Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War and Let Your Art Shine
WORK NOTES:
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WEBSITE: http://kadavy.net/
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Omaha, NE.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and speaker. Kadavy.net, blogger. “Love Your Work,” podcast host. Web design teacher. TEDx at SXSW, speaker. Worked formerly as a product designer in Silicon Valley.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous periodicals, including Quartz, Observer, Inc.com, Huffington Post, McSweeny’s Internet Tendency, and Upworthy.
SIDELIGHTS
David Kadavy is a writer, blogger, podcaster, and speaker. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Kadavy has lived in San Francisco, Chicago, San Jose, Kearney, Nebraska, and Ames, Iowa. His career began in Silicon Valley, where he worked as a product designer. Kadavy is passionate about helping people find satisfaction in their crafts and careers. He blogs about this at kadavy.net and talks about it as host of podcast “Love Your Work.” Kadavy also developed a free email course to help viewers learn web design, as well as courses aimed at teaching viewers the principles of visual design and white space. His productivity tips have been featured in Lifehacker, Inc., Huffington Post, and Quartz. He has spoken around the world, including at SXSW at TEDx. Kadavy lives in Medellín, Colombia.
Design for Hackers: Reverse-engineering Beauty, Kadavy’s first book, offers readers a 352 page introduction to the history and principles of design. Kadavy opens the book with a lengthy explanation of what goals it serves to fill. He outlines what the book will cover, why it is relevant to the reader, and the importance more broadly of design literacy. The book is comprised of nine chapters, and the remaining sections cover topics such as technology and culture, proportions, composition and design principles, visual hierarchy, and color science and theory. Each section concludes with a list of guidelines and principles to summarize the preceding information and further direct the reader. The book is primarily written for the purpose of web design, and thus many of the topics are specific for screen rendering.
Kadavy uses applicable examples to supplement his lessons, as well as historical asides. Included in the historical tidbits are the story behind Romain du Roi letters, which were commissioned by Louis XIV; the description of the design principles of the Georgia family; and a comprehensive explanation of why Comic Sans is not a font to use for serious or professional design. Kadavy offers illustrated examples of why and how to use the design lessons he describes. Specifically, he explains how the reader could use these lessons in a blog design setting.
A contributor to ZDNet website wrote: “No matter how much you already know about design, you’ll learn something useful, fascinating or both.” Boris Veytsman in TUGboat website noted that Kadavy “clearly and lucidly explains many rather difficult topics,” adding, his “attention to the details and the skill in revealing these details for the reader are superb.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 23, 2018, review of The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War and Let Your Art Shine, p. 78.
ONLINE
TUGboat, http://www.tug.org/ (January 13, 2012), Boris Veytsman, review of Design for Hackers.
ZDNet, https://www.zdnet.com/ (March 20, 2012 ), review of Design for Hackers.
David Kadavy (@kadavy) is a bestselling author, blogger, podcaster, and speaker. Through his blogging at kadavy.net and his podcast, Love Your Work, he helps people find satisfaction through following their crafts, even if it takes them down unconventional paths. David's writing has appeared in Quartz, Observer, Inc.com, The Huffington Post, McSweeny’s Internet Tendency, and Upworthy. He has spoken in eight countries, including appearances at SXSW at TEDx. He lives in Medellín, Colombia.
I’m David Kadavy. I’m a creative entrepreneur and author of Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty (which debuted in the top 20 on all of Amazon), The Heart to Start, and multiple “short reads.” I also host a podcast called Love Your Work (iTunes), where I’ve interviewed entrepreneurs and creators such as Jason Fried, Dan Ariely, James Altucher, Seth Godin, Ryan Holiday, Laura Roeder, Noah Kagan, and many more.
I used to be a product designer in Silicon Valley, but I’ve since doubled down on my love for writing, after accidentally becoming an author. My writing has been featured in Observer, The Huffington Post, Inc.com, Quartz, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Upworthy, and Lifehacker. I currently do most of my writing and thought experimentation on Medium, and I’m very active on Twitter, and have a Facebook Page.
I offer a free email course to learn web design, a course to learn the principles of visual design, and an entire course about white space.
In addition to my regular Design for Hackers email list, I have a book recommendations list.
I worked with behavioral scientist Dan Ariely to reinvent Google Calendar. The company we worked on, Timeful, was bought by Google, and many of those features are now in Google Calendar.
I currently live in Medellín, Colombia, which I chose as my home base after extended stays in many places around the world. I’m originally from Omaha, Nebraska, and have also lived in San Francisco; Chicago; San Jose; Kearney, Nebraska; Ames, Iowa; and I’ve done month-or-longer stints in many other places.
What is my work like?
While I’m my own person, with my own viewpoints, readers often compare me to Tim Ferriss (They cite my somewhat nomadic lifestyle, my tendency toward building passive revenue streams for further exploration. I’m less rational and rigorous, and less-interested in “top performers.”), James Altucher (I’ve long been interested in the idea of self-investment. I’ve never been as rich, and I only aspire to be as open.), Sam Harris (I’m interested in the contours of the mind, and try to speak with similar precision. You’ll probably never hear me mention religion, and am not a neuroscientist.), and Ramit Sethi (He’s a friend, and inspiration, but I’m more interested in writing and podcasting than in building online courses.) I recognize that these are all highly famous and accomplished people, which makes them useful examples, but I don’t mean to suggest that I actually compare to them.
I’m interested in how to build habits that cultivate Deep Work, the ways that attempts at rationality lead us astray, and the balance between technological progress and exploring human experience. By the time you’re reading this, I’m probably interested in a whole set of other things.
Kadavy.net on WPEngine
Kadavy.net has been hosted with numerous companies on numerous platforms, but is now happily served up on WPEngine. You can get a special deal on hosted WordPress if you use his special WPEngine free trial. They make it so damn easy. It’s great. No updating or getting hacked (knock on wood).
Saying “Kadavy”
It’s KAD-uh-VEE: “KAD” like “CAT,” “uh” like “duh,” “VEE” like “KNEE.” But, David’s not really too picky about what you call him, as long as it’s not “jerkface,” or something like that.
Common misspellings include cadavy, catavy, katavy, cadavey, kavady and kadavey.
Contacting David
If you want to get in touch with David, you can always @mention him on Twitter, but he also gets email at david (at) kadavy (dot) net.
Call David
If you’d like to get real-time advice from David about running a solopreneur business, building online courses, nomadic lifestyle, podcasting, writing, book marketing, email marketing, SEO, design, or anything else, book a call with him on Clarity.fm.
David Kadavy
David Kadavy is the author of Design for Hackers and host of the Love Your Work podcast. He was recently involved in adding new features to Google Calendar, and his productivity tips have been featured in Lifehacker, Inc., The Huffington Post, and Quartz. David is somewhat nomadic, but currently lives in Medellin, Colombia.
Recommended: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
What is your morning routine?
I am not a morning person. This is exactly why first thing in the morning is my most critical creative time. Research shows that your off-peak times are the best for insightful thinking, so my one goal in the morning is to make the most of that still-slightly-groggy time.
I wake up without an alarm, usually around 8:00am. Ideally, I’ll meditate for about ten minutes, but I’m usually too eager to start working. I set up my computer on a bookshelf that allows me to stand while working, put in some Mack’s earplugs, and spend the first hour of my day on my most important project at the time. For a couple of months, that was writing and publishing a 500-word Medium article every morning, but that exercise is over. Usually, my hour turns into about two hours of uninterrupted work.
How long have you stuck with this routine so far?
I’ve guarded my first hour religiously for about the last six months, but I’ve made it a priority to work first thing for about three years.
How has your morning routine changed over recent years?
I used to simply have the goal of working for ten minutes straight on a project first thing in the morning. Often, that would bleed into one or two hours.
Exciting news, our book is now available! Order online or purchase from your local bookstore today
Why has my time commitment increased, even though I still spend the first two hours working? Because I’m always shooting for a goal that feels ridiculously easy to me, as a “Motivational Judo” move that tricks me into working more. I’ve gotten better at focusing, so just one hour is a pretty easy goal for me.
What time do you go to sleep?
About midnight.
Do you do anything before going to bed to make your morning easier?
The more I wind-down the night before, the better my brain works in the morning. On a perfect night, I’ll have turned off screens or put on blue-blocker goggles by around 10:00pm. I also try not to read any social media or things that make me think about anyone other than close friends and family after this time. (The exception to this is long-form stuff, such as books.)
I may watch a show or some videos, but I try to spend time after 11:00pm doing only quieter activities, such as reading. I go to bed before I’m too exhausted, and I sit in bed with the light on and stare at the wall when I first get in. I allow myself to think about things that happened that day or what I’ll do tomorrow, and only when my eyelids start to get heavy do I put on my sleeping mask, insert my ear plugs, and turn out the light. I’ve found that if I try to close my eyes before my eyelids get heavy, I have a hard time sleeping.
Do you use an alarm to wake you up in the morning, and if so do you ever hit the snooze button?
I try to avoid using an alarm. If I do, I use my iPad, rather than my phone, as I don’t allow messaging or other notifications that may distract me on my iPad.
How soon after waking up do you have breakfast, and what do you typically have?
I try to make it to around noon before eating. I use an egg maker to poach about three eggs and then I sauté vegetables, or I’ll make a smoothie with coconut milk, MCT oil, vegetables, a few berries, and some stevia.
Do you have a morning workout routine?
I go to the gym around 11:00am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My goal is just simply to go and spend fifteen minutes there (it’s usually more like forty-five). Building the habit is more important to me than sticking to a particular routine.
Do you have a morning meditation routine, and if so what kind of meditation do you practice?
I try to meditate for ten minutes each morning (sometimes I’ll extend it to half an hour). I guess it’s mindfulness meditation. I first concentrate on my breath, and then I search my body for points of tension that I allow myself to release.
Do you answer email first thing in the morning or leave it until later in the day?
Email is an afternoon activity. I try not to check it until after my first meal. Less critical email I Boomerang until Friday. My brain isn’t its best on Friday, but it works well enough to answer lower-priority emails.
Do you use any apps or products to enhance your sleep or morning routine?
I’m a big fan of Andrew Johnson’s apps, such as Relax. Sometimes I’ll mix it up with his Positivity app. I may do these at night before sleeping or in the morning as a substitute for meditation.
How soon do you check your phone in the morning?
Like email, I try not to check my phone until after my first meal. I leave it facedown on a table in Do Not Disturb mode overnight. My phone is not allowed in my bedroom.
What are your most important tasks in the morning?
Whatever my most important project is at that time, my task is to work on it for one hour.
What and when is your first drink in the morning?
It depends on how thirsty I am. I may have something to drink first thing in the morning or after my writing session. Again, I feel my creative work is better if I don’t get too hydrated in the morning. I drink water almost exclusively.
Do you also follow this routine on weekends, or do you change some steps?
On weekdays, my first priority is to do some work. On weekends, my first priority is to get outside for a short time. I plan my coming week on Sunday afternoons and often have to spend time organizing my life and travels on Saturdays as well.
I generally don’t work on weekends unless I’m really crunching a project.
On days you’re not settled in your home, are you able to adapt your routine to fit in with a different environment?
Yes, but there will inevitably be some inherent aspect about where I am that shakes things up, such as if or when I will work out. I use this as an excuse to try new routines when I live in places for extended periods.
What do you do if you fail to follow your morning routine, and how does this influence the rest of your day?
If something other than work has to be done first thing in the morning, it’s as if my whole day’s creative output is shot. Ultimately, though, I think those situations leave me with more energy for doing “social” work, such as researching podcast guests or nuts-and-bolts production-type work later on in the day.
Five keys for writing a book title that sells
A good title can’t make a bad book sell. But a bad title can make a good book not sell. If you’re writing a book, you want to nail the title.
I’ve learned a lot about good titles in writing a couple of books. I had some terrible ideas for titles. But they were part of the process of coming up with good titles.
I still have a lot to learn about coming up with great book titles, but the titles Design for Hackers and The Heart to Start have performed well.
Here’s how I think about non-fiction book titles. There are five keys I consider:
What keywords will people use to search for the book? Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said “our biggest search competitor is Amazon.” Most readers are not browsing the bookshelves at the bookstore. Most readers are searching for books on Amazon — one of the most popular search engines. Having the right keywords in your title (and subtitle) will help boost your book in search rankings, where you’ll find active buyers for your book. The subtitle of The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War & Let Your Art Shine, helps it rank highly for a companion book, The War of Art. You can get an idea of keyword volume with a tool like KDP Rocket (affiliate link), you can see what shows up in auto-suggest on Amazon’s search bar, or—for best results—run AMS ads on keywords for a book you’ve already published.
How does it feel to tell someone you’re reading a book with that title? Think of this as the “cocktail party” test. Imagine talking to a new friend at a party, and telling that person what book your reading. Imagine saying that title to that person. How does it feel to say you’re reading a book with that title? Does it cast you in a flattering light to your new friend? Living With Diarrhea, for example, would not pass this test. Deep Work does. You feel cool and important telling someone the work you do is “deep.”
Is it easy to understand the title when spoken? Is it easy to spell? Keywords help people find books they’re looking for, but books still spread through word of mouth. If your title is hard to pronounce, people will be afraid to say it. This often happens when authors try to get clever with a made-up word. If it sounds awkward, let’s say it’s called Smackinfwee, people won’t want to say it (and won’t know how to spell it to find it). Grit on the other hand, is easy to understand and spell.
Does the title sound cool? Does it roll off the tongue? A title may be easy to understand, but it might not sound cool. This is something you have to get a feel for, and it will be different depending upon your reader. The Artist’s Way may sound cool in certain spiritually-inclined artist circles, but it may sound too flowery in other circles. Antifragile sounds cool to circles of readers who value toughness and achievement, but it may sound arrogant and boastful to others. The Hackers in Design for Hackers sounds nefarious to the general population, but it’s a badge of honor in the target market.
What are secondary meanings of the words in the title? What imagery does it conjure up? Words carry meaning beyond what they mean, and that secondary meaning changes throughout time. Consider the government official who lost his job for saying a word that merely conjured subconscious imagery of a racial slur. (Whether that was right or wrong is besides the point. The point is words carry secondary meanings.) The word “habits,” for example, used to conjure imagery of bad habits, but lately, it’s been associated with good habits. Flow, Outliers, and Lean In all conjure secondary imagery that supports the concepts in each book.
Picking the right title is a balance. The bigger the platform you have, the less risk you’ll be taking in using an abstract title that attempts to bring new meaning to a word, or invent a new word altogether.
Each time you think of buying a book, return to these five keys, and notice how each key influences your decision. You’ll sharpen your senses for book titles, and get better and better at writing titles that sell.
I'm David Kadavy, Author of Design for Hackers, and This Is How I Work
Andy Orin
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David Kadavy is a designer turned author who writes about productivity, traveling, and design. His book Design for Hackers teaches developers and makers the necessity and principles of marrying good design with good engineering, and he certainly designs a productive life of his own—we've probably quoted him a dozen times. We caught up with David to learn about his favorite apps, gear, and how he works.
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Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
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Location: Chicago, IL
Current Gig: Author/Professor at Design for Hackers, Advisor at Timeful.
One word that best describes how you work: Methodically
Current mobile device: iPhone 5s (Silver)
Current computer: MacBook Air
What apps/software/tools can't you live without? Why?
Without a doubt, number one for me is Evernote. I do everything in Evernote. I draft blog posts, write talks, brainstorm ideas, and document processes in Evernote. I even write emails in Evernote, even though when I paste back to Gmail I have to reformat any bullet points that I've made.
When I started using Evernote, I really just had a notebook called "Inbox" with a note called "Inbox," but since then it has grown into a number of stacks and I even have a numbering system that I'm not quite sure even I can explain; but, it works.
I guess it would make sense if I mention Siri, since I'm actually drafting this blog post into Evernote using Siri on my iPhone, as I pace around the room.
Next would have to be Timeful, co-founded by behavioral scientist Dan Ariely. I've been advising them on product the past several months so I'm in their private beta and it's really grown to be indispensable for me. It allows me to not only plan what is going on during my day and what I want to do during the day, but it also allows me to be clear about when I'm actually going to do those things. A lot of times we get a sense of anxiety over traditional tools like email, to-do lists, and calendars, but that's because they're often at odds with one another.
Finally, there's Fancy Hands, which is like an on-demand personal assistant. I've been concentrating a lot on delegating things, and it's really freed up my creativity. Fancy Hands was a great way for me to not only train myself on delegating, but it has also saved me a ton of time making phone calls, booking appointments, and doing research.
What's your workspace setup like?
I try not to spend too much time at one particular workspace, because my thoughts then start to get kind of stale. At home I have an IKEA Jerker desk with an Aeron chair, and I use my split keyboard and a 24" Apple Cinema Display. I have a piece of tile board I got at Home Depot, which I occasionally throw on the floor in my living room for high-level thinking.
About three days a week, I go to a co-working space, and I use my mobile setup, which again includes my split keyboard, an AViiQ laptop stand, and my MacBook Air. I stand most of the time at the co-working space and need to get around to converting my home workstation to standing.
What's your best time-saving shortcut/life hack?
My best time-saving shortcut is actually to not think about productivity in terms of time, but instead in terms of cognitive load.
Units of time are a really feeble way to represent what you can output in your life. I discovered this when I was writing my book, and I would have an amazing 15-minute burst of productivity, after banging my head against the wall all day.
You can learn to recognize and work with your different mental states and rhythms, and that is the best way to have the maximum impact with your time. I recommended David Rock's Your Brain at Work to get started in understanding this.
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A quick method for hacking your brain's output is the 10-minute hack.
The 10-Minute Hack
The hardest part of doing most things is just starting. We often think about how big of a project…
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What's your favorite to-do list manager?
It's definitely much more than a to-do list manager, but the aforementioned Timeful. (As I said, I advise them, so in some ways it's literally built for the way I work.)
Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can't you live without and why?
I never like to be without a really good blender. Even when I'm living a mini-life somewhere else, I'll sometimes bring a blender with me. However, recently I got a Ninja, and it's big enough it might not travel so well.
The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War and Let Your Art Shine
Publishers Weekly. 265.17 (Apr. 23, 2018): p78.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War and Let Your Art Shine
David Kadavy. Kadavy, $10.84 trade paper
(138p) ISBN 978-0-692-99569-3
In this encouraging guide, Kadavy (Design for Hackers), shows how to jumpstart one's creativity. Kadavy uses material from his podcast, Love Your Work', entertaining metaphors; and vignettes from his life and those of a myriad of others such as a behavioral scientist, a board game creator, a singer-songwriter, and a chef to highlight the obstacles that prevent people from starting their creative projects. Original terms, such as "the Fortress Fallacy" (imagining one's project in its most ambitious possible form before even starting) and "Inflating the Investment" (overestimating how much time and energy projects will take) clearly illustrate the thinking that leads to procrastination. The practical advice and techniques that Kadavy provides for circumventing distorted thinking and ego-driven insecurities, such as "motivational judo," in which "you use the force of your own ego to kickstart your project," make it sound relatively easy to start creating, but Kadavy is careful to keep expectations realistic. Reassuring reminders not to be defeated by discomfort, perfectionism, and the fear of others' judgments, and to follow one's curiosity and passion, round out this lively, motivating entry into the self-help genre. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War and Let Your Art Shine." Publishers Weekly, 23 Apr. 2018, p. 78. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532940/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5ac0add3. Accessed 26 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536532940
Book review: Design for Hackers
For a book so packed with fascinating and informative details, Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty starts much too slowly. The author is so keen to tell you what he's going to tell you, what difference he hopes it will make to you and why design literacy matters that the first 40 pages are essentially an extended introduction (even if reminding people to sketch out ideas is always a good thing).
By Book Reviews for ZDNet UK Book Reviews | March 20, 2012 -- 07:52 GMT (07:52 GMT) | Topic: Reviews
0
For a book so packed with fascinating and informative details, Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty starts much too slowly. The author is so keen to tell you what he's going to tell you, what difference he hopes it will make to you and why design literacy matters that the first 40 pages are essentially an extended introduction (even if reminding people to sketch out ideas is always a good thing).
Skip to the meat of the book where Kadavy dives in and takes something many people know instinctively — Comic Sans is not the right font for serious design — and analyses why, in a way that makes immediate sense. Instead of simply declaring that something is good or, in this case, bad design, he shows you why.
The thickness of every stroke in every letter is the same, leading to thick spots where lines overlap and thin spots where there are spaces within the shape of a letter so passages of text are an uneven mess of light and dark on the page, individual pairs of letters aren't designed to sit well side by side and the letter shapes are designed to be readable on screen when the edges aren't smoothed out by anti-aliasing, not on paper when they are.
Not only do you understand what you've been reacting to in Comic Sans all along; you also get a lightning course in typographic design, followed up by the wonderfully clear explanation of serif and san serif type that goes back to Roman inscriptions, painted graffiti in Pompeii that Kadavy wittily dubs the Twitter of Ancient Rome and medieval manuscripts, and forward to the first computer fonts, the classic Mac font Chicago and web fonts.
If you care about design, you'll love the details. If you're trying to understand why you need to care about design, the details should keep you interested enough to absorb the lessons. And every section ends with a handful of guidelines and principles that add up to pretty much the rules that Kadavy says he doesn't want to teach you.
Most of the rules you think you know about design are things like proportion, the rule of thirds and the golden ratio of the Fibonacci sequence — which shows up in design from da Vinci's Vitruvian man to the (now replaced) New Twitter interface. Kadavy's not a fan of the golden ratio, but he shows the effect of other pleasing proportions, with plenty of examples of what works and instructions on how to take advantage of that.
Composition and design principles are illustrated with heat maps of how users look at web pages (generally an F shape, with the bottom right corner almost ignored), as well as the variety of ways sculptors and painters lead your eye around a design using tools like foreground, background, colour, similarity, dominance, rhythm, direction and texture. Again, this is liberally illustrated with annotated examples and followed by how to use the same tools to put together a blog design that's very simple but has a lot of impact, as well as how to make individual elements like tables easier to read. Because he explains why and how specific effects work, you get a good understanding of the principles behind specific examples. A later section covers similar principles in font design, explaining why certain fonts work well together, again in great detail. This won't make you an instant expert in fonts, but it will give you the principles to use fonts well without being an expert — and if it inspires you to learn more, you'll be starting with a good grounding.
A design can feel fresh or dated, because you're going to see it in the context of the culture — and technology — around it. Showing how Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are reactions against photography and the artistic establishment makes an unusual introduction for showing how the gradients, rounded corners and reflective surfaces of the web 2.0 look grew out of the design of the original candy-inspired iMac and the Mac OS X Aqua interface — which was meant to make you want to lick the screen — and evolved into the hyper-real interfaces showing up on web sites today. And on the next page Kadavy is contrasting lessons about SEO and design (make the content compelling) with the way breakthrough medieval book publisher Aldus Manutius combined new italic typefaces and an easy-to-carry book format that made ancient Greek literature the iPad of the 1600s. It's all about information accessibility.
The section on colour is comprehensive, clear and full of details, taking usually complex ideas like colour spaces and gamuts and the way the human eye perceives colours and making sense of them. If you've ever struggled to find the colour you want in a colour picker dialogue or to come up with a palette of colours that work well together, or you want to use colour to explain data in a map or chart without misleading viewers accidentally because you use a colour that's too light for its position on the data scale, you'll come away knowing exactly what to do. A very few data tools, like Tableau, have these principles built in. if you use anything else — including PowerPoint — you should read this book. The section on colour psychology is interesting, but nowhere near as comprehensive and convincing. Even if you're not convinced you can get the effects Kadavy suggests yellow or red can induce, it's useful to be reminded that colour isn't just there to look pretty.
This is all both practical and inspiring, and it's the combination that makes Design for Hackers so successful. The continual and uncritical admiration of Apple design can grate, especially when Kadavy simply praises various Apple product designs without explaining why. It would have been nice to see some analysis of Microsoft's Metro design principles, for example, both to balance the overemphasis on Apple and because many of them show up along the way (like not putting rules in tables).
Despite promising not to give you lists of rules, Design for Hackers does give you rules, as well as tools and principles. It also explains why they work and how to make them work for you. The mix of examples and explanation should equip you to understand the designs you come across (and why you like or dislike them) and improve your own. No matter how much you already know about design, you'll learn something useful, fascinating or both.
Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
David Kadavy
John Wiley
352 pages
£24.99
ISBN: 978-1-1199-9895-2
Mary Branscombe
TUGboat, Volume 33 (2012), No. 1.
Book review: Design for Hackers
David Kadavy, Design for Hackers. Reverse-Engineering Beauty. Wiley & Sons, 2011. 352 pp., Paperback, US39.99. ISBN 978-1-119-99895-2.
In the beginning of the book David Kadavy thanks the Wiley acquisition editor Chris Webb for taking up this project, which another publisher dismissed as “ambitious”. After reading the book I could appreciate this story. In 352 pages, the author describes the principles and history of design—the subject that usually takes several semesters of college level courses. If this is not ambitious, then what is?
Of course, the book is not intended for a systematic study—rather it is a very popular introduction to whet the appetite of novices and, as Kadavy says, to provide you with a new set of eyes through which you can see the world anew. It is clearly intended for the “new media creators”: web designers, programmers, management of high-tech companies and other people with a good knowledge of computers, but much less of design and arts. Even if they themselves will not become designers after reading the book, they might better appreciate the job of their designer departments. This in itself would be a very good result. Let us see whether Kadavy achieves this implicit goal.
The book has nine chapters: (1) Why Design Matters, (2) The Purpose of Design, (3) Medium and Form in Typography, (4) Technology and Culture, (5) Fool’s Golden Ratio: Understanding Proportions, (6) Holding the Eye: Composition and Design Principles, (7) Enlivening Information: Establishing a Visual Hierarchy, (8) Color Science, and (9) Color Theory. It also includes an unnumbered Introduction and two appendices: (A) Choosing and Pairing Fonts, and (B) Typographic Etiquette.
Simply from this list of chapters a reader can see that the book discusses in detail typography and fonts. It is not surprising, since David Kadavy taught a college course on typography, and seems to be genuinely interested in the subject. Thus TUG members who share this interest might enjoy and appreciate the book.
In my reading, the pages about typesetting are among the best in Design for Hackers; the author is very knowledgeable and knows how to convey his knowledge to the reader. Since the book is written mostly about web design, it talks in length about suitability of various fonts and font features for screen rendering. Design for Hackers has several fascinating asides: why the Romain du Roi letters commissioned by Louis XIV and designed on a “scientific” grid inspired many digital fonts, the story behind the (in)famous Comic Sans, the design principles of the Georgia family, and many others. These stories alone make the book worth reading.
The chapters about composition and colors are also well-written and quite interesting. The author teaches these subjects by examples: he takes logos, paintings, web pages and explains why they are successful. This exposition is convincing and might be quite revealing for many novices or even experienced readers. For example, in Chapter 6 the author explains how the details of a classical sculpture or a Seurat painting subtly guide the eye to return to the center of the piece. Then he takes a modern logo and shows the same principles in a quite different situation. Kadavy’s attention to the details and the skill in revealing these details for the reader are superb.
Kadavy clearly and lucidly explains many rather difficult topics, such as grid design for books and web pages, coordinating font sizes, relationship between colors, color spaces and printing technology, and many, many others.
I would be happy to stop here and congratulate the author and his readers with a very good introductory text on design. Unfortunately, while the publisher provided a bold and dedicated acquisition editor for the book, he seemed to forget about the need for copyediting. Design for Hackers has many paragraphs which an experienced copyeditor would delete or demand be rewritten. Following are just a few examples of such paragraphs.
Kadavy twice (p. 3 and p. 46) states that before Gutenberg made books cheap, literacy rates were very low, and few people outside the clergy could read. First, this statement probably does not deserve repeating, and second, it is not quite true. The author himself talks at length about wall graffiti in Pompeii, which demonstrates that in the ancient Roman empire the literacy level was relatively high.
Talking about technology and culture, the author spends several pages on the history of Impressionism and Salon des Refusés. The author makes a connection between the new artistic school and the growth of the middle class. A box on page 82 summarizes the take-home message as REMEMBER: In order for a piece of art or design to really be relevant and important it has to be sensitive to the technological and cultural factors present within the world in which the piece is created. Doing otherwise will result only in the creation of a veneer. Does this jejune remark really deserve its prominent place? Immediately after this story Kadavy talks about Web 2.0. What does the author want to say? Is Web 2.0 comparable to Impressionism, and if yes, how? Which social changes are relevant to Web 2.0? Maybe Web 2.0 is, using the author’s terms, just a veneer?
One of the most prominent examples of the lack of copyediting is the section SEO Is Design. Nowhere in the body of the book does the author explain what SEO is, and this reviewer was quite baffled by the passionate pleas in the book about the importance of this enigmatic entity. Only in the index is this acronym spelled out as “Search Engine Optimization”: a series of tricks to make your web page go to the top of Google search output. A good editor would likely catch this. A copyeditor could also tell the author that naming two consecutive chapters Color Science and Color Theory is probably not a good idea.
Another thing a good copyeditor could do is slightly brush up the style of the author. Kadavy’s writing is generally easy to read. However, sometimes his colloquial style becomes too flippant, and the result looks rather artificial. For example, Kadavy argues that the “golden” ratio is overused and over-hyped, and some other fractions like 2:3 and 3:4 should be used in the design as well. This is fine, but should he really name the corresponding section Fool’s Golden Ratio? Also, sometimes the author veers into sales speak (The corporations pay big bucks for …).
Since this book is about design, the design of the book itself should be mentioned. It seems to be highly influenced by web pages rather than by traditional typography: ragged right typesetting, paragraphs separated by vertical white space, lots of colored illustrations, etc. Since the author is without doubt a good designer, the result is surprisingly clean and brisk. Marginal captions for figures look excellent, the colors are selected with great care, and the overall impression is striking. The book is printed on glossy paper (probably necessary because of many color illustrations) and is tastefully typeset in beautiful Adobe Garamond. It is a pleasure to open and read.
Returning to the question in the beginning of the review, I can say that Kadavy has written a good introduction to design, interesting for novices and giving food for thought to more experienced readers. I would only wish that he had given the same care and attention to the details of his text as to the design and typesetting of the book.
Boris Veytsman
Computational Materials Science Center, MS 6A2
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
USA
borisv (at) lk dot net
http://borisv.lk.net
$Date: 2012/01/13 18:28:16 $