Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design
Recently, the topic of design process came up in conversation and I submitted rather sheepishly to a friend that I didn’t begin my design process in Photoshop or an image editor, but in CSS. I have always felt a bit unsure about my approach, but cannot feel confident and oriented to a project without getting a feel for the actual content.
I have always needed two elements to create anything beyond the threshold of boring and predictable: clients who like to talk about their dreams and business … perhaps also a bit about design, and samples of actual content with which to work. Anything else provides no real-world grounding for design. It appears that my ideas about the process of design are not as radical as I thought. Andy Clarke’s book, Transcending CSS, makes an excellent case for the “Content-Out” approach.
Anyone who has jumped feet first into CSS design and had some success will find this book a refreshing re-orientation to the basics of where we’ve been, the reasons we’ve been there, and where we should be heading as a Web standards design community.
The technical content and practical advice alone are enough to recommend this volume, but the part of the book I read with the most gusto deals with finding creative inspiration. On occasion, designing for the Web can become somewhat dry, constraining, and predictable. Thankfully, Andy Clarke points out a host of sources for design inspiration as well as many approaches to structuring content and presentation. There is enough here to break a designer out of a creative rut.
This is the most significant Web design book I’ve read in 2006; it has the potential to remain the most significant Web design book of 2007 as well.
January 1st, 2007
