Practical Web Design is your complete guide to creating great websites, the easy way. Featuring the best articles and tutorials from the pages of net magazine, the special edition guides you through the entire process from start to finish – from prototyping approaches to mobile techniques and SEO.
If you're new to web design, this guide is a great place to get started. Featuring 22 easy-to-follow projects and walkthroughs will equip you with all you need to start designing fantastic sites.
What's more, the guide comes with a free DVD, packed with three and a half hours of video tutorials to help bring the practical projects to life, and guide you through each process step-by-step.
Build the perfect site
In the Planning section, there's a special report from Mark Llobrera on how content, collaboration and communication will set you on the path to building the perfect site; and the web pros at Bearded outline three strategies to help you build extensible sites.
The Prototyping section is full of practical walkthroughs using the latest and most popular tools, including Sketch, Quartz Composer, UXPin, Marvel, Edge Animate and Pixate. Whichever tool you favour, you'll pick up a bunch of new tips and tricks to help you mock up sites, add animations, or transform layered files into working prototypes.
The Design and Branding section homes in on how to give your creations real identity. Michael Flarup outlines how to design icons that will make your app shine in the App Store, and Tobias van Schneider explores how to put together stunning case studies using Semplice.
Motion design
Visual effects can elevate a design from good to great. In the next section, Val Head shares her (considerable) expertise to give you a crash-course in motion design, and Brenna O'Brien shows you how to use new frontend technologies, such as SVGs and HTML5 Canvas, to create geometric designs in pure code.
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The Typography section explores how the right font choices can make all the difference to your web page, and walks you through how to master responsive web typography.
Designing for mobile
Mobile has been getting plenty of attention of late. We've dedicated a whole section to the intricacies of designing for mobile, including a report by Dave Shea on the top 10 mobile mistakes (and how to avoid them), and a closer look at gestures, icons and navigation from Pamela Pavliscak.
Finally, there's no point creating a great website if no one can find it. The last section puts the spotlight on SEO, and shows you how to boost your sites to the top of Google.
