I love reading Smashing Magazine as it is extremely helpful for an aspiring graphic designer slash web developer. When they were advertising the release of their book Smashing Book, I pre-ordered right away. I had great hopes and they sure delivered a book chock full of ideas, concepts and smashing content.
The Good
As always from the writers, content is key. This book touches upon most topics that are relevant for any designer focused on the web as its medium. The topics range from taking full advantage of CSS for layouts to typography options as well as color theory. It covers on the fundamentals of user interface design and usability concerns that may not be something we may care as much as typical graphic artists.
Besides the graphical topics it covers, the book also covers the operations and business aspects that one may neglect. From learning pieces of good coding for optimizing SEO to optimizing performance on websites. There is also references to utilizing the free analytical tools to track metrics and conversion rates. Finally, it teaches you to be aware of marketing and branding.
Another highlight subject is the insight Q&A from the authors. This definitely provided ample rations of food for thinking. It ends with a story of the Smashing Magazine.
Its a good amount of tips and insights that you may not gain from another book. In addition, there are the references for you to further develop and learn on the topics the books chapters touches on.
The Bad
I can’t really fault any of the content in the book. After all, its written by some of the leading minds in this industry. However, I would have expected the book itself to be much better constructed.
The book is smaller than what I’d like. I mean, the content is colorful full of graphics, screen shots and examples, it just begs to be done in a proper format like a coffee table book.
The binding of the book, as others have reviewed, is horribly constructed as you have to be extremely careful when reading or else the pages may come apart. Add to the problem is that the page layouts are tight where padding is minimal for the amount of content crammed in. It makes reading the content much more difficult without opening the book up.
There is definitely some errata as well in terms of spelling and reference. Particularly of note, in the chapter on usability, they reference a website that is clearly of the Korean language but state it as Chinese. Small error but being international; they need to recognize this. Korean and Chinese writing is completely different.
Finally, this book took way too long to arrive. I pre-ordered in August and hoped it would have arrived in October. It did get to me until December, in time for Christmas. But had I known, I could have probably picked up all the content in the book from other resources already.
Looking Forward to the Next Installment
I am fairly critical but I do look forward to the next installment from Smashing Magazine. I hope Smashing Book Vol. 2 will be even better; from content to presentation to construction. It’s been three months since I’ve received the book and just about the same amount of time since I’ve read through. I guess, like their shipment problems, it just took me awhile to get to actually putting up my thoughts on book.
***I hear the book binding issue has been resolved, unfortunately, my book has not been fixed. Perhaps they can send me a electronic .pdf version so I can actually use this wonderful book as a reference manual.***