WILEY Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty

I purchased this book so I could muddle through creating web designs for non-profit activities that didn't justify spending money on a professional (mainly because for such work there is no money to spend). I was expecting a list of "do's and don'ts" with a tiny bit of context that would at the very least stop my designs looking like an explosion in a Clip Art factory. In this regard I have been somewhat disappointed as this book actually requires me to do some creative thinking for myself - there are some excellent (almost prescriptive) guidelines in the book for things such as picking colours and fonts, but joining everything together is clearly going to take a lot of practice. If I were a churlish reviewer, rating the book on its suitability for my purposes, then I would have given it four stars. But I'm a professional who appreciates the reasons why my clients pay me for the stuff that I'm actually good at (i.e. not design) and I realise that some of my greatest growth experiences have come from learning the "wrong" (i.e. unintentional) thing. This book is one such experience.Anybody that comes anywhere near building user interfaces or hard-copy publications (i.e. web and desktop developers, copy writers, marketing execs, small business owners, school fair and bake sale organisers, careless cat owners, etc.) should read this book - even if only to stop you looking like a total design amateur. It's genuinely fascinating in the way that it explains why fonts, colours, layouts, and logos, look the way they do from a historical context. The message that design is a product of both intent and environment is re-iterated and illustrated with examples throughout the book. The level of detail seems unnecessary at times, but by the end of the chapter it becomes clear that the author's judgement was spot-on. You may think you don't need to know some of this stuff but actually you do.The author's tone is that of a good professor - he clearly wants you to learn and enjoy this stuff, so he explains everything clearly and doesn't take for granted that you already understand these design concepts. I felt like this book was educating me, but at no point did I feel out of my depth or patronised. Only time will tell if I am able to put it into practice, but right now I feel like my life is richer for having read it.

There are a lot of good examples and all the items are very clear.Really a great book for people who like to understand why it works and how to make it work.

The content of the book is great. It covers a wide array of design principles, from typography, to color, to proportions, to... Well, really, most of design. It's all easy to understand, and it comes with a variety of examples to help illustrate and reinforce the information. It is an excellent resource for learning design, and I highly recommend it. Even with a few minor flaws, it still deserves a 5 star rating.Amusingly, however, I have a couple small gripes with the design of the book. As I said, there are plenty of examples to help get the point across. Sometimes, these examples are mentioned near the end of a page, and then the author begins talking in depth about the example, but the example is on the next page (the back of the current page, not just slightly to the right), requiring you to flip back and forth to finish that last paragraph if you want to see the example as you read it. There is often more content relevant to the example on that next page, so it's not like the examples feel ostracized; they don't. In fact, in most such cases, the bulk of the information is on that next page, so it wouldn't make sense to put it on the first page, either, so it's sort of a catch 22. It's just mildly annoying to not have them readily available when he first begins talking about them.Also, of slightly more importance, be careful with the section and chapter title pages. They're almost all black, and fingerprints show up very easily. When I tried to wipe a couple off, I actually smudged some of the ink, causing it to fade in spots. So if you get annoyed with your fingerprints on those pages, be careful how you try to wipe them off.

Per alcuni può essere un libro ovvio, per altri magari no.Si parla dell'importaza delle proporzioni, di tipografia, di estetica del colore, di tutto quello che si mescola in armonia e distingue il Bello dal mediocre o dal brutto.Leggetelo, vi farà bene.The cult of Beauty!

Rating this book is difficult. After finishing it, I would have given it 5 stars. I was impressed. I learned a lot about typography, SEO, proportions, composition, and color. It gave me a lot of reference points to use for making design decisions in those areas in the future. But something in my gut told me to hold off on reviewing this until I tried to design something and see how this book changed my process.This led me to confusion. I opened photoshop to design a website I already had plans for. This book gave me a reference for which fonts to use, what color schemes would work well with the message of the site, and that everything — the fonts, the images, the boxes — should be proportional to each other. The book taught me to use all these things to create a hierarchy to show the reader what’s most important. But I still felt unsure about some critical design decisions: whats a good width layout to use for a website? I use a 5K monitor, and I see a lot of well designed sites that either expand to take up the whole width of the screen or expand to a maximum width and then stop. What goes in to making that decision? What about adjusting for mobile? But then I remembered that Kadavy said at the end of the introduction, “After reading this book, you still may not be totally satisfied with the very next design that you create.” He also brushes off the importance of giving you concrete rules to follow and instead wants you to know the more abstract principles that go into design.So am I wrong to want to critique him for not doing something that he said he wasn’t going to do in the book? He did a great job at what he said he was going to do in the introduction. This is a beautiful and well written book.Could it be that I misinterpreted the purpose of the book? He clearly states it’s about understanding the principles that go into design and not a how-to manual for web design. But the title “Design for Hackers” and the subtitle “reverse-engineering beauty” imply that he’s going to go over concrete examples of beautiful designs. It even states that’s what he’s going to do on the back of the book for web design. Could it be that I missed these examples in the book? No. I read his section on reverse-engineering Twitter. It’s six pages. He mentions it uses the golden ratio for proportions (which he says later is not all its cracked up to be), and then offers user personas, use cases, and wireframes for the Twitter design. Those last three things he never mentions again in the book (I checked the index). The bit on Target isn’t even about web design. It just talks about the power of the color red.Maybe Kadavy didn’t write the back of the book. Or come up with the title. It doesn’t match the message of the book and it’s great advertising for persuading readers to buy the book. The title grabs the attention of any engineer who wants to learn design by speaking their language. The back of the book asks questions that you want to know the answers to, and you’ll get them if you buy the book. Or maybe he’s just a great salesman and wrote it himself. Either way, what he’s selling on the cover is a subtle bait-and-switch from what he’s selling in the intro — which he fulfills greatly.My theory is that Kadavy wanted to write a book on the principles of design that are used on the web (which he does a great job of in the book), but for some reason felt like it would sell better if he promised to “reverse-engineer beauty”, which he half-heartedly attempts to do. I think it’s a great book for introducing the principles of web/graphic design, but the title, blurb, and back of the book duped me into thinking I would be ready to design a beautiful website after reading it. So since you’ve read this far, you’ve been warned.