New Design Book Available!
I am super excited to unveil my first design book: Contrast; Intro to Designing Beyond Form & Function, and it is now available to buy in both hardcover and eBook forms!
Whew! I started writing this book at the beginning of 2020, but it's inception goes back a lot further than that. For the last 3 years, I've been compiling notes, research, and studies on the psychological and affective factors that color, shape, and many other design factors have on our psyche. These are things such as:
► what color works best for a call to action button
► what shapes are more appealing to different demographics
► what order do people view a webpage in
► what color makes people more comfortable
I've also been recording many other observations that I've taken from industry, trying to discern some sort of deeper secret or pattern, hoping to give me an edge in the marketplace. For me, it's been a really eye opening experience, and I've learned immensely from the process.
During that whole time, a recurring thought was: I wish there was some book that I could reference with this information in it!
The problem is, affective (psychological) design is a relatively new science, and a lot of the companies doing the research keep it for themselves (After all, this information gives them an advantage in the market). Secondly, a lot of the existing resources regarding this topic are much too involved or have a high barrier to entry (too expensive, too time consuming, too exclusive, etc) for most people. I found it so convenient to have my notes on hand that I could quickly refer to in the heat of design, but I still wished it was more formal, more formatted, even more accessible.
So January 2020, I decided to compile all that I had learned into a concise, easy to reference, easy to digest, book that could help other designers (and myself) in their future projects.
In writing this book, I tried to follow several tenants:
► Brevity: Everyone is short on time, so I tried to make everything as concise and straightforward as possible, while still keeping it paced and interesting. As I'm going a self publishing route, I do not have to reach a designated page count. No long winded exposés here.
► Neutrality: This book is meant to be a tool to aid in design and offer statistical advice, not to tell you how to do your job.
► Easy to Skim & Navigate: This book has been intentionally designed to make it easy to skim and get a lot of information out of it, as well as to find what you are looking for fast. So if you really are short on time, it can still yield high amounts of data.
It has been quite the experience creating this book, and I've learned so much in the process, which in itself I feel is worthwhile for the effort. But I hope that other people will be able to learn from this book as well, and take that knowledge to push their design skills and to create amazing things. I want to live in a world where great and thoughtful design is all around us, so I hope to contribute towards that end.
Stay safe, design smart,
-Jeremy
