<p>Lavishly illustrated with detailed examples, The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is an easy-to-follow guide that will lead you through the process of creating great designs from start to finish. No prior web design experience is required.</p>

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, 4th Edition

Preface

For many web developers, myself included, the most intimidating part of the design process is getting started. Imagine for a moment that you're sitting at your desk with nothing other than a cup of coffee and the business card of a potential client who needs a basic corporate website. Usually, a business card speaks volumes about a company's identity, and can be used as design inspiration.

Layout and Composition

Whether you're defusing a ticking time bomb, or trying to design a decent-looking site, if you choose the wrong color, you're doomed. Okay, so the wrong color selection for a client's site is unlikely to be the death of you, but it could curtail your budding career as a web designer. Choosing colors is no simple matter. There are aesthetic, identity, and usability considerations to take into account. And, to make matters worse, most modern displays can render more than sixteen million colors. That's a huge number of horrible color combinations just waiting to happen!

Color

There are many well-intentioned designers out there who build a standard two- or three-column website layout, pick a few colors for it, and call it a day. They don't bother pushing their design any further, or tweaking any details. Perhaps there's no time or money in the project budget to go the extra distance, or maybe they've taken the "less is more" axiom a little too literally. Not every website has to be beautiful, but every website can be. CSS has given web designers a great amount of control over how a site looks, but I think the real problem is that many people are just unsure where to start when it comes to customization. This chapter is all about that process: taking your design a step further with the help of texture.

Texture

Let's face it: the core purpose of all web design is communication. Whether we're talking about an online retail store, a web presence for a Fortune 500 company, or a profile for a social networking site, typography is a vital component of your message. For most people, typography is simply about arranging a familiar set of shapes to make words, sentences, and paragraphs. But ironically, having the ability to set type with only a few mouse clicks or strokes on a keyboard has allowed us to forget about the creative and artistic possibilities of this medium.

Typography

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