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Drawing was on my list of things I want to know how to do for a long time. A year ago I've seen a nice recommendation of this book saying that the science in it is not worth reading, but the exercises are great. I have to admit that I skipped the exercises in last chapters - basically I don't have crayons or pastels and I don't want to buy them right now. Besides that, I have learned a lot. Exercises were really hard for me, even sitting and drawing for an hour was really hard. Fortunately in the end I have set a goal to myself to finish it in June. Without that specific goal, it would probably never happen. After finishing my self-portrait in chapter 10 and comparing it to the one before the book I was amazed. Don't get me wrong, the people on both on them don't resemble me, but the third one at least looks like a person. Most of what I learned about drawing would be something I would consider "cheating". I though that artists just happen to si...

I want to get some more experience in design so I bought this book on a premise of learning more about typography in design. Unfortunately it is far away from what I expected so it is really hard to judge it. Most annoying thing about this book is too small base font. Author on last page herself warns about experienced designers using too small font sizes, yet her own book has this problem. You can argue that I'm spoiled by web and kindle but this book has smallest base font from all I own (and I have a lot of books). For sure I have learned a bit, and seen a lot of good and bad examples, that for sure counts for something. Rating: 5/10

Really good book for startups and designers of everyday applications and services. Nir Eyal created model for creating habitual use of your service: Trigger (first external, then internal) Action (make sure it is easy to do) Variable Reward (just like in casino) Investment (ask user to make your service better for him) Model is pretty easy and you can map it to our everyday activities. Email, Facebook, Twitter all of those are using this model. Of course every website has its own value so every one of them manifests those steps differently. Book is pretty short and to my surprise I really liked two last chapters. One about morality of using such techniques and second one about startups.  One of great quotes from this chapter is Paul Graham: Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" From Want to start a startup?  Overall: 6/10 This rating for me is a bit lower than wh...

It is pretty old book. It was published in 1988. Computers were much more clumsy and hard to use but at the same time they were changing really fast. Fortunately author picked everyday things as the main theme of the book. You can read about faucets or doors but what you learn in the process will work in every context. First idea from a book is about blame. When we see some strange faucet we feel stupid for not knowing how to use it, but we are not to blame. Design of the faucet should be blamed, maybe even designer. Our everyday things should be designed to make them easy to use and understand. One important idea from a book is to think about ease of use when we are buying any kind of objects. Natural Mapping It is one of several important factors of great design. Controls should be aligned exactly the same way that things they control. If you want to see it violated look at controls of your burner in the kitchen. Perceived Affordances How things look like suggest how they ...

I really like this book. Many times I have compared it to  Design for Hackers . I would say they are really similar in way of making design more approachable. Of course "Presentation Zen Design" is more about using design in context of slides but most of the rules are the same in every context. After reading it I have good review-like feeling. It refreshed my knowledge from "Design for Hackers". I really liked Japanese and 'Zen' references in a book. It is really astonishing how 'Zen' art forms and rules can inspire our own presentations and designs. One thing to remember: "Rule of Thirds". Basically in every aspect of art, design or photography if you put your subject in the center it will look boring. If you put main subject in 1/3 on the right or left then it will look much more professional. That's it. Rating: 9/10