These are books that we like or that have influenced us. We hope you'll find our remarks useful.

Non-disclaimer: we accept full responsibility for both patting backs and stepping on toes on this page.

The Weblog Handbook: practical advice on creating and maintaining your blog

Rebecca Blood (Perseus, 2002)

Although there are loads of places to get info these days, no serious blogger should be without this tightly written, wonderfully intelligent introduction to the world of weblogs.
  
  
 
 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Blogging: genius strategies for instant web content

Biz Stone (New Riders, 2003)

More nuts-and-bolts than the previous work, this 310-page tome gets into practical subjects like archiving, traffic generation, and RSS syndication. The modest author is a self-proclaimed genius… Great for folks who know nothing about setting up a web page.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: what categories reveal about the mind

George Lakoff (University of Chicago Press, 1987)

Lakoff, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists, shows how language reflects what’s going on in our brains. Hence, this book is as much about linguistics as it is about cognition. Definitely not light reading (and it weighs almost a kilo, too), but it’s an important work, although one you could probably live without.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Sorting Things Out: classification and its consequences

Geoffry C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (MIT Press, 1999)

An overly wordy, but thoroughly practical work, this is really something of a “must read” for budding information architects. Quite a bit of time is spend discussing the political and persuasive aspects of categorization, which are as important as they are fascinating.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Order of Things: an archaeology of the human sciences

Michel Foucault (Tavistock/Routledge, 1970)

Originally published in French as Les Mots et les choses, Foucault does for philosophy what Lakoff does for cognition. Truly a work of genius, but a seriously difficult read. If you’re in a hurry, skip to Chapter 5, Classifying, for 30 of the most erudite pages you’ll ever read.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Community Building on the Web:
secret strategies for successful online communities

Amy Jo Kim (Peachpit, 2000)

Not only was this the first book to address the issues of community building, but it's been a tough act to follow. Ms. Kim has written a true gem that runs the entire informational gamut - from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to establishing community holidays.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Online Communities:
designing usability and supporting sociability

Jennifer Preece (John Wiley & Sons, 2000)

A bit dry, Professor Preece intended this book to be used at the university level, but is actually a fairly basic book when all is said and done. If you’re seriously into community building, get it - but only after you’ve studied Amy Jo Kim’s much more appealing work.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Net Words:
Creating high-impact online copy

Nick Usborne (McGraw-Hill, 2002)

The words of wisdom are few and far between. The title of chapter 13 is "Copywriting on-line is different." It would seem fair to assume that most potential readers already knew this. However, there's good stuff about e-mail marketing, which is actually the main thrust of the text.

 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Hot Text:
web writing that works

Jonathan & Lisa Price (New Riders, 2002)

Fat volume that teaches basic writing skills as well as specific on-line techniques. If you’re already a professional writer, you may find some of this a bit patronizing. Still, there’s a lot of good hands-on stuff about menu-writing and usability as it relates to text.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Content Critical:
gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content

Gerry McGovern & Rob Norton (Prentice-Hall, 2001)

The authors are writers and firmly believe people come to websites to read – everything else is mere distraction. Although there are lots of writing tips, the book’s real value lies in the information on creating a web publishing strategy and organizing a publishing team.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Web Content Style Guide

Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton, and Catherine O’Dowd (Pearson, 2002)

Only the first 32 pages discuss the actually task of writing, the rest of the book is an A-Z glossary of web terms. It’s a fine book, but now a little past its prime. And because the name is misleading, we list it here so you’ll know before you buy it sight unseen from someone.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Web Word Wizardry: a guide to writing for the web and internet

Rachel McAlpine (Ten Speed Press, 2001)

Excellent beginners guide to writing for new media. In addition to standard page content, Ms. McAlpine also discusses Ezines and search-engine optimization. Convenient checklists remind newbies to include metadata and microcontent.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Internet Writer’s Handbook

Martha C. Sammons (Allyn & Bacon, 1999)

Here’s a terrific, easily accessible reference tool that brings the Chicago Manual of Style into the electronic age. Too often, writers attempt to create Web pages by simply using the same techniques they use for print documents - IWH provides specific advice on writing and designing on-line hypertext documents. The many contemporary topics even include e-mail style. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Elements of Style: a style guide for writers

William Strunk and E.B. White (Longman, 1999)

According to the New York Times, "No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume." ‘Nuff said.


 
 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

On Writing Well

William Zinsser (Quill, 2001)

The classic guide to writing nonfiction, now in its 25th anniversary edition. Even if you’re a good writer, this will make you better. Guaranteed. The four main sections include Principles (simplicity, audience, etc.), Methods (beginnings, endings, and stuff in-between), Forms (writing about people, places, travel, etc.), and Attitudes (tone of voice, decisions, etc.).

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: the zero tolerance approach to punctuation

Lynne Truss (Gotham Books, 2003)

A book on punctuation that’s actually fun to read? Lynne Truss pulled it off. No wonder it’s been top of the New York Times bestseller list for months on end. OK, so we work in the web world where a lot of writers don’t even know how to use capital letters. Put an end to sloppy writing NOW!

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Words Fail Me: what everyone who writes should know about writing

Patricia T. O’Conner (Harcourt Brace, 1999)

Can you untie this one? “He did not marry her because she was a web designer.” No, this has nothing to do with either passion or profession. It could mean: “Because she was a web designer, he did not marry her.” Or: “He married her, but not because she was a web designer.” We shouldn’t expect our content readers to be mind readers, too. Great book.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Writing for the Web

Crawford Kilian (Self-Counsel, 1999)

• Amateurs won't learm the nuts and bolts of wordsmithing
• Professional web writers won't learn much they don't already know
• Technical writers might benefit.
• Bullet points are really, really good.

Check out http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ instead.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Content Management Handbook

Martin White (Facet, 2005)

Here’s a marvelously readable book that is by far the best introduction yet to a very complex subject. White elegantly progresses from the “why” (information enabling your organization), to the “how” (SoR and vendor selection) in a mere 139 pages. Fantastic!

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Content Management Bible

Bob Boiko (Wiley, 2004)

Not surprisingly, Boiko’s philosophy of CM is that the system should contain everything, as does this 1000-page book. The question is, does any individual really need it all – it’s not always clear who the audience is. In fact, the reading level on the back cover states: “Beginning to Advanced”. Strictly for die-hard CM fanatics.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Managing Enterprise Content: a unified content strategy

Ann Rockley (New Riders, 2002)

Rockley is one of the world’s most respected CM consultants and she freely shares her hard-earned knowledge in this interesting work. If you’re in charge of implementing CM across a diverse and far-flung organization, this book is a must read. You don’t have to agree with everything she says, but you’ll at least be able to make informed choices.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Web Content Management: a collaborative approach

Russell Nakano (Addison-Wesley, 2001)

With CMS systems, anyone with a password, anywhere in the company, can now publish web content. Nakono explains in elegantly simply terms how webmasters can keep collaboration from decending into chaos. If you’re looking to go beyond the basics outlined by Martin White, this is the book to get.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Information Storage and Retrieval

Robert R. Korfhage (Wiley, 1997)

It's fat, expensive, and filled with mathematical equations - but you'll be hard pressed to find a better textbook/reference on this incredibly important subject. And even if you don't have the math or physics background to understand entropy functions etc., there's a lot of other less technical information that will prove immensely useful if you are the least bit involved in database design.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Contextual Design:
defining customer-centered systems

Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt (Morgan Kaufmann, 1998)

A brilliant work from two of the pioneers in Human-Computer Interaction. CD cuts the development cake rather differently than most other books by emphasizing the need to understand (and often mirror) human processes when designing computer applications. As such, usability, information architecture, and other key issues assume their correct places as means to an end rather than the ends themselves.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Back to the User:
creating user-focused web sites

Tammy Sachs & Gary McClain (New Riders, 2002)

A good, basic book, probably best-suited for members of web teams and others who need to know something about user-centered design, but aren’t going to make a career of it. The mere fact that you found our site suggests you’ve already moved beyond this stage.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)
 
Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Breaking Through to the Other Side: using the user experience in web, interactive TV, and mobile services

Thomas Snitker (Nyt Teknisk Forlag, 2004)

FatDUX co-founder, Thomas Snitker, shows how user research forms a solid foundation for building useful and usable applications. It effectively bridges the gap between initial research and late-stage usability testing, outlining an amazing number of research techniques: from field ethnographics, to card sorting, to think-aloud testing.

Buy this book directly from Nyt Teknisk Forlag!

Observing the User Experience: a practitioner’s guide to user research

Mike Kuniavsky (Morgan Kaufmann, 2003)

Amazingly detailed account of research techniques – right down to explaining the difference between cardiod and omnidirectional microphones and creating a seating order for a focus group. One of the very best how-to manuals of user research available.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Mental Models: aligning design strategy with human behavior

Indi Young (Rosenfeld, 2008)
 
A mental model helps categorize and map repeating user behaviours/needs determined during your research to your current and future content and features. This insightful book covers everything from planning to interview techniques and evaluation. Destined to become a classic.
 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

About Face 3.0:
the essentials of interaction design

Alan Cooper and Robert Reimann (Wiley, 2007)

Comprehensive review of the current state of the art, including practical design tips and reviews of various techniques (for example, several pages are devoted to a discussion of pointing devices). This is not a book that will inspire you to do better work. But it will keep you out of trouble.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Designing Interfaces: patterns for effective interaction design

Jenifer Tidwell (O’Reilly, 2006)

Jenifer has been asking for pattern contributions on the various special-interest lists since 2002. This book is the brilliant culmination of her work. Not only can she write, she talked O’Reilly into including hundreds of color illustrations to help clarify the concepts and techniques. The single best interface book on the market today.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Designing Interactions

Bill Moggridge (MIT Press, 2007)
 
This 766-page tome (plus CD) includes insightful interviews with 40 of the pioneers of interactive design. Richly illustrated and richly rewarding, you could read this for relaxation if it weren’t too heavy to hold when you’re lying on the couch.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Information Dashboard Design:
the effective visual communication
of data

Stephen Few (O’Reilly, 2006)

Dashboards translate complex data from several sources and display the composite information in a useful and usable manner. The first third of this gorgeous book presents an inspirational review of a dozen dashboards from leading corporations. The next two-thirds describe the philosophy and practicalities behind the creation of great dashboards. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Designing for Small Screens: mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, pocket PCs, navigation systems, MP3 players, game consoles

Carola Zwick, Burkhard Schmitz, and Kerstin Kühl (Ava, 2005)

The title says it all - and the book really lives up to its promise with a wealth of priceless research and sensible conclusions. Although the authors and the folks behind the scenes are associated with the University of Applied Science in Magdeburg and the University of the Arts in Berlin, this is anything but a tired textbook - it's simply drop-dead gorgeous. All are part of the innovative Studio 7.5 in Berlin.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Designing for Interaction: creating smart applications and clever devices

Dan Saffer (New Riders, 2006)
 

A collection of interviews, musings, and historical review. A fine book, although it occasionally bites off a bit more than can be comfortably chewed. As an introduction to interaction design, this is far and away the best you’ll find.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Designing the User Interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction

Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant (Addison Wesley, 2005)
 
This is one of the HCI classics, now in its fourth edition. It may not be the sexiest book on the shelf, but it’s certainly one of the most important. The new edition covers 3D and sound, but you won’t find video in the index – our world is moving pretty fast.
 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)
 
Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)
 

Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction

Jennifer Preece, Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp (Wiley, 2002)
 

Some years back, Professor Preece wrote a dull book on communities. Now, she’s written a dull book on interaction design. Mind you, it’s a fine textbook (choose your own definition of “textbook”). Many of us dream of creating good interaction; Preece puts us to sleep.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Interaction Design for
Complex Problem Solving

Barbara Mirel (Morgan Kaufmann, 2004)

Here’s a scholarly work that contains practical advice for application software designers. But you could also view it as a practical work aimed at university students. So which is it? There’s a lot of good information here, but it’s a difficult read – ironic for a book dealing with complex problem solving.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Humane Interface:
new directions for designing interactive systems

Jef Raskin (Addison-Wesley, 2000)

The creator of the Macintosh speaks out. But that’s misleading. This is a heavy-duty book (references to Hick’s Law in relation to Fitts’ Law, GOMS calculations, etc.) for HCI people and application designers – who will love it!

 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Elements of User Interface Design

Theo Mandel (Wiley, 1997)

Heavy-duty textbook at the university level. A serious book for serious developers-which will undoubtedly put off those looking for "cool" books. Hey, let's face it, folks, life isn't always easy, but this is the book to read if you really mean business.


 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Web Navigation:
designing the user experience

Jennifer Fleming (O'Reilly, 1998)

Ms. Fleming holds a master's degree in library science and also has a superb understanding of the graphics of navigation design - an unbeatable combination. For years, this pioneering work was required reading for all designers and information architects; today many of the specific techniques are out-of-date due to new browser capabilities.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Designing Web Navigation: optimizing the user experience

Jim Kalbach (O’Reilly, 2007)
 

The long-awaited sequel to Ms. Fleming’s book covers many key issues that have developed in the past decade (site relaunches, Web 2.0, AJAX, RIA, etc.). It focuses on design principles and development techniques, with case studies and essential concepts seamlessly folded in. Superb! 
  

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)
 
Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Tagging: people-powered metadata for the social web

Gene Smith (New Riders, 2008)
 
metadata, folksonomy, search engine optimization, seo, findability, web 2.0, types, tips, techniques, tricks, genesmith, goodfriend, greatbook, getit
 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Envisioning Information

Edward R. Tufte (Graphics Press, 1990)

Envisioning Information is the second in an outstanding series of three books on visualizing information. This book deals with nouns, the other two deal with numbers and verbs. It's a true treasure-trove of information regarding the design of visual media. Although this isn't a web book per se, it provides important insights regarding the design of multimedia interfaces, of particular interest if you often work with sites containing lots of financial graphs and similar images.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Universal Principles of Design

William Lidwell, Kritna Holden, Jill Butler (Rockport, 2003)

The subtitle of this work is "100 ways to enhance usability, influence perception, increase appeal, make better design decisions, and teach through design." And it actually delivers quite well on all of these counts. The 100 points are listed alphabetically, which is a rather meaningless organizational scheme, that puts icons next to immersion. But the book is inspirational and well worth the semi-hefty price.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Show Me the Numbers: designing tables and graphs to enlighten

Stephen Few (Analytics, 2004)

As gorgeous as Edward Tufte, but much more practical. If you ever have to design a graph - even just once - this book is going to make it better. And if you do graphic design for a living, this should be require reading. In fact, after you've read it, you'll never again propose one of those silly 3-D piecharts. A real eye-opener.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Elements of User Experience: user-centered design for the web

Jesse James Garrett (New Riders, 2003)

Deceptively simple, Mr. Garrett’s five-level model of user experience is one of the masterpieces of our industry. Be warned, though, this is a book for people who think. If you’re looking for hard-core “Insert Tab A into Slot B” design advice, read Van Duyne.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Experience Design: a manifesto for the creation of experiences

Nathan Shedroff (New Riders, 2001)

An enchanting tour through virtual and real-world experiences. Mr. Shedroff writes like a dream and his photos are great, but… the whole thing is so over-designed that it is next to impossible to read – mostly negative text on busy photos. A disasterous experience :(

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Design of Everyday Things

Donald A. Norman (Doubleday/Currency 1988)

Originally published as The Psychology of Everyday Things (POET to those in the know), this wonderfully entertaining book has long been the design bible for many of the "old-timers" in the business. The emphasis here is on VCRs, water faucets, and other everyday devices, but the principles of human cognition and the reasons for various types of "human error" are just as relevant in the on-line world. Superb!

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Emotional Design: why we love (or hate) everyday things

Donald A. Norman (Basic Books, 2004)

Professor Norman's follow-up to his 1988 classic (see above) has one overriding thesis: that inanimate objects become more fun when they are invested with a degree of personality. This allows us to react emotionally to them. Norman then shows how output from our sensory systems is processed at three levels - the reflective, behavioral, and visceral - to affect our motor reactions. Lots of nice anecdotes.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Why Things Bite Back:
technology and the revenge of unintended consequences

Edward Tenner (Vintage, 1997)

"Why are the lines at your bank's ATMs often longer than the ones at the teller's windows?" – just one of hundreds of examples of how good intentions can go wrong. Although not as well known as the previous title, this is also an important work that can help web developers avoid creating more problems than they actually solve. A provocative book that gives us all cause to think twice about how we implement our on-line solutions.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Sketching User Experiences: getting the design right and the right design

Bill Buxton (Morgan Kaufmann, 2007)
 
Bill Buxton is a way-smart designer/scientist/educator who loves paper and pencil. Find out why sketches on napkins are often far more valuable than sophisticated electronic tools when nailing down a design concept. And while you’re at it, let Bill explain the inner workings of business models, ecosystems, and much more. Incredible.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Inmates are Running the Asylum: why high-tech products drive us crazy and how to restore the sanity

Alan Cooper (Sams, 1999)

The "Father of Visual Basic," Cooper effectively bridges the communication gap between programmers, usability experts, and the people who employ them. Should be required reading for all three groups!

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Build for Use: driving profitability through the user experience

Karen Donoghue (McGraw-Hill, 2002)

This is a business book. That's why it's from McGraw and not from one of the usual web publishers. But to her credit, the author has read all the important stuff and produced a decent volume in its own right, although the ideas are not particularly original. We're not sure who the audience is, but if you've got a left-brain client who's eager to learn a little about a lot, this might be the book to recommend.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Web Redesign:
workflow that works

Kelly Goto & Emily Cotler (New Riders, 2002)

When we first read this, it seemed that the basic premise was “your first site was awful, so now we’re going to do it right.” Hence, “redesign” generally meant starting from scratch. Actually, when you really start to dig in, you'll find this is a fabulously insightful book that covers a lot of territory not found in other works, such as content inventories and audits. A great discussion of business goals, too. Now available in a second edition.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Site-seeing:
a visual approach to web usability

Luke Wroblewski (Hungry Minds, 2002)

Rather than the standard “Keep your links blue. Keep your text short.”, Wroblewski focusses on visual presentation – not just to make the site “pretty” but to aid visitors in their quest for information. A truly excellent work (and beautifully designed, too).

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Communicating Design: developing web site documentation for design and planning

Dan Brown (New Riders, 2007)

If you’re working in the web business, this book is a major “must have.” Disguised as a book about documentation, this is a masterful review of popular deliverables that will also help you avoid the worst political squabbles. Our motto: “Never leave home without a good book by Dan Brown.”
 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Web Design for ROI: turning browsers into buyers & prospects into leads

Lance Loveday, Sandra Niehaus (New Riders, 2008)

Think landing pages are “so 1996”? Think ROI can’t be proven because you don’t have a baseline? Think ROI is strictly for e-commerce sites? Then think again. Without question, the single best web book we’ve read in years, valuable for designers and business people alike.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

The Art and Science of Web Design

Jeffrey Veen (Que, 2000)

Jeffrey Veen is smart, innovative, and has impeccable design sense - something of a killer combination. No wonder he’s been a mover and shaker on the Web since its outset. Here, you’ll find his tricks of the trade all wrapped up in one fabulous reference.

 

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Mapping Web Sites: digital media design

Paul Kahn & Krzysztof Lenk (RotoVision SA, 2001)

Tufte with an electronic twist. Slick, large-format book with loads of mouth-watering pictures of site maps of every kind. Chapter 4 is particularly interesting for web developers and information architects because it deals with boxes-and-arrows deliverables. Great source of inspiration.

Buy this book from Amazon.com (North America)

Buy this book from Amazon.co.uk (Europe)

Web Pages That Suck: learn good design by looking at bad design

Vincent Flanders, Michael Willis (Sybex, 1996)

It's actually a little unfair to list this book as a "design" book, since it really covers so many key points about website development, not least of which is usability. Intelligent and highly entertaining, if you're only going to read one book on website development, this is the one to get. Son of Web Pages That Suck was published in 2002.

Companion website at www.webpagesthatsuck.com