Designing visual interfaces
by Kevin Mullet, Darrell Sano · first published 1994
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Teaches systematic visual design principles for interfaces, with communication-focused techniques and practical design grids; valued for concrete techniques by working designers and developers new to UI layout.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I really loved - not something that happens often to me - "Designing visual interfaces" by Mullet and Sano. The examples are dated now, but the techniques and the suggestions are pure gold.
on “Books For Learning to Design, The Hard Way” ↗I'm an engineer too, and many years ago I read a book that I really found illuminating: http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Visual-Interfaces-Communicat... The examples about applications design are outdated, but the principles and clarity of exposition are still top notch.
on “Ask HN: I'm an engineer, how do I learn design?” ↗This one is good at teaching both fundamental design principles and UI design in particular Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques This is an introduction to UX The User Experience Team of One It's from Rosenfeld Media and you should take a look at the rest of their books. They are of a high…
on “Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?” ↗To throw another hat into the ring, I liked "Designing Visual Interfaces" by Mullet and Sano. It has one of my favorite quotes: > Without minimizing the value of intuition as a problem solving tool, we propose that systematic design programs are more valuable from a communication…
on “Ask HN: What is the best book on data visualization in 2021?” ↗…and Java's stock layout managers (gridbag, table) always fills me with frustration and anxiety. In my experience, for the fussy work, it's easier to explicitly code what I want. Ages ago, inspired by Designing Visual Interfaces [2], I made a layout manager [3] for canonical design grids [4]. It was pretty neat. Fluent API. Always visually correct. All the baselines aligned just so. Predictable results. Perfect for banging out…
on “Help us invent CSS Grid Level 3, a.k.a. "Masonry" layout” ↗My favourite book on this is _Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques_ by Kevin E. Mullet and Darrell Sano https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/344729.Designing_Visual_... and the high water mark of my graphical UI experience was when…
on “No more icons in every menu by default” ↗