A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web

I’ve enjoyed reading Mark Boulton’s blog for several years, so of course I wanted to read his free ebook A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web. It’s a relatively short book that covers the workflow and tools of a web designer, design briefs, research, typography, color, and grid systems.

The book has great breadth (it’s a good overview) but because it has to cover so many topics, it lacks the depth that I generally prefer.

I really enjoyed the section on grids. Many other books only explain how to use grids in print, but Boulton takes a web-first approach. His “Five Simple Steps to Designing Grid Systems” blog posts are some of my favorite resources on grids, so this comes as no surprise. The book is available for free online, so there’s no reason not to check this one out!