EJS logo

Sexy Web Design

Article illustration for Sexy Web Design

So it’s official: I’ve written a book, it’s called Sexy Web Design, it’s published by SitePoint, and it’s out now! Before I get down to the details, I hope you’ll forgive me for providing some shameless ‘buy’ links:

SitePoint (international) / Amazon: UK, US, Canada, France, Japan *

What’s the book about?

When speaking to people about the book, I’ve been describing it as “a definitive guide to the successful web design process.” In other words, it covers everything from receiving a brief, responding to that brief, conducting basic research, creating sitemaps, creating wireframes, finding inspiration, designing with solid art and design principles in mind, working effectively with Photoshop (or your layout tool of choice), presenting ideas to clients, and getting ready to pass your files onto developers. Basically it covers everything up to the stage where you (or a third party) would actually start coding up the site.

For more information, check out the official SitePoint page for details.

Who’s it for?

As described above, this book focuses entirely on the design process (there’s virtually no code mentioned at all). As such, it’s well suited to web designers, but it’ll also be helpful for any developers who want to make their sites look nicer. There’s a fair bit of solid art / design theory in there so it serves as a good guide for either the beginner or the professional who wants to brush up on some basics.

Most importantly, I’ve crammed in absolutely loads of screenshots of beautiful websites. So even if you’re not bothered about delving into the specifics, I hope that it’ll be a nice source of inspiration for you to flick through on a rainy day.

SXSW

At SXSW, after the web typography panel I participated in, we gave away a few copies of the book to the audience. If you got a copy of the book and you’re reading this, please let me know what you think! In fact, if you’d like to discuss anything in the book, please direct your questions and comments to the form below.

Lastly…

I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that it proves both useful and inspirational! Also, thanks to my friends Jina Bolton and Dan Rubin, who were the expert reviewers on the book (and Jina also wrote the preface), and Raena Jackson Armitage, my fantastic, inspirational, and patient technical editor. At some point in the near future, I’ll probably blog about the writing experience.

* Full disclosure: some of these links are referrer URLs, which means I’ll get a small financial kick-back when you buy the book from them. It’s at no extra cost to you, so if you’re going to buy the book, please consider using these links, as it’ll help me out!