The Zen of CSS Design (Book Review)
One of the most picked up books from my office bookshelf would be The Zen of CSS Design: visual enlightenment for the web authored by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag. Published in 2005 (now three years old) they deconstruct a diverse series of CSS Zengarden designs along the overall conversation lines of best practice web design and intelligent problem solving. From View Source, Design, Layout, Imagery, Typography, Special Effects, and finally Reconstruction.
The main reason this book lives more in our loungeroom than in my office has everything to do with it’s design inspiration value. Even after being consumed numerous times and with curled corners and looking anything but underloved, The Zen of CSS Design provides a handy and well laid out running conversation about the design process through the eyes of various creatives. Unlike many design books, the real inspirational value in this one is also that they aren’t all just the same web 2.0 plastercasts - each one is very unique, and chosen specifically for that quality. Thus, my copy suffers every six months from another brush with our lifestyle.
My favourite design in the book is door to my garden by well known standardista and accessibility expert Patrick Lauke. Overall, if you’re looking for a CSS design book that will show you some finesse in both code and some design influence - highly recommended. I would lend you my copy but this one has been a bit well worn over the last few years.
I have to say too that the large square shape of this book goes a long way to enabling an effective design throughout the pages.
