Lovely resource
I love this book because it inspired me and gave me great ideas for different portfolios.
Just Wrong
As someone doing web design, I bought this book to look at other designs, and how they were built. If this is what you're looking for, this book isn't for you.
This book should be a coffee-table book, but is the wrong size and format even for that. All it contains is pictures of websites, and not at a size to to be considered art. Not helpful. If you want to browse websites, only looking at a picture, you can do that on the web just fine.
This book should never have been titled "Web design". It's not web design, it's a vanity site on paper.
Great book from a great series
Great book and a nice compact format. Not a lot of text but visuals are why you would buy this book.
Atrocious Grammar, Beautiful Book
I am a web developer and purchased this book with a few others to sample the current design trends and to find inspiration for new design layouts. Quite simply, this book serves both purposes much more completely than I had anticipated.
I picked up the book in a hurry, expecting only to find photos of sites. I was pleasantly surprised to find a bit more: the book provides a caption noting the languages/tools/technologies used to create the site, the names of the programmers (and, by logical deduction, the number of programmers it took to create), the number of hours that were spent creating the site, and the average number of hours that are spent maintaining the site on a monthly basis.
It is true that most of the designs are created primarily with Flash. If you're looking for layouts to mimic using XHTML and CSS, well, good luck.
Also, as a lifelong member of the Grammar Gestapo, I had quite a few chuckles when reading the introduction (the English introduction, that is--the book is trilingual, with the introduction, titles and captions in English, French and German).
Despite the poor grammar (which is, I'll grant, better than that of most native anglophones), the book delivered much more than I had expected, and I am extremely happy with my purchase. I imagine I'll be carrying this book around with me for at least the next few months, glancing through it whenever I have a free moment on the bus or out at lunch.
The book comes with a durable cover and glossy pages that smell great!
Nice for inspiration
As an amateur photographer, some years back I'd built up a simple site to show my images. It is pretty stale so I wandered the net looking what other photographers were doing. While it is easy to just wander around, it is time consuming for this research aspect.
Looking at the latest web design books at the local bookstore, this one was titled exactly what I had in mind. Fortunately Wiedemann has wandered far and wide to gather this collection. Sitting on the couch, it is easy to thumb through and mark those you may want to see. Clicking on these is like a best-of and the sites are fantastic as far as content and creativity. While not every one will match your preference, there are more than enough that will.
Many of the examples play heavily on Flash programming so it may be a bit much for casual site builders. To me, this book is a nice reference for those who want a site but may not have an idea which direction to pursue. Seeing the layout, this may be beneficial when farming this aspect out. You can say..."I like this feature on this site...can we integrate something like it in ours?" So by picking-chosing various features, one can develop a pretty nice atmosphere for viewers.
You'll easily spend countless hours in fruitless wandering to maybe turn up 2-3 sites in an hour that really grab you. Then try and dig through your history tab frantically hoping to recall one particular site with a feature you liked. This book for the price is a no-brainer...BUY-IT! For me, the overall value in design layout, content, Flash ideas exceeds the price paid in multiples.
The book's production values are first rate too. Well worth $10.
(7 reviews)
