Web Design
Topics include graphic design, web design and development, information design, hypermedia and writing for the web.

The following resources are our top picks in this category.

Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. Jakob Nielsen. (1999)
This guide segments discussions of web usability into page, content, site, and intranet design. This breakdown skillfully isolates for the reader many subtly different challenges that are often mixed together in other discussions.
Note: Working title was "Designing Excellent Websites: Secrets of an Information Architect."

The Elements of User Experience. Jesse James Garrett. (March 30, 2000)
This diagram attempts to impose order upon the chaotic array of terms and concepts currently being used to describe user experience development.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Scott McCloud. (1993)
This book explains the details of how comics work: how they're composed, read and understood. More than just a book about comics, this gets to the heart of how we deal with visual languages in general.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Edward R Tufte. Revised ed. (1992)
A timeless classic in how complex information should be presented graphically. The design of this book is an exemplar of the principles it espouses: elegant typography and layout, and seamless integration of lucid text and perfectly chosen graphical examples.

Yale Style Manual. Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton. (January 1997)
Approachs web page and site design as a challenge that combines traditional editorial approaches to documents with graphic design, user interface design, information design, and the technical authoring skills required to optimize the HTML code, graphics, and text within web pages.
Note: The book is available through Amazon.com.

The following are also excellent resources.

Application (Re)Engineering: Building Web-Based Applications and Dealing With Legacies. Amjad Umar. (1997)
A guide to successfully integrating client/server, object-orientation, and the Internet in new enterprise applications. Using case studies and short tutorials, the author shows how to establish data architectures, application architectures, and frameworks that enable successful web-based software development; how to use middleware to engineer new applications, or re-engineer existing ones; and how to cope with legacy systems.

Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss "Obvious" Links. Jan Panero Benway and David M. Lane. From: ITG Newsletter. 1:3 (December 5, 1998)
This study showed that banners were ignored, even when there was no other way to access the required information. Design recommendations include being cautious when increasing the visual distinction between elements on a web page, and following the guideline to duplicate visually distinct elements in another area of the web page.

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web. Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos. 2nd ed. (1999)
This book is the perfect introduction to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for beginning writers of web pages, and the definitive guide for professional web designers.

Collaborative Web Development: Strategies and Best Practices for Web Teams. Jessica Burdman. (1999)
This book offers advice on pulling together a team, establishing procedures, setting a timeline, communicating effectively with team members and clients, balancing scope and technical sophistication with cost and time constraints, and managing large-scale web sites. The CD-ROM contains templates, sample forms, and demonstration software.

Common Ground: A Pattern Language for Human-Computer Interface Design. Jenifer Tidwell. (1999)
The patterns contained in this work address the general problem of how to design a complex interactive software artifact. They are intended to be used by people who design traditional user interfaces, web sites, online documentation, and video games.

Customer-Effective Web Sites. Jodie Dalgleish. (2000)
This book addresses every component of e-commerce success: content, navigation, applications, information architecture, visual design, technology, and more. It presents 17 rules that every site must follow to attract profitable customers.

Designing Business: Multiple Media, Multiple Disciplines. Clement Mok. (1996)
Illustrated with examples from dozens of Fortune 100 companies, this guide reveals how the right design strategy can give businesses a powerful advantage. The author offers a new paradigm for design success, one using traditional design tools, such as diagrams and graphics, blended with new computer technologies.
Note: Currently out of print.

Designing for the Web: Getting Started in a New Medium. Jennifer Niederst. (2000)
This book on web graphic design is especially strong in helping you solve the mysteries of working with transparency, interlacing, imagemaps, and bit-depths to create effective and compact images that work on the web.

Designing Your Audience. Jeffrey Zeldman. From: A List Apart. (1999)
This article contrasts two sites regarding their general design, and concludes that one is designed for users and the other is designed for viewers. The resulting suggestion is to resolve the riddle of who the audience is before determining how to design the site.

A Divided Approach to Web Site Design: Separating Content and Visuals for Rapid Results. Jeanette Fuccella and Jack Pizzolato. (June 1999)
This paper describes a way to shorten your design cycle by getting focused early user feedback on the different layers of your design.

Envisioning Information. Edward R. Tufte. (1990)
The author's second book presents a collection of some the best examples of information design ever invented, and some of the worst examples. This book will be helpful to any web page designer, UI designer, statistician, cartographer, scientist, or anyone concerned with presenting dense information in a clear way.

InfoDesign Discussion List.
This list serves as a forum for discussions about information design issues.

Information Architects. Richard Saul Wurman, editor. (1996)
The author edits this book of contributions by 20 masters in the visual display of information. This book discusses the importance of information design in physical spaces and virtual interfaces.
Note: Currently out of print.

Information Architecture Resources.
This guide by Info.Design includes books, articles and other resources on a range of topics including information architecture, knowledge management, accessability, e-commerce, navigation, usability and visual design.

Information Design and Technology (IDT) at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The Master of Science in Information Design and Technology (IDT) at the Georgia Institute of Technology offers humanities-based advanced study in digital media design and critique. This program takes a different approach to information architecture than a traditional library science program.

Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference. Robert L. Harris. (2000)
This book explains how to visually represent many types of information. It is a thorough reference to all types of graphs, maps, tables, diagrams, and charts, and most of the graphics are accompanied by one or more examples along with explanations for when and how to use them.

A List Apart. Jeffrey Zeldman, editor.
A magazine and discussion list for people who make web sites.

Live With Your Users. Marc Rettig. From: Proceedings of Web Design & Development '99. (July 1999)
This presentation discusses using the techniques of contextual research -- techniques borrowed from anthropology -- to shape both strategy and design.

Mapping Hypertext: The Analysis, Organization, and Display of Knowledge for the Next Generation of On-Line Text and Graphics. Robert E. Horn. (1990)
This book addresses one of the major problems of writing for the web -- how to chunk, organize, and sequence your writing. It is an introduction to the author's method of "Information Mapping," which is the most widely taught method of technical writing in the world, taught to over 20,000 writers per year.

The Non-Designer's Design Book. Robin Williams. (1994)
This book outlines the essentials of page layout, emphasizing the four concrete principles of design -- proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast -- in an illustrated volume that features before and after examples of page design.

Peterme.com. Peter Merholz.
This site began as a series of self-published essays: "Stating The Obvious." This evolved (or devolved) towards link lists and shorter thoughtpieces. Topics for discussion range from information architecture and web design to current events.

Secrets of Successful Web Sites: Project Management on the World Wide Web. David S. Siegel. (1997)
This book explains the process of web development from both the client's and the contractor's point of view, with 15 detailed case studies of web sites and the teams who put them together, and 11 chapters on methods for designing sites. It describes phases of the web design process including partnering, content development and design, production, and launch and maintenance, with emphasis on design and business aspects rather than technical how-tos.

Understanding Hypermedia 2.000: Multimedia Origins, Internet Futures. Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver. 2nd ed. (1997)
This book charts the developments in technology, culture, science and the arts to give a very broad understanding of just what hypermedia is and where it came from. Looking to the future, the book looks at the components of hypermedia, the processes of designing and building new media projects, and the future of the medium.

Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Edward R Tufte. (1997)
The third volume in the author's series on information display centers on dynamic data -- information that changes over time.

Web Design: An Empiricist's Guide. Mary Evans. (Spring 1998)
This report reviews empirical research results in an attempt to find research-based answers to key questions of web site design.

Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference. Jennifer Niederst and Richard Koman. (1998)
The book breaks down the huge topic of web site development into understandable, readable segments: the web environment (browsers, displays, design principles), an in-depth guide to HTML tags, graphics manipulation and display, multimedia possibilities, and technologies for larger site management, such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XML.

Web Page Design for Designers: Navigation. Joe Gillespie.
This site discusses the graphic design of navigational elements.

Web Review Magazine. Molly E. Holzschlag, editor.
This magazine is available in print and on the web, and includes articles, reviews, and tips for web developers.

Web Techniques. Amit Asaravala, editor.
This journal contains how-to information on every aspect of web development, design and management.

WebbedEnvironments.
Includes opinion pieces, articles and tips dealing with the wide spectrum of information related to web design.

Webmonkey.
This resource includes opinion pieces, articles and tips dealing with the wide spectrum of information related to web design.