The Non-Designer's Design Book

"This is a great example of ‘show, don’t tell.’ This design book teaches you the principles of design by showing you examples of good design and bad design. As well as going into the specifics about colors and other design elements, Williams explains the high-level principles, which she acronymizes as CRAP: contrast, repetition, alignment, and positioning. She provides various images that you can assess in terms of these principles, thus gaining fluency in them. By the way, acronyms are a good example of chunking, as described in Oakley’s book. An acronym breaks a concept into small pieces and makes each piece memorable. Williams does an excellent job of communicating the low-level details and the high- level principles and giving you examples to work through on your own. It’s a very short and concise read, which is merciful for the reader. As writers, we may imagine people hanging on our every word, but readers want the information to be delivered as quickly as possible. Books can be entertaining, but the goal is to help the reader to achieve the desired outcome. Keeping it short and sweet is definitely key. We’re lucky if we can remember three things from a book we’ve read. How many books have you read? You might have retained a sentence or two. If you can make that sentence content-packed by using an acronym, then that’s perfect. A year after someone’s read a book, what can you hope that they remember? If it’s an acronym and they know how to use it, that’s excellent."