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The Non-Designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice

Robin Williams · 7 HN comments
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Amazon Summary
Outlines the essentials of page layout, emphasizing the four concrete principles of design--proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast--in an illustrated volume that features before and after examples of page design. Original. (All Users).
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I learned this concept years ago in "The Non Designer's Design Book". It really gave a logical breakdown of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity along with a number of other useful/important design techniques.

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-...

Poiesis
Yes! I still have my ancient copy. I will forever remember that mnemonic. Robin Williams (not that Robin Williams) really did well with this one.
alexwolfe
me too.
deyan
Great book indeed!
Paying $10,000 for design work at early stage is lunacy. I solved the problem by:

1) Reading the first 100 pages of the Non-Designers Design Book (http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-...).

2) Using CSS grid systems (e.g. Blueprint) and CSS abstractions (such as Compass) to ease the design process and minimize cross browser tomfoolery.

3) Visiting http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ and browsing lists such as "best minimal designs" and then slicing and dicing parts from my favorite pages together.

End results: www.bolivianexpress.org, www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk

Your end result might not win any awards, but hey you'll have $10,000 more in the bank.

If you're interested in learning about some design concepts, I highly recommend reading The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams:

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-...

It's a quick, easy read and the concepts can really apply to any kind of visual design. Any of her other titles are also excellent.

These were some of the books which taught me a lot about Design were:

Don't make me Think by Steve Krug http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/032134...

Non-Designer's Design Book http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-...

Universal Principles of Design http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-Revised-Up...

Also make sure you go through design's everyday on Behance.net, they have some really amazing designers and design.

neves
Non-designer's book is really a great introduction.
Helped me a lot too.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-...

cageface
For a design book that is an ugly cover.
jayliew
Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany" also has a horrible design and the "manufacturing" quality of the book is just plain crappy. But the content in the book is just absolutely golden, a must read for tech startups.
nailer
yes - they just a lost a sale for me. The yellow and the purple tones are too close.
tokenadult
That's the publisher's house style, I'm pretty sure. Author's rarely have control over book covers or book titles--publishers think they know more about such marketing issues than authors do.
zackattack
That sounds reasonable, but Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think is a design book that embodies its own principles, from cover to cover.
csmeder
Yes the cover sucks, it sucks horribly, however, the book is by far the best book I have found for people new or intermediate to design.

This seems like a dichotomy but its not. The reason the cover sucks is that Williams is not naturally good at design. This means for her to get good at it she had to actually learn and understand it. This is why this book is so good. However, she never learned how to design with color. Most of the designs she makes using color I feel are bad.

That said this book ROCKS, is hands down the best book when it comes to design basics of: Proximity

Alignment

Repetition

Contrast

Typography

edanm
You're right, this is often brought up.

But trust me, this book is one I'm very glad to have read. More importantly, glad to have read first. It's a list of no-nonsense principals which teach you the basics in an easy-to-understand manner. I really can't recommend this highly enough, cover or no.

Note that the book I linked to is the wrong one. One of the comments has the correct book.

Also note, this book doesn't talk about color, but only the other basics.

steamer25
There are a couple different titles, the one linked above is the typography-focussed volume.

The one on general design principles is here: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...

There are also volumes specifically for web, powerpoint, etc.

edanm
You're right of course, that's the one I meant. Copy paste bug! :(
Nice, I'm glad you found it useful.

I would actually recommend her previous edition of the book. In this new version she trys to update it using color and it goes all wrong.

She is stretching her ability past her strong points. She is EXTREMELY good at the basics, but ask her to design something in color and its just bad IMHO.

This is the edition I like : http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-...

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