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Design Concepts with Code: An Approach for Developers Review by Thomas Duff
Good for a particular niche readership...
One of the books I recently finished reading for review was Design Concepts With Code: An Approach For Developers by Kelly Carey and Stanko Blatnik (Apress). While this book might appeal to some niche of website design and development, I don't think I'm part of that group.
The chapter breakdown: Introducing Interface Design; Introducing Design Principles; Project 1: Building an Open Source Portal; Implementing Design Elements: Line, Type, and Shape; Implementing Design Elements: Texture, Space, Size, Value, and Layout; Project 2: Building an Online Resource Center; Working with Content and Typography; Using Color; Project 3: Building a Webzine; Exploring Site Issues and Accessibility; Index
This is a different book that is hard for me to describe. There are a number of abstract sketches in boxes that are about 1" x 1". The reader is asked how they would interpret the lines and they are given three choices. They are then told which answer is correct as far as the attitude and mood that is suggested by the design. Each sketch is followed by Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) code to show how that sketch is coded. After a number of these exercises, the concepts are used to show a design of a web page or site that incorporates that type of design to create the proper sense and feeling.
If you're a graphic designer of web sites, you would probably get something from this book. A developer (or at least *this* developer) would have a much harder time getting past the "here's a picture and here's the right answer as to what it should mean to you" style. Outside of that, the incessant use of showing each sketch's SVG code seems to be nothing more than a space filler. I would have much rather seen something like this be downloadable from a website and to skip the endless code listings. I guess I misread the title Design Concepts With Code. I was thinking the book would cover how your code can show design concepts, not to show design concepts with code printed for each picture.
I won't say it's a bad book... It's just got a few flaws I would have done differently, and it definitely isn't a book that will appeal to everyone.