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When it comes to putting books together into a collective works, you will find a lot of them out there, from comics to art to images to even fonts. Usually this is done after months or years of them being put out at an individual level and so when these collection books are put together, all that information is condensed into a few volumns. Now take that collectors concept and https://www.smashingmagazine.com/ and you have one of three volumns of the best content from their website in book form. This book is co-authored by 13 individuals at various levels of experience in the web design world and at 315 pages broken down into ten chapters, Smashing Book #1 consists of a lot of information for one to take in. Like in most first volumn books, I think, This book covers covers a lot of introductory/beginner topics such as CSS layouts, typography, usability, color, optimization to name a few. Like I said, this is a condense volumn of hundreds of articles posted on their website, but on top of that each chapter by itself can be considered a book due to the fact there are litterally hundreds of books out there that cover every angle you can think of about color, typography, usuability and so on. However, the one thing I will point out is that most of the information is outdated by three years, but with a lot of the concepts presented in this book I doubt much has changed. Therefor, the book is worth getting to help give you a start on the hundreds of ideas and concepts that are presented in this book and obviously push you to find out more and see what current information is out there about what you have read. Another thing I like about this book is the writing from these various authors, its simplsitic in nature but they go into a lot of detail in explaining everything. Obviously if go to their website, most of the information you find in this book you will find there. However, I don't think you want to stare at the screen for hours on end, but I know most do. Because it is a great collection of information about the web and obviously the more you know the better you get at becoming a great web designer. Of course, I would recommend getting volume two of this book as it introduces you to even more topics, and if you have both of them, then go ahead and order volumn #3 as well since it will be the most updated book out of the three.

In this review, I will be talking about second edition of Jason Beaird's book titled "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design 2ed". it is just one of many free books I have picked up from this great website and I would like to share it with you. In this book Beaird talks about all the various aspects of designing a beautiful website, from layout to color to typography to the usage of images and more. While this is pretty small for what it covers (Five Chapters at 196 pages). He still provides a great source of information, especially with current trends such as Grids, Fluid/Fixed/Responsive layouts, CSS3 and some HTML5 as well. In his first chapter titled "Layout and Composition", he spends his time in this chapter discussing the layout process a designer takes, such as what what the website is about, which questions to ask, should it be symmetrical or asymmetrical, inspiration and more. Definitely worth reading for you UX designers out there because how important this aspect of building a website is important to the boys and girls of UX. Another favorite part of the book lies in chapter two "Color" in which, Jason Beaird talks about the psychology of color, and spends the first seven pages talking about the meaning of primary colors such as red, blue, black, white, yellow, and even purple. Then of course, a topic I have been pondering about for awhile of course is topography and the fact I spend timing looking at fonts more closely, especially since CSS3 including the @font-face into its structure. Even though this is good book, the one fatal flaw its a bit short, especially in the topics that Beaird covers and so this book is gear more towards those getting into design and not those or are well aged in these areas. Of course, if you bought the first edition of the book most of the information is the same, but I find this version to be more polished and the book more reader friendly then its predecessor irregardless of the information that is in the two books. Of course, if your a huge fan of Sitepoint, then its a must have for your collection and I know I have.

In today's book, I will be reviewing White Space Is Not our Enemy: A Beginner's Guide to Communicating Visually through Graphic, Web and Multimedia Design by Kim Golombisky & Rebecca Hagen. If you thought what I though, unlikely, I was thinking it was a book about work white space in your designs, well you be wrong as this book is more of a informal discussion of web design in general. Meaning, that it covers the most important aspects of design such as fonts, color, images, layout, story boarding to name a few. Of course, the whole time the book is specifically talking about the proper and improper usage of white space so that is most definitely a buzz world to look out for as you read this book. While this book is gear more towards the UX crowd, I think this book, which is light in nature, is valuable to programmers, graphic designers, font and color specialists and so on. The book isn't technical by any means but does provides processes a person would go through when trying to figure out their design. Obviously, the topics that the previous sentence refers to the chapters on color, fonts, and story boarding. However, as you read the book it provides a subtle process for everything a person goes through, its just those three chapters that stick out the most. As for the chapter that I will be focusing on in this review will be Chapter 4, which is titled Layout Sins. In this chapter the authors talks about 13 common mistakes when it comes to the layout process, for me some of them are pretty common and others not so much. For instance, sin number 2 talks about re-sizing the image to fit your layout and the problem is that it often distorts the image itself and thus lose its quality. I can say from experience getting an image to work properly in a layout is a annoying task, especially if the image isn't large enough to fit the layout. As for a sin that isn't too common, for me at least is Sin #8: Trapped Negative Space. The idea from what the authors are talking and from my understanding it has to deal with making sure that the white is balanced through out the website and if it isn't, then it will stick out like a sore thumb. To read more about this sine more specifically, go here http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/negative-space-in-webpage-layouts-a-guide/ The best thing about this chapter is out the end in which they ask you to go through the 13 sins with your designs and see if any of them show up, and odds are after reading that chapter they will stand out more. Which means, that this list should be an important part of your design process and odds are I bet that list would be even larger, but odds are I think the authors wanted to stick to these the most. To end my review, it is a good book for light reading and helps you think a bit more or rather think about things that have never come up and while it isn't technical in nature, I bet if you combine it with your other books, UX or other wise, odds are it will strengthen the process you go through from paper to server.