| by Ian Mankowski February 15, 2000 Wow, is definitely something you’ll be saying upon picking up this book, and it’s something we’ve all come to expect from the WOW! series. The Web Design WOW! Book is 219 pages of inspirational imagery for web site designers. It ships with a CD that contains trial versions of popular WYSIWYG editors (Mac and PC) as well as Gif construction and optimization utilities, (Macintosh only). This publication succeeds in bringing the best web site design under one cover. While not a “how to” book, The Web Design WOW! Book will show you the best of the web so you can succeed in bringing life and design sensibility to your own sites. The publication is primarily intended for web site designers, but several of its examples are for interactive CDs and other software, making this a good design book for any multimedia artist. While there are many “how to” books out there for good web site design, The Web Design WOW! Books' use of brilliant imagery and it's primary focus as an inspirational guide, make it a leader in a class of its own. The Web Design WOW! Book contains more then 50 case studies, with over 600 full color photographs of web sites and interactive software designs. This all combines into a very easy to read book that is sure to get your creative juices going. For each site and interface this book takes apart, an invaluable grid diagram is shown to help you see the underlying structure of the example. Each case study is categorized into a main design focus, such as entertainment, sales, and portfolios, allowing you to quickly find site designs that will help inspire you for your particular purpose. Many of the case studies are for interactive software. As a result, the designing of interfaces and the layout of the graphic elements are much more bandwidth intensive. Which is great if you’re running a company DSL line, unfortunately for the rest of us, we’re still chugging along on 56K modems. The upside to this? 56K is rapidly being replaced with broadband services and these graphic intensive designs will be very relevant, as the downloading of these pages will be much quicker in the future. The Web Design WOW! Book succeeds in what all books in the WOW series strive to do; to inspire and astound. There is no better inspirational source for the web then this one. With its easy to read content, and liberal use of photographs, The Web Design WOW! Book is suitable for beginning and advanced designers who work with the web, as well as those who work on software interface design. I give my utmost recommendation for this publication. Strengths: - Great inspirational resource
- Very easy to read
- Lots of full color pictures
Weaknesses: - A good proportion devoted to designs and interfaces for other mediums besides the web.
If you’re a web site designer, you need this book. The design aesthetics featured will inspire you to create sites that will be a pleasure to return to. The Web Design WOW! Book CD contains content relevant to Windows and Macintosh
List Price: USA $39.95 Canada: $55.95
Peachpit Press Copyright 2000, Ian Mankowski, All Rights Reserved | 