Today’s book is a fantastic resource, beautifully written and illustrated by By Adrian Twarog & George Moller, titled “Design for Developers“.
It’s easy to read and understand because authors provide side-by-side illustrations for every concept they introduce. Additionally, Adrian and George frequently share useful practical tips for working with UI components. As the description of the book, it serves as a guide for developers, offering foundational design rules and formulas to create a good looking components, colors and typography.
The book is well-structured and divided into seven chapters:
Chapter 1: Color
Chapter 2: Typography
Chapter 3: Component Design
Chapter 4: Visual Hierarchy
Chapter 5: Design Process
Chapter 6: Implementation
Chapter 7: Design System
In Chapter 1, all the basic concepts related to color are clearly explained, including color theory, saturation, tint, hue, tone, and more. The authors also introduce the common strategies for selecting well-balanced color palettes, which are essential for building visually appealing websites. An important topic covered in this chapter is color psychology—a key concept every UI/UX designers should understand. The authors explain how to achieve the desired psychological effects through color choices, making this chapter particularly valuable for designers and developers .
Typography is a crucial component of any user interfaces. In Chapter 2, we learn how to choose appropriate fonts for header and body text. Beyond typefaces, authors guide us on using font’s style-such as font weight and italics—to server their intended purposes. For example, they explain when to use italics and which items or component we should avoid their use. Spacing in typography is another crucial topic discussed in this chapter. Adrian and George share general rules to ensure text is easy to read and enhance the overall legibility of our content.
In the next chapter, we dive into designing core Components for any web-base applications such as button, label, input, border, form, badge, and more. The focus is on making these components usable, aesthetic, functional and accessible. The authors provide best practices for designing these components using “Do and Don’t” examples. For instance, when designing border style, they shares the following tip:
In Chapter 4, we explore one of the most important concept in UI/UX design: Visual Hierarchy, and why it is crucial. This chapter introduces popular visual patterns, including F Pattern and Z Pattern, and explain their usage. The authors also teach us how to effectively alter visual hierarchy when working with basic components like buttons or inputs. Additionally, they cover practical principles such as contrast, proximity and consistency to enhance the overall user experience.
In Chapter 5, Adrian and George guild us through a typical Design Process that includes: wireframing, creating a styleguide and prototyping. Each step is explained clearly with straightforward illustrated examples that make it easy to understand.
In Chapter 6, the book provides an real-world example of implementing a Styleguide. It covers everything from building essential components like color palettes, typography, icons to designing basic UI components such as buttons and inputs.
And in the final chapter, Adrian and George highlight the key advantages of building and using a Design system in the product development. By bringing together everything we’ve learned so far, the book provides an example of a design system, including the guidelines for branding, layouts, typography, iconography, and more.
In conclusion, I highly recommend this book for its concise and well-designed content, along with creative illustrations that help us can build intuitive and user-friendly interface.