I have before me a beautiful example od DIY creativity. The Smashing Book is a compilation (but made apparently especially for the book) made by the nice people from SmashingMagazine.com . Why are they nice? Well they’re nice because they share what they know, and in the modern world information is money, so it’s nice of the to share. Sure the book costs 30 bucks + postage but after giving it a brief shuffle it’s worth it! Definitely. It doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced designer with a portfolio that when printed would have more pages than this book. It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete beginner who hearing “text-kerning” says “WTF mate?”. There’s only one group of people that won’t find this useful. The rest will love it regardless of their experience and knowledge.
So let’s pop the question
Who are those people that won’t need it though? Well the people who will not find it useful are people who don’t really learn anything by themselves. People who rely on knowledge and learning before attempting ANY tries at a subject. People that will have a full typography course before they type in their first Aa’s. These people might only benefit from the nice, easy to understand language. But they probably won’t learn much, because what Smashing Magazine did is organized the most commonly “asked questions” and answered them with both the scientific precision and clarity for the “normal” people who don’t spend their life buried in a textbook.
Is it worth the 30$?
Definitely. It’s a quick read for the first time, and then you might keep it handy since it’s almost like a bible of design, usability, productivity and more down to earth stuff like CSS and coding. That makes it universal in a way that anyone who wants to do more with their projects will want to have it somewhere close to the computer. Good job guys! Thumbs up!