The Non-Designer's Web Book is a sincere text with good intentions. I no qualms about it. Certainly some of the information is more basic than I need, but other information is exactly what I need. I would also note that the authors themselves do seem to be a bit confused at to their audience. At once, they claim to aim at the same time for the "
pro-designer" and "
non-designer" who have not yet ventured deeply into web design. This causes a few odd lapses. For instance, on pg. 152, when they write, "You may remember, back in the digitally dark ages, that designers used to keep dozens of design annuals on their shelves[...]." As a non-designer, I really can't recall seeing a designer's office let alone seeing "design annuals on their shelves." This is a quibble, a peeve, and hardly affect the utility of the book.
One more note that applies to both
Envisioning Information and
The Non-Designer's Web Book alike. Many of these principles of design have already appeared elsewhere for other modes and other genres, so that Williams' and Tollett's and Tufte's rules become so much nuance and example to very old rules. For instance, Ezra Pounds rules for writing poetry in "A Retrospect"
1) "Direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objective."
2) "To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation."
- Indeed, no word, or no image, or graphic, or number, etc.
3) "As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome."
- Let your content govern form.
Also useful, though, is a gesture I haven't seen from either of these texts on design. As Pound writes it, "[C]onsider the three propositions [...] not as dogma--never consider anything as dogma--but as the result of long contemplation, which even if it is some one else's contemplation, may be worth consideration." Or as George Orwell puts it more directly in "Politics and the English Language, "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."
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