5 books to read about UI design

Books that will help you judge your work

Want to develop a better eye and vocabulary for judging layouts, type choices and imagery?

According to performance experts, the best way to learn is to gain lots of exposure to how experts evaluate work. Here’s 5 books that provide this type of insight.

1. Design for Hackers

by David Kadavy

Don’t be turned off by the “hacker” part of the title. While the title “hacker” can evoke images of technology gurus, Kadavy explains early in the book that he uses “hacker” to signify an attitude, rather than a skill set. To him, a hacker is someone who is curious and passionate about learning. There’s no need to know specific development languages to get a lot out of this book. In fact, the technical content in this book is limited to css references.

This book covers a breadth of topics, including typography, proportion, composition, visual hierarchy, and colour.

What distinguishes it from other graphic design books is that it’s first an instructional guide: It eschews experimental page layouts and galleries, which are typical for this genre of books, for detailed explanations. Kadavy’s conversational writing style, along with “football play-style” image annotations makes “Design for Hackers” an easy and informative read.

You can find Design for Hackers here.

2. Sketch Handbook

by Christian Krammer

The Sketch Handbook is not a user manual: It’s a detailed tutorial on Bohemian Sketch.

Many books in this genre limit themselves to explaining the specific steps required to achieve a certain result. This book is worth reading, even if you’re not going to use Sketch, because Krammer goes one step further: He takes the time to explain his higher-level design rationale.