Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini   Lists for North American Delivery  

Design | Humor | Page-turners | Food | Travel

  

DESIGN

The links below connect to amazon.com. If you have already set your preferences there, you can click on any link, select "Buy 1 Now with 1-Click" and your books will arrive in a few days with no further action on your part. If you haven't used amazon.com before, check it out. Once you've put in your name, address, and credit card info once, it is really easy to buy books from then on. It's also the nicest way to support AskTog—you get your books at the full 20% off, and we get a few pennies toward our ISP costs.

 About Face by Alan Cooper
../Book%20cover Alan Cooper has done a masterful job at providing a good, fundamental grounding in human interface principles, along with everything you ever needed to know about developing Visual BASIC and other Windows interfaces.

This is a must-read for anyone entering the Windows world for the first time (yes, there still are a few of us) and belongs on the bookshelf of anyone new to human interface and its principles.

 

For further description, reviews, or to order a discount copy, check out the About Face page at amazon.com.

 Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
../Book%20cover When people ask me what's the one book they should read that can help them become a designer, the answer is always simple: The Design of Everyday Things. Being a designer requires some inherent talent, but most of all it requires an attitude. This book teaches that attitude. You will come away with a lifetime intolerance of bad design, but, more than that, you will have a fundamental grounding in what to do about it.

 

For further description, reviews, or to order a discount copy, check out the Design of Everyday Things page at amazon.com.

 Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen
Dr. Nielsen's long-awaited (particularly by his publisher) book on web design has just hit the streets. It is a joy. Jakob has not only filled its generous 420 pages with a wealth of information that will lead you to competent, succesful web design, he has spiced it with hundreds of full-color examples taken from the web. This is an absolute must-have for your bookcase.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that if you are engaged in web design, you need to own this book. It is fundamental. Either run immediately to your local bookstore or click for the AskTog amazon.com discount price.

 Multimedia & Hypertext by Jakob Nielsen
../Book%20cover The basic text on multimedia and hypertext. In a world where books more than one month old are out of date, this one remains current, fresh, and alive. Jakob teaches approaches, not solutions, strategy, not specifics. Whether you are looking for a first grounding, or a single book that can fill in missing or forgotten areas of your multimedia knowledge, this is the book for you. I consider it an important component of the designer's basic bookshelf

 

For further description, reviews, or to order a discount copy, check out the Multimedia & Hypertext page at amazon.com.

Tales from the Tech Line by David Pogue
So what's a humor book about the funny things that people call tech support say doing on a designer's booklist? It's here because almost every "stupid mistake" these hapless users make is a direct result of bad design. This book, as inadvertant as it may be, has much to teach about how things should really be done.

Visual Explanations by Edward R. Tufte
../Book%20cover The world's leading expert on the visualization of information design shows us how to make the invisible visible, and amply displays the fatal consequences for those who fail to do so. The third book in Edward's series, this is the most gripping.

If you have never owned a Tufte book, you are in for a treat. They are as beautifully crafted as they are designed. Edward watches over each and every step of the process, and he is meticulous in the extreme.

View Tufte's chilling reworking of the overhead slides that killed the seven people aboard the space shuttle Challenger in this exerpt from Tog on Software Design.
For further description, reviews, or to order a discount copy, check out the Visual Explanations page at amazon.com.

Also By Tufte:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Tufte's First book and still possibly the best. A must-have for every designer. Like his later works, just holding this beautifully-crafted volume is a joy. Read it, and you will be better at your craft.

Envisioning Information In this book, Tufte presents a variety of remarkably compact and moving information displays, from Gallileo's observations of Saturn to Maya Ying Lin's Vietnam Memorial, offering lessons that can be applied in our own day-to-day work.

 Tog on Software Design
Book cover2 "Tog takes us on an extraordinary journey as software design crawls out of the operating system of computers and on to the landscape of networks and new media content. He is a gifted hands-on designer who weaves a very compelling story." --John Sculley, former CEO, Apple Computer, Inc.
Check out this excerpt from the book: The Coming Decade.
For further description, reviews, or to special order a copy, check out the Tog on Software Design page at amazon.com.

 Tog on Interface
Book cover
Tog on Interface is a report from the front lines of interface design, full of anecdotes and useful tips. I recommend it for anybody who cares about personal computing."
- Stewart Alsop, Editor-in-Chief, InfoWorld
For further description, reviews, or to special order a copy, check out the Tog on Interface page at amazon .com.

Web Pages That Suck by Vincent Flanders & Michael Willis
Book cover
The original book on web design, but still highly useful, particularly for those struggling to design or maintain a small retail website.

Not only is this book attractively laid out and designed (with lots of pretty pictures), not only is it thoroughly amusing to read, it is dense with powerful, immediately-applicable information.

For further description, reviews, or to order a discount copy, check out the Web Pages That Suck page at amazon .com.

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