The Web Designer’s Idea Book Volume 2: The Latest Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design (Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Latest Themes, Trends & Styles in Website Design)
Web Design Inspiration at a Glance
Volume 2 of The Web Designer’s Idea Book includes more than 650 new websites arranged thematically, so you can easily find inspiration for your work. Author Patrick McNeil, creator of the popular web design blog designmeltdown.com and author of the original bestselling Web Designer’s Idea Book, has cataloged thousands of sites, and showcases the latest and best examples in this book.
The web is the most rapidly changing design medium, and this book offers an organized overview of what’s happening right now. Sites are categorized by type, design element, styles and themes, structural styles, and structural elements. This new volume also includes a helpful chapter explaining basic design principles and how they can be applied online.
Whether you’re brainstorming with a coworker or explaining your ideas to a client, this book provides a powerful communication tool you can use to jumpstart your next project.
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(out of 2 reviews)
List Price: $ 30.00
Price: $ 19.79
The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design
- ISBN13: 9781600610646
- Condition: New
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Inspiring Web Design at a Glance
The Web Designer’s Idea Book includes more than 700 websites arranged thematically, so you can find inspiration for layout, color, style and more. Author Patrick McNeil has cataloged more than 20,000 sites on his website, and showcased in this book are the very best examples.
Sites are organized by color, design style, type, theme, element and structure. It’s easy to use and reference again and again, whether you’re talking with a co-worker or discussing website design options with a client. As a handy desk reference for design layout, color and style, this book is a must-have for starting new projects.
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(out of 45 reviews)
List Price: $ 25.00
Price: $ 12.99
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Review by TexasAggie for The Web Designer’s Idea Book Volume 2: The Latest Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design (Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Latest Themes, Trends & Styles in Website Design)
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First, if you don’t have the first one, you’re missing out. They fit together perfectly… hopefully the start of a long series!
The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design
Like the first volume, this is full of carefully picked examples of the best in modern web design. It’s organized into very clever topics making it the perfect reference book. It’s loaded with screenshots, screenshots, and more screenshots… just as before, but all new, and more recent.
In this version, the screenshots are even larger and easier to pick up on detail and text. They’ve also included “Developer Notes” which I think are pretty insightful and in context.
If you are involved in web design in any way (even if you’re hiring other people to do it), this book will be super handy. The two editions are the same size and style… they’re intended to be on the bookshelf together. With the two combined, there must be a thousand organized designs to look through. The amount of work that went into collecting such quality work without “filler” junk is astounding.
I’m really impressed… if you can’t tell!
On the negative side: I’d personally prefer these came in large hardback coffee-table books. While maybe not as handy, it certainly would be great to have around the agency. Maybe after the 3rd edition, they should release a combined volume!
Review by m burwell for The Web Designer’s Idea Book Volume 2: The Latest Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design (Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Latest Themes, Trends & Styles in Website Design)
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This the second of two comprehensive, up to date books. Great for the talented wanna-be web designer or already-is web designer but needs inspiration to get to the next level and see patterns in beautiful web design. Organization of this book is beautifully laid out and easy to reference. The author really knows good web design. The pictures are rich with color. Absolutely love the spot varnish on the cover.
Anyone who wants to know where design is going should buy this book. I have ordered several for my friends who are thinking of getting into this field or already are…!
Review by Jason Beaird for The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design
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As a web design author, I often get asked what books I recommend. This of course depends on who is asking and what they want to learn, but one book I often pass along is Curt Cloninger’s original* Fresh Styles for Web Designers: Eye Candy from the Underground from 2001. The specific design examples are quite outdated now, but to me, that book was a pivotal source of inspiration at a time when everything online seemed to be either boringly corporate or awkwardly amateur. Cloninger helped me to see the web differently; I learned to creatively tag design trends and techniques so that I could mentally catalog them for my own use.
This process of mentally classifying design inspiration has become a critical part of my growth as a designer as well as my ability to explain web design to the non-designer. In The Web Designer’s Idea Book, Patrick McNeil takes the task of cataloging current trends and styles to a meticulous new level. Within the book’s 256 pages, McNeil has sorted over 700 screenshots of stellar site design by color, design style, type, theme, element and structure. Within these 6 chapters, he has defined a total of 75 individual design categories. Some examples of these categories include: Blogs, E-Commerce, Minimalist, Wood, Pink & Blue, Muted, Rays, Gradients, Tabs and Massive Footers. Then, within each of these seemingly exclusive categories there are a few paragraphs explaining when, how, and why it should be used along with an average of 8 or 9 example screenshots.
Obviously, reading this book will not teach you to be a great website designer. What it will do is expand your design vocabulary and train you to break down your favorite sources of design inspiration into bite-sized chunks that you can use in your own work. I spent a good portion of the cold, rainy weekend reading through the text in each category and pouring over the pages of screenshots. I saw quite a few familiar examples of good design, but was amazed by quantity of inspirational sites that I had never heard of. If I had one complaint about the book it would be that I wish all of the screenshots were full-size, or perhaps if they couldn’t be, that there was an archive of the full-size screenshots posted somewhere on the web. Regardless, I’m sure the book will be a huge source of inspiration for me for years to come. Then, when it is too old to serve as inspiration, it will most certainly be an excellent resource for web design history.
* As I was writing this review, I discovered that Curt Cloninger just released a sequel to this book: Fresher Styles for Web Designers: More Eye Candy from the Underground You can be sure that I’ll be reviewing this book as well in the near future.
Review by Keith Donegan for The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design
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This book does just one thing, it showcases beautifully made websites and the author does this extremely well. The Web Designer’s Idea Book is a must have for any web designer/graphic designer out there to have real world examples of good design on hand.
Review by TexasAggie for The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design
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This book has a huge selection of design style examples, all organized in a very intelligent way. The print quality is very good. As a reference book, this is a must have for any web designer looking for some inspiration.
Review by Brian Martin for The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design
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This book is pretty much what you think it is, about 200 pages of site thumbnails. Interspersed throughout are write-ups on the category that is being presented and a little intro by the author.
The actual sites themselves are pretty good. I wasn’t blown away by them, but was impressed and inspired. I keep a folder of bookmarks of sites that I think look good, categorized by “theme”. This is a nice little handheld thing to quickly scan through to get some quick ideas or some quick inspiration.
I do wish some of the thumbnails would have been bigger, the pages a little larger, or the book itself a little taller. Some of the pages are stuffed with thumbnails and it can be a little difficult to discern what that header really looks like, or what that button really says.
Also, some of the themes could have used a couple more sites. Some categories like blogs are literally 2 pages. If you’re gonna have a whole category I’m sure you can find a few more pages of nice sites to fill.
With all that being said this is a good book for 15 bucks. Especially if you are a web designer of any sort, this is a great resource to just have and flip through right before a new project.
Review by Brian M. White for The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design
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The main problem on the book is needing to print the website photos at 300 dpi. The website shots are maybe 2″ inch wide.. not very helpful to see details.