I love reading books on web design, I’ve got close to 50 (excluding the PDF ones I have) and it’s primarily how I gain an insight into other peoples methods of web designing, it’s not so much the tips they provide but the methodology they use which has helped me. I read plenty of websites too like SitePoint, A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, Freelance Switch (etc), great resources for interesting snippets. I use forums (of course) and the occasional blog (just to keep in touch with the web design community and keep my skills current) and I use reference guide sites to boost my physical knowledge.
PS: Those 50 odd books have provided me with me more skills and knowledge than any $10k University degree course could have offered, money well spent!
… apart from all web design courses at universities being seriously out-of-date due to the bureaucracy of getting new relevant information into the curriculum thereby any graduate of an explicit web design course having the coding skill level (and bad habits) of someone developing websites in the 90’s. Can’t agree with you there
I read a lot of books in the beginning. Sometimes when I wanted more examples of something the books went over I would search using Google for tutorials and whatnot. Eventually I found some great forums and participated in threads about pretty much any subject I even remotely understood.
Over the last couple of years I’ve not read as many books. For the most part they’re all saying the same things as the books I’ve already read using different wording. I like short articles about experimental techniques for doing things more than anything these days.
Hey Sitepoint…first post…whohoo!!
I love your guys site out by the way, loads of information for a newbie like myself.
I do most of my learning online, there are tons of information online. I recently started out so I have been learning by tutorials on various web blogs.
Not to take any business from you guys, but I have also been a regular at the local library checking out web design books and staying up till 2am learning on my own.
