Smash­ing Mag­a­zine one of the best design blogs on the inter­net, known for its lists of inspi­ra­tion, design exam­ples and tuto­ri­als recently pub­lished a book, The Smash­ing Book. At the web­site smash­ing mag­a­zine the com­mu­nity had deci­sions on the top­ics for the book, a new way of get­ting the poten­tial read­ers into this book. The authors of Smash­ing Mag­a­zine com­bined forces and wrote this great book.

The Smash­ing Book

In sum­mary the book is about every­thing you need to know to cre­ate web­sites, from design, typog­ra­phy, lay­out, color usage, inter­face design, cod­ing, brand­ing, web-development and much much more. At the end of the book is an inter­est­ing topic; Learn­ing from experts, which includes inter­views and insights on com­mon top­ics when design­ing and cre­at­ing web­sites. The last chap­ter is the Smash­ing Mag­a­zine Story, Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Fried­man go deeper into how Smash­ing started and where it is today and in the future.

The first pages show the table of con­tents which is a bit to short for me, head­lines only. What inter­ests me is what I can learn at the chap­ters of the book. If I want to use this book as ref­er­ence guide when work­ing on a project I quickly need to find the infor­ma­tion and how I can learn from that. Here’s mine inter­pre­ta­tion of what you will learn from The Smash­ing Book.

1. User inter­face design in mod­ern web applications

Dmitry Fadeyev talks about the the­ory as well as the prac­ti­cal tech­niques involved in visual inter­face design, start­ing with the basics char­ac­ter­is­tics of inter­face design to how infor­ma­tion is adapted com­bined with many examples.

2. The art and sci­ence of CSS-Layouts

Jacob Gube and Kayla Knight go deeper into the need and basics design­ing web­sites in CSS lay­outs. They dis­cuss four types of lay­outs: fixed-width, fluid, elas­tic and hybrid, all accom­pa­nied by exam­ples and DIY CSS code. In con­clu­sion they give well advise on what to choose for your next web design.

3.(Web) Typog­ra­phy: Rules, guide­lines and com­mon mistakes

This chap­ter describes meth­ods and tech­niques for typog­ra­phy on the web and what char­ac­ter­is­tics are best prac­tice for (large) con­tent web­sites in read­abil­ity, line length and line height as well as a short typo­graph­i­cal terms index. The chap­ter goes deeper into the bal­ance in typog­ra­phy within design, place­ment and leg­i­bil­ity, with exam­ples and most pop­u­lar type­faces avail­able. Fur­ther on in this chap­ter the authors Alessan­dro Cat­te­neo, Yves Peters and Jon Tan talks about text replace­ment tech­niques and how that can ben­e­fit your design. Great read!

4. Usabil­ity prin­ci­ples for Mod­ern Websites

Andrew Maier and David Leggett takes it deeper into the prin­ci­ples of an usable web­site design by set­ting out the char­ac­ter­is­tics on what is impor­tant and to whom it con­cerns. This chap­ter is accom­pa­nied by many exam­ples and prac­ti­cal tips to cre­ate an usable web­site design.

5. The ulti­mate guide to fan­tas­tic color usage in web design, usabil­ity and experience

What an enor­mous title Dar­ius A Mon­sef IV came up with, any­way this chap­ter tells you about color in web design. This chap­ter is full of exam­ples and color wheels but it is not really learn­ing you any­thing about color or how to use color wheels in web­site design.

6. Per­for­mance opti­miza­tion for websites

Rene Schmidt tells about tech­niques on how to improve the web­site per­for­mance with short and prac­ti­cal exam­ples. A bit too tech­ni­cal for me.

7. Design to sell, increas­ing con­ver­sion rates

Dmitry Fadeyev wrote this great chap­ter on focus and place­ment. With prac­ti­cal tips the author talks about the AIDA sales fun­nel and how to get web­site vis­i­tors into buy­ing some­thing from your website.

8. How to turn a site into a remark­able brand

Chris Spooner takes it step by step in how to cre­ate a web­site that sticks… With many exam­ples and prin­ci­ples this chap­ter tells you how to cre­ate your own brand.

Learn­ing from the experts: Inter­views and Insights

Steven Snell got together with over 20 expert design­ers and devel­op­ers to share their knowl­edge and phi­los­o­phy in design top­ics. The panel dis­cusses the fol­low­ing top­ics design & devel­op­ment, the design process, self improve­ment and skill devel­op­ment and busi­ness and free­lanc­ing. A true gem of the Smash­ing­book where design­ers give their opin­ion and prac­ti­cal tips on the process. Every­thing wrote in a very acces­si­ble way. #mustread

Behind the cur­tains: The Smash­ing Mag­a­zine Story

The last chap­ter is devoted to the Smash­ing Story, Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Fried­man talks about the start up of The Smash­ing Mag­a­zine and how every­thing evolved to where SM is today.

Book vs online

The Smash­ing Mag­a­zine (online) is a great resource of infor­ma­tion when you are into learn­ing design, typog­ra­phy and inspi­ra­tion. The book is a reflec­tion of the online infor­ma­tion but more in an edu­ca­tional man­ner and you will pick up the book more likely to learn some­thing and use it effec­tively. With online media you quickly scan the pages and move on, there­fore I believe the book will be a huge improve­ment for spread­ing knowl­edge and will become a spring­board for those who are inter­ested in this field.

I hope SM will con­tinue to pub­lish the great online con­tent and start series of Smash­ing books with prac­ti­cal learn­ing content.

Hard­ware qual­ity and size of the book

After two weeks of intense read­ing the Smash­ing­book seems to fall apart, the binder is very though, this makes it hard to open pages and lay the book beside the com­puter to type in the exam­ple code or check a ref­er­ence online. To my opin­ion the book is a bit too small for its con­tent, great con­tent but it doesn’t read very easy. I would sug­gest for future books to use a larger book size, less pages and more white space on the pages.

Con­clu­sion

The Smash­ing Book is a great, really great book for every­body who is inter­ested in design and web-development. Espe­cially the typog­ra­phy and learn­ing from the experts chap­ters where inspi­ra­tional resources to me. The con­tent is great but I believe the lay­out of the pages should be as a book. Sup­port the Smash­ing Mag­a­zine Book by order­ing your copy and I hope SM will con­tinue the con­cept of bring­ing the con­tent by book.

Avail­abil­ity of The Smash­ing Book

Cur­rently the Smash­ing Book is avail­able through the SM web­site shop for $29,90 or €23,90 and pay­ment is processed with many avail­able options such as cred­it­card and paypal.

• Spec­i­fi­ca­tions: size 210 x 140 mm, full color high qual­ity, 311 pages, pub­lished by Smash­ing Media GmbH, Lübeck Ger­many 2009
• Get the SM Book here: The Smash­ing Book is released: Buy Now!

Did you buy they book, please share your opin­ion about the Smash­ing Book in the com­ments, thank you in advance!