- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (5 Dec 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0133033899
- ISBN-13: 978-0133033892
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 19.1 x 1.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 305,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
For anyone responsible for designing, specifying, implementing, documenting, or managing the visual appearance of computer-based information displays.
Ironically, many designers of graphical user interfaces are not always aware of the fundamental techniques that are applied to communication-oriented visual design — techniques that can be used to enhance the visual quality of GUIs, data displays, and multimedia documents. This book describes some of the most important design rules and techniques that are drawn from the rational, functionalist design aesthetic seen in modern graphic design, industrial design, interior design, and architecture — and applies them to various graphical user interface problems experienced in commercial software development.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a great book if you know how to use it. Its not for people looking for cookbook approaches. Rather, it provides well argued information about the underlying principles of visual design. The authors ilustrate their points about grids, layout, typography, and color by showing examples of top notch efforts by some of the best information designers in the world.
Classic examples like the London subway maps and the National Park Service brochures are illustrated, along with excellent explanations of the design principles that make these particular design so successful.
The aurthors then go on to show how these examples can be applied to GUI design. And they are very gutsy as they show actual examples from actual software products that are "design failures". In fairness, they also show examples of well designed software, with explanations of why the design works so well.
This book is for a person who's willing to invest some time to learn about things like information hierarchies and information design. Like playing a piano, this isn't something one can master over night, but also like playing a piano, it has its own vast rewards.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
*Designing Visual Interfaces* deserves a wider audience. Its promotion of visual literacy for GUI designers is a worthwhile cause. Every GUI designer, which includes most programmers these days, should read this book!
*Designing Visual Interfaces* is a "nuts and bolts" design book with lots
of examples of bad and good interface design in present-day Graphical
User Interfaces. The authors attempt grand analogies with media that
offer richer opportunities for design--posters, timetables, appliances.
Sometimes it seems that returning to the same old dialogue boxes
is a bit of a come-down in the design world, the need to shove a lot
of info into a few pixels. Nonetheless, the book has lots of good
advice. Perhaps the reason it hasn't found wider readership is
that its own printing format, using small black and white images,
doesn't do justice to the careful thought they've put into their
selection.
The authors both worked on the Open Look standard, which is not my
favorite GUI. But fortunately their book is not a brief for that
standard. And they do have some good criticism of Microsoft Windows--well merited!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There's something irritating about a book on graphical design of interfaces that refuses to use chapter numbers in the Table of Contents (or for that matter anywhere except the first page of each chapter) even though the text references them. Unfortunately the authors also fail in the contents to fully integrate these two aspects of design.
The book really reads like two: examples of bad interface design, and a smorgasbord of interesting examples and tidbits from the graphic design lexicon. The former struck me as mostly common sense, while the latter just whet my appetite to read the sources in the bibliography.
Overall: worthwhile looking at, but not something I would actually refer to while designing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
is this made on a photocopier?
When I opened this book I was genuinely shocked by the deplorable quality of the images used to demonstrate the textual points. Read more
Published on 29 Sep 2006 by G. B. Hedges
Design thought
I was very impressed when I first read this book. Complex ideas are clearly explained in the most simple words they can be explained. Read more
Published on 17 Aug 1999
A "must have" book for serious UI Designers
There are very few good books on UI Design. This one definitely rates in the top 5. The authors make a very good observation - now that we have high resolution displays and high... Read more
Published on 16 Jan 1999
Pros and cons
True, this is one of the best Design and Visual Interface books available. However, at times, the "Sun Micro and Apple Mac" bias became repetitive and old. Read more
Published on 25 Oct 1998
required reading for all developers
This book clearly shows good and bad ways to communicate to the user. I find myself returning to it often, and the principles shown can be used in information and Web design as... Read more
Published on 17 Aug 1998
If you design graphical UIs, you need this book
This is the best book I've ever seen on how to design the graphical part of graphical user interfaces. Read more
Published on 11 Feb 1998
Great introduction to visual design for user interfaces
I didn't expect too much from this book when I saw it's cover... for a book on visual design, it's pretty badly designed! Read more
Published on 21 Jan 1998
Interfaces are very important and this book shows it.
This book describes, so well, some interesting techniques to design good interfaces. I think the authors had a good ideia to introduce a lot of examples; the "bad"... Read more
Published on 11 Dec 1997
Excellent Book!
This is one of the best books around on GUI design. While it is from Sun's publishing arm, it isn't oriented toward a particular OS. Read more
Published on 22 Oct 1997
Waiting for the sequel
So far the best text-book about GUI I found. It is rich and comprehensive, connects GUI design with modern design in general. Read more
Published on 7 Oct 1997
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