Top 16 Free UX/UI Design Books Worth Reading in 2019
“You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.” Paul Rand
Paul Rand was right when he said that reading gives us understanding. While we’re busy working on projects, it’s worth to spend some time reading one of the best FREE (yes, it’s all free and downloadable!) design collections with up to day knowledge.
Take a look and may you find the favorite one to sharpen your skills!
1. The Shape of Design
A small philosophical handbook about design and making things for people by Frank Chimero.
2. Jobs to be Done
Great products start with real problems. People buy products and services to get a “job” done. The key to success is understanding the real job customers are using your product for. Drawing together the most valuable lessons they have learned thus far, Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done offers tried and tested advice on how you should be thinking about business, growth and innovation.
3. The Modern Web Design Process
Web designers often think about the web design process with a focus on technical matters such as wireframes, code, and content management. But great design isn’t about how you integrate the social media buttons or even slick visuals. Great design is actually about creating a website that aligns with an overarching strategy.
4. Designing for the Web
Designing for the web is different than designing for any other medium. The breadth of skills required is sometimes daunting. The depth of experience required, seemingly unattainable. Yet, the medium attracts designers from all spheres of design practice: from engineering and architecture, to product and graphic design. This chapter aims to provide a snapshot of the current state of the medium, and our role as practitioners working within it.
5. Save the Pixel
The goals of each web design can vary greatly from one project to the next, but we should always strive for efficiency and simplicity. This will deliver a cleaner result that facilitates accurate communication with less margin for error. It also takes less work to make something simple than it does to make something complex.
6. Digital Behavioral Design
Human behavior is programmable. You just need to know the code. Here we introduce Behavioral Design: a design framework for programming human behavior. In this book the Boundless.ai team focus on a particular area of behavior design: Habits. How they work and how your product can use Behavioral Design to become a daily habit for your users.
7. Resilient Web Design
You won’t find any code in here to help you build better websites. But you will find ideas and approaches. Ideas are more resilient than code. J. Keith have tried to combine the most resilient ideas from the history of web design into an approach for building the websites of the future.
8. Pixel Perfect Precision Handbook
Tools, techniques and approaches change and evolve, but the principles of precise, detailed visual craft remain part of our DNA and a foundational element of good mobile design. Well over a quarter of a million copies of PPP have been downloaded, so they did something right.
9. Design’s Iron Fist
Design’s Iron Fist is a collection of essays with advice about design and business. It’s been featured as one of the best free design books by the Creative Bloq, the AIGA, and numerous other sites.
10. Brand House Book
The aim of this book is to make branding tangible by relating it to everyday experience.
11. Design Process for Pros
A resource that will help you understand the design process and improve the quality of your work. Learn about strategies Netguru team has been implementing and improving over years of cooperation with clients.
12. The Vignelli Canon — Massimo Vignelli
Massimo Vignelli is truly one of the great craftsmen of design, therefore making anyone who reads his books a very lucky apprentice. “The Vignelli Canon” offers us a glimpse into his design principles and beliefs. Touching on subjects such as typography, visual power and timelessness, Massimo Vignelli sheds a light on how to make graphic design with impact and personality.
13. A Designer’s Art — Paul Rand
Some people call Paul Rand the most influential graphic designer there ever was, so you would really be missing out if you’d ignore his 1985 work, called “A Designer’s Art”. The book is a stunning insight into the mind of one of the great modernists, taking is through such chapters as “Politics of Design” or “The Symbol in Visual Communication”, and helping you unlock the artist behind the graphic designer.
14. Fundamental UI Design
Learn fundamental UI design skills you need to create perfect screens in this free e-course by Jane Portman from UI Breakfast and InVision. Designing for the content; Conversion and action elements; The creative part of UI design; User onboarding essentials and much more.
15. Making a Product Designer
Learn the technical skills and thought patterns it takes to design amazing products in this free e-course by Scott Hurff of Tinder and InVision.
16. Principles of UX Design
Discover how and why you should become a UX champion in this free e-course from InVision, by Best Buy’s Timothy Embretson.
Happy reading!
P.S. Comment in the comments box below if you have to add any free UX books available online so this list could be expanded. Thanks!
