Tyler G. Merkel Blog: 40 must read free eBooks for web designers

As web designer its important to constantly be striving to learn more and broaden your mind. E-books are great way to learn more about web design. E-books can truly provide you a fountain of knowledge of information, and there’s a lot to be learnt. The beauty of eBooks is that there short and insightful not as a long as a book but not as short as a blog post.

This blog post includes 40 eBooks we certainly highly recommend reading whether your a newbie to webdesign, developer or even a experienced UX designer there’s a range of various eBooks each certainly worth reading through.

1. The elements of typographic style applied to web

For too long typographic style and its accompanying attention to detail have been overlooked by website designers, particularly in body copy. In years gone by this could have been put down to the technology, but now the web has caught up. The advent of much improved browsers, text rendering and high resolution screens, combine to negate technology as an excuse.

2. Webdesign succes guide

Web Designer’s Success Guide is the definitive guide to starting your own freelance Web design business.

3. Why Design

Does your startup need a designer co-founder?
Enrique Allen runs down the characteristics of designer founders, scenarios where design is particularly important, and how to spot designer founders in the wild.

4. Time Management for Creative People

Delivering time management training and coaching for hundreds of creative people has taught me a lot about what it takes to get original work done in the midst of the demands and distractions of the 21st century workplace.

5. Introduction to Good Usability

Over the past year I have written a few posts about design guidelines. They have also proven to be the most successful ones. I have therefor decided to put a few of them together, add some more and bundle it as an ebook. So without much further ado, I present:

6. HTML5 Quick Learning Guide

There are lots of great resources for getting comprehensive information on HTML5, so instead of creating another one of those, I decided instead to create a short “quick learning guide”. This guide introduces you to just the main elements of HTML5 that you’ll probably want to use right away. This guide is for those who want to get the basics figured out first, and worry about the finer details later on.

7. How To Be Creative

MacLeod, an advertising executive and popular blogger with a flair for the creative, gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative. Each point illustrated by a cartoon drawn by the author himself.

8. Taking Your Talent to the Web

Rated Five Stars at Amazon.com since the day it was published, “Taking Your Talent to the Web” is now a free downloadable book from zeldman.com

9. How to create your own portfolio

How to create your own design portfolio website without all that HTML nerdy stuff.

10. Design Your Imagination

WebGuru India is glad to offer “Design Your Imagination”; a one stop ebook resource for web design novices. Primarily written for website design wannabes, this book will also benefit experienced web designers. The book has been written by some of WebGuru India’s most seasoned professionals and is divided into 28 comprehensive chapters. Each chapter is on a specific topic with a number of examples for better understanding. The language is lucid, to-the-point and easy to understand.

11. Free E-book – How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself)

Running motivation training and coaching sessions for hundreds of clients has taught me a lot about how to get outstanding performance out of people at work.

12. The Design Funnel: A Manifesto for Meaningful Design

Would you like a process which would help translate the often vague, unclear wishes of your clients (and yourself, for that matter) into a clear and solid basis for your design?

13. Essential JavaScript And jQuery Design Patterns – A Free New Book

Hey guys. Today I’m happy to announce the release of a free book I’ve written called ‘Essential JavaScript & jQuery Design Patterns For Beginners’. Design patterns are reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems in software development and are a very useful tool to have at your disposal.

14. HTML5 WTF?

From Simon Schoeters, the author: Yet another overview of the changes introduced by HTML5. How does it look like? What is sexy?

15. Download the Guide to Guerrilla Freelancing ebook for free!

The best articles from Gurilla Freelancing that will help guide new freelancers in the right direction as well as give them insight into the benefits and drawbacks of freelance life, some things you must be aware of as well as some guerrilla marketing tactics to get them going.

16. Faster, and More Secure Webfonts

Font embedding for the web is a great step in making the web look better and become more functional, but what about security and load times?

17. Who’s There? the new ebook (free for now)

Is about how to make websites do their job better, then it’s only natural to turn our attention to blogs.

18. Free 27 Page Type Classification eBook

This book has been made to help you learn the 10 broad classifications of type. These are the basic foundations of what you need to learn to learn typography and it is essential for any designer to know how to classify type.

19. The Woork Handbook

The Woork Handbook is a free eBook about CSS, HTML, Ajax, web programming, Mootools, Scriptaculous and other topics about web design… directly from Woork!

20. To Five Smashing Years… And A Free Anniversary eBook Treat!

A collection of several web design articles to celebrate 5 years of smashing magazine.

21. Minimalist UI Design Trends 2016

Understand how Apple, Pinterest and Nordstrom all use minimalist design to make the right first impression on users. Tips and tricks for using typography, creative color, and maximizing your content with a minimalistic approach.

22. How to pair lean UX with agile development

23. Designing The Optimal Mobile Shopping Experience

Design matters for mobile. The user experience of your website and app is the difference between driving revenue, and driving customers away.

24. 2016 Web Design Best Practices Ebook Bundle

400+ pages of practical web UI design advice. No dry theory.

25. How to Build a 5 Star Website?

Have you ever contributed to the Wikipedia? If so, you’ll probably be mentioned along with other 7.5 million contributors in the Wikipedia printed version (as it existed on April 7, 2015). What is more important you can find that very article of yours in one of7,473 printed volumes of the English Wikipedia (yeah, “can”). Now try to guess where’s yours…

26. How to Align SaaS Content Marketing and Product Management

You’ve seen the studies — companies that retain customers grow bigger and faster than companies focused solely on customer acquisition. You can fill your funnel to the brim, but if your onboarding process acts like a leaky sieve, you’ll never have enough revenue to build and grow sustainably.

27. Bright Ideas for User Experience Designers

This eBook contains 100 pages of real-world help on user experience design, in handy portable form.

28. Five Algorithms Every Web Developer Can Use and Understand

This eBook contains 100 pages of real-world help on user experience design, in handy portable form.

29. Free eBook – A Guide to HTML5 and CSS3

We are happy to announce the launch of our free ebookA Guide to HTML5 and CSS3, authored by technical writer, web developer and programmer Ashley Menhennett.

30. Systematic Web Design

Systematic Web Design is a methodology for applying CSS to HTML in a structured, systematic way. It makes it easier to prototype, iterate and scale a web design.

31. Mobile UI Design Patterns 2014

A deeper look at hottest apps today. Pinterest, Spotify, Uber, Instagram, Dropbox, Flipboard, Mailbox, Yelp – they all use mobile UI design patterns explained in this e-book.

32. 10-Step Checklist for Your Website Redesign

You have learned from the mistakes of your first website design, but make sure you don’t make new mistakes with your website redesign. Download our free ebook,