King of Madison Avenue

If you want to make software products, you must know design. Even when I worked for the hardware company, my software was used by humans, and they object if what you make sucks. I’ve made a script used by many engineers for result reporting. And the output was shared in the web, PDF and printed form. For stuff like this you must know design, otherwise you’ll fail miserably.

This is one of the few books for hackers to introduce you to design step by step. The amount of unnecessary fluff is minimal. It uses easy language, without many scientific details which you’d forget anyway.

The examples are nice and clear.

Exercises are fun and doable. I often find examples a drudgery, but for this book it wasn’t a case.

You get to learn simple rules. Rules, which you can put on your checklist and which are easy to memorise. You can actually think of them when making your next visual software.

While I know the importance of design, typography, layout and grid already before reading this book, color was something I struggled with. After reading this book the sense, meaning and composition of colored elements in your software should be easier.

I’m by no means good with it, but I understand where to use what better. The app or website must look good and be fairly appealing to people for them to stick to it. If it sucks, people won’t even look around. If you’re into building products for other people, this book will show you how to use typography, size, alignment, repetition and contrast to make your creations usable.

Basically, can’t recommend this book highly enough.