I’ve been building websites for 4 or 5 years now and this is the first book I’ve found that does a good job of walking the reader through the entire thought process of planning and creating a structured strategy for designing websites. If you’re sold on the idea that smart thinking and great design thrive on a methodical approach, this book will delight you. That said, it’s not a how-to book on building code or using tools like Photoshop, so if you’re just getting into web design and you’re itching to learn specific skills for building stuff, you’ll probably want to hold off on buying this for now and come back to it later when you’re ready to start doing professional projects. Just do so knowing that, when you do eventually come back and read it, you’ll probably kick yourself for not reading it first ;-).

For those of you interested in buying the book, here’s a quick list of pros and cons:

PROS (many):

• There’s zero fluff-factor. Brian did a solid job of explaining things simply and succinctly and moving on. Every page gets straight to the point. You’ll get through it quickly without feeling like you wasted any time.
• It’s easy on the eyes. There are plenty of visuals to support the content. If you surf though CSS galleries a lot looking for inspiration for your projects, you’ll also get a lot of value just from flipping through the pages.
• It’s an ideal start for aspiring design professionals because it provides a comprehensive, horizontal look at the design process end to end. If your goal is to learn how to manage big design projects, the book helps you develop an essential vocabulary and a broad awareness of things you need to consider (and why you do) before you get started.

CONS (few):

• The information in some sections is a little “light”. I said at the beginning of this post that I wished the book was longer. And again, I’ll say that at 255 pages, that’s not really a knock. There’s plenty of great info to chew on. The book was clearly designed for breadth, rather than depth, which is why it succeeds in giving the reader a complete and broad awareness of the design process. Depth needed to be sacrificed in order to cover everything. Entire books have been written on each topic covered in this book (like SEO, usability etc). The good news is that being aware that these are critical steps in the process will aid you in your search for deeper dives into how this stuff is done.
• No suggestions for further reading. Recognizing that this book was designed for breadth, it would have been useful to have had a short list of suggested resources in each section to guide the reader to deep dives. For example, Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us includes a vetted list of “further reading” after every section. This isn’t a make or break by any means, it’s just a nice to have.

So in wrapping up I just want to acknowledge one last thing. Funny enough, I actually found this book while searching the iPad app store for web design tools. It has an accompanying iPad app with a neat grid building function and a few short interviews with Brian that are tied into a sample of the first chapter. If you’re still wondering whether this book might be for you and you have an iPad, download the app. It’s only a buck, the tools are neat and it’s a great way to figure out whether you want to spend an extra $20 on the paperback. I doubt you’ll be disappointed with either. The paperback is collection-worthy.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Book Review- Above The Fold: Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design

My Favorite Learning Hubs:

TutsPlus

This one is by far my favorite learning hub, so much so that I subscribe via email so I don’t miss anything. It’s actually a network of blogs that post daily tutorial content on Photoshop, Flash, web development, graphic design, photography and video creation. Most of the content is free, but for $9 a month, you can get access to their archive of premium video tutorials, screen casts and tutorials, which I do. It’s not all great, but 75% of it is – Jeffrey Way‘s screencasts on PSD to HTML to WordPress alone are worth the price. Many of us spend more than that on any given weekend in Starbucks. Believe me, if you’re already at an intermediate level with multimedia creation and want quickly build a broader skill set, this is the place to go.

Kelby Training

Adobe Photoshop is a linchpin application. So many higher-level skill sets these days depend or build on Photoshop that you just can’t get by doing anything front end or visual without it. I’m not saying that Kelby Training is the only place to learn photoshop, but it’s almost certainly the best. For $25 a month you get access to a constantly updated stream of online video training by Scott Kelby (president of the NAPP) and a host of other experts . The content is all targeted towards creative professionals and focuses on Photoshop and the rest of Adobe’s creative suite, as well photography and DSLR videography. Most of the video sessions are over an hour long, and they’re segmented into 5 to 10 minute targeted chunks so you can skip around and just focus on what you want to. Great time value for money and I never leave without feeling like I learned something.

O’Reilly Media

O’Reilly continues to publish some of the best tech books available on the market. The Missing Manual and the Head First series are great.  A lot of thought’s put into the delivery of the information in both series which is an important thing when you’re trying to learn quickly and get bang for your buck. The Head First HTML  with CSS and XHTML is still a book I go back to frequently for refreshers. I’m still waiting for O’Reilly to expand it’s offerings into a Kelby Training type of video-lecture format, I’ve got to admit that sometimes there’s just no substitute for one of these books when you’re trying to build foundational knowledge, especially when you can download them. Almost all of O’Reilly’s books are available as ebooks via the website and if you follow them on Twitter, they dish out daily $9.99 ebook deals.

Smashing Magazine

Last but certainly not least, this site deserves a mention. It’s a great source for information and tutorials on graphics, coding, and design inspiration and tools. They often have great freebies. In particular, it’s one of the best places to get an idea of current design trends and tools in web design.

Final Thoughts

For me, what differentiates the sites I’ve mentioned above from others is the value I get for my time and money. It takes thousands of hours to get good at web design, creating media and using creative tools like Photoshop. Any resource I can go to that allows me to focus my energy and feel like I’ve learned quickly and effectively is a plus – and at prices like these, you can’t really lose. It actually makes me question whether traditional schooling is even necessary these days. Why would you pay 50-100K to go to college to become a creative professional when you could spend a fraction of that to get access to really recent content, interact with industry experts and get the same skillset?  That’s another topic for another time, I guess, but I’m happy to discuss it here with anyone in the comments.

What are your favorite places to learn web design, development and multimedia on the web?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

The Best Learning Hubs For Web Design, Development and Multimedia