I’m a graphic designer trying to learn HTML and CSS. I’ve got lots of questions and am sure this forum will be very helpful. Here’s a question that’s been bugging me for a long time.
I really enjoy books and although I’ve read lots, I’ve never come across one that was specifically written to help make the transition from print design and production to web design and production.
As a print designer for many years, I already have a process and vocabulary. It would be nice to have a book that could take the things that print designers are familiar with and translate them to web design terms.
To be clear, I’m looking for a technical, how to kind of book, not design theory.
As a print designer for many years, I already have a process and vocabulary. It would be nice to have a book that could take the things that print designers are familiar with and translate them to web design terms.
There’s a danger here, because print and web design are very different animals—more different than traditional print designers tend to assume. Trying to bring print design skills to the web is generally a disaster in my experience, because “print thinking” translates very poorly into web design. The web is much harder to control, is fluid and elastic, and print designers find it difficult to break out of the mold of thinking that everything is fixed to a certain height and width and pixel perfect.
So from that point of view, it might be better to approach web design from a completely new perspective, and find out what its needs really are, independent of anything you are familiar with. Then, and only then, bring back in any of the principles from print design that may still be useful, such as typography, white space and so on (you can tell I’m not a graphic designer ).
Thanks for your thoughts Ralph. I’ve gotten far enough into this to know how right you are! Very different animals indeed!!
But there are many basic things you do in both print and web layout. Unfortunately they often have very different names. If I’m trying to figure out how to do something in CSS but it’s called something completely different in print layout, it can, for example, be very frustrating to look it up in a reference book index.
Also, I think it might feel less foreign from someone who understands where you’re coming from. Who knows, I may be looking for something that doesn’t exist.
What sorts of things? From my rudimentary learning, there is a lot that’s pretty similar. Obviously leading becomes line height etc, but that’s often mentioned in books. Eric Meyer’s CSS Definitive Guide is pretty useful, but again, I’d be interested to hear some examples. People around here may be able to translate for you.
Thanks for the book suggestion. I have another by Eric Meyer and he writes well.
To be honest it’s not that I have a particular question in mind. I’ve managed to figure out a lot of what I needed through trial and error. It would just be nice to have a book like this as a resource.
However, next time I have a question I will be sure to take advantage of knowledge of this forum! And actually I do have another question, but it’s on a different topic.
I actually come at this from the other side, being more adpet with the technical side of the equation. I can’t recommend a specific book, but one web site I’ve found helpful along the lines of your quandry is called “Web Page Design for Designers”. They have a lot of useful resources on the site itself, and they have a forum. It may point you in the right direction.
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