Ding! The sonorous ring of our victorian doorbell startles me out of my work induced stupor as I stare at my computer screen. As I open the door, a scruffy postman plops a heavy box in my arms. “What the heck is this?”, I wonder. With my keys I gouge at the layers of tape wrapped around the box, finally breaking one flap free to reveal the colorful cover of the new Smashing Book: Redesigning the Web.
Authors cherish this moment. You invest incalculable amounts of time toiling away at your keyboard, hoping that the end product will be interesting, educational, or at least entertaining. But it’s abstract work until you hear that bell, and the postman shows you what you’ve been doing for the past few months. It’s a book! And it’s a damned fine one at that!
It’s a treat to hold this book. Its thick, glossy cover is so vivid as are each of the carefully crafted pages nested inside. It’s heavy because the paper and ink that make up this beauty ain’t the cheep stuff. As you read through, the silky orange ribbon will safely guard your place. This is an object to behold.
Although I’m more than familiar with the chapter I contributed to this book, I’d not yet seen the contributions of the other authors, all of whom are mind-blowingly talented at their craft. Elliot Jay Stocks guides the reader into the book with a brief, yet elegant preface. Paul Boag sets the bar for the authors to follow with his usual whit and charm in a chapter entitled The Business Side of Redesign. Rachel Andrew, Ben Schwarz, David Storey, Lea Verou, and Christian Heilmann then gently guide the reader through the ins and outs of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Dmitry Fadeyev contributed a gem of a chapter on Techniques for Building Better User Experiences. Marc Edwards‘ chapter, Designing for the Future Using Photoshop, blew my mind with its lucid explanation of designing images that will look tack-sharp on any display, regardless of resolution. And Aral Balkan makes clear how we should be thinking about native and mobile web experiences. Finally, Stephen Hay and Andy Clarke wrap up the book by showing the reader a new way of thinking about web design. Hay challenges us to rethink our design workflow so that we can design future-friendly interfaces that will transcend time and platform. Clarke deftly caries the baton further showing us how responsive design changes not only the canvas we design within, but also how we talk and think about our work.
Despite being comprised of contributions from so many diverse authors, it reads as a well considered narrative, each topic dovetailing into the next as if sprung from one pen. It’s testament to the editing and direction of the folks behind this book. How fortunate am I to be a co-author of such a stunning book. I hope you’ll take some time to read it.
Son of Smashing Book
PS: There was so much great content contributed to this book, that it spawned a sibling. You’ll want to check out Smashing Book #3 1/3: The Extension as well!
tagged: book, Design, redesign, smashing-book, smashing-magazine, web design
