Design Inspirations ~ Lucent Web Design ~ Web Design, Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders

Here are a few links to things that inspire and inform us when we design, both within and beyond the world of web design:

A List Apart

This online web design journal helped pioneer contemporary web standards based design, and continues to produce excellent articles relevant to all aspects of web development.

Beautiful Evidence

Edward Tufte's superbly illustrated book shows the ingenious efforts made by artists and designers over the past 1,000 years to present charts, tables and other data efficiently and attractively.

Creative Photoshop

Derek Lea's book offers a clear, well illustrated guide to creating digital art with Photoshop, explaining in detail how to recreate some of his amazing illustrations.

De corporis humani fabrica

Andreas Vesalius' 16th century anatomical atlas is one of the most beautiful books ever published.

Getting Real

A refreshing read from web agency 37signals about the dangers of spending too much time thinking about designing, and not enough doing.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design

Josef Muller-Brockmann's book - first published in 1981 - formulates timeless principles for grid-based design that apply just as well to web pages as to printed publications.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach's music is perfect to design to: superbly crafted, logical and inspiring. Rarely off the studio's turntable.

Architecture and web design have much in common, seeking the ideal blend of structure and aesthetics. In this book Palladio, the master Renaissance artist, offers a tour through the architecture of ancient Rome.