Well I ordered this quite a while ago to take advantage of the 20% pre-​​order discount, I love books, I love owning them which is a bit of a bad habit, I really need to get into reading them cover to cover instead of just parts but I certainly intend to with this one.

It was a pretty good today, as not only did I get my Smashing Book but I received my print from Luke’s Beard.

The Book

The Smashing Book is printed on pretty sturdy paper with a satin-​​like sheen and its 311 pages make for quite a hefty book, it’s A5 in size and almost two centimetres thick (0.75 inches). It’s probably just that I haven’t opened it lots and creased the spine but it’s quite hard to open, and certainly doesn’t lie flat which is a shame as I was hoping for it to be similar to Bulletproof Web Design which is pretty easy to open and lies flat so you can leave it on your desk and glance at it.

Opening it up everything is nicely laid out, the typography is a simple sans-​​serif which I’m sort of ashamed to say I don’t recognise instantly with a good use of colour to bring the pages to life. I would just say that the chapter intro designs are not my cup of tea particularly, perhaps I was hoping for something with a bit more flair but that’s just me. That aside it all looks like a good book and excellent for their first published book.

The Content

Beyond the superficial I can’t say much as I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’ll get started on that this evening and as someone fairly new to web design (I wouldn’t really call myself one) this book should be invaluable. But just from the appearance it looks like a good quality book, though you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover now should you? More to come.