I finished the book Design for Hackers a few days ago. I haven’t read a lot of books about design so i’m kind of lacking an objective point of view. But for me it was a really great reading experience and totally not what i expected. My expectation was to learn some nifty tricks and be able to create stunning designs in no time. But as always it seems to be kind of work intense to get good at something.
So back to the book. David Kadavy takes an interesting aproach to shift your persective on design. He talks about the layers of design, a concept that includes all the parts of a creation and their influence on the final outcome. He illustrates the concept by taking you on a journey through history starting with the Pantheon in Rome and heading to the modern font designs like Georgia. Along the way he describes various concepts of design that apply to any given example and the commonalities between them.
The key thing i learned from this book is that every piece of work tries to commutincate a message and that visual design is only there to help make it’s point more clear. As well as being beautiful and appealing can help to get a message more widespread.
Another thing i realized reading this book is that it’s hard to come up with ideas to make something more beautiful. For example this site is kind of ugly right now. I don’t like the overall appearance. But at least it’s design does (hopefully) not prevent the content to convey it’s messge.
If anyone would like to help just send me an email. I’d like to keep the light background and hate the ugly default link colors but i have no idea for an color scheme. Any help appreciated!