web design Book Review: Professional Web Design Vol 1

[Saint_Michael 3]

When comes to web design, there is just way too much information, but what if I told you that the best minds in the web industry got together, wrote some articles over a two year span, and it was put into a book to help make your life easier?

Well, there is such a book and it comes from the boys and girls of Smashing Magazine and its called Professional Web Design vol 1., 12 Chapters, almost 250 pages of the best information of 2009 and 2010. In this book, if you don't come out as a better design after reading this book and volumn 2, then you need a career change. This book makes you think of what being a web designer is, as the information though a bit old is still quite inciteful because most of the core ideas and concepts in this book never change, just get a slight update based on who is using them. Some of the topics that Volumn one covers include, portfolio design, user experience (UX) concepts, corportate world, color theory, identifying and working with clients, and networking to name a few.

The chapter that I am going to cover is titled "Color Theory for Professional Designers" and it is written by Cameron Chapman. So what does chapter cover that most of us know already? Well Chapman breaks down some various colors and their meanings (Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue, Purple, and Green) in which Chapman breaks it down by warm, cool, and neutral. Chapman then goes over and explains "Traditional Color Scheme Types" which Monochromatic, Analogous, Complementary to name a few.

However, I think the most important section in this chapter is the process of creating color Scheme, one thing that Chapman does mention is creating a set of colors can be pretty intimidating, just because there millions of colors and billions of combinations to work with. But she says its not a complicated process and I would have to partially agree as its a norm for most web designers to work with just five colors, but if you feel confident with your color theory, you can work with more.

Of course, the best advice she has to provide in which I should do more myself, is develop color schemes daily using the various tools out there. My recommendation is using Adobe Kuler as it is a fantastic tool to create and discover great color Schemes. The other thing is that when it comes to color theory, this chapter barely scratches the surface of which mentions there are litterally hundreds of books out there just on this topic alone.

As for the rest of the book, it is just as insightful and worthy to be in anyone's library, and for those getting into the web design business, take a look at this book to give you an idea where to begin and focus your time and energy. For those who are well versed in the web or print, book is just as good if you feel like changing things up a bit or looking for a bit of a refresher.

To end, I would like to point out that the book isn't on individual sale, except for Kindle, but you can get it with a bundle package from the Smashing Magazine store at the following address.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

In this bundle it includes this book, and volume 2, and another book titled "Getting the Hang of Web Typograph" so check the bundle out and the rest of the Smashing book series.