books worth reading
These are probably the six most influential books written about working on the web. Each have their own web site to support the printed material, but there is nothing like having the book itself. Using the links below you can buy them from Amazon.co.uk.
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What to say about the Cluetrain Manifesto? Read it. Forget half of what you though you knew. Business as storytelling. Telling it like it is. I'm sick of all this talk in the media about the "new economy". More like the truth economy? Serous food for thought. |
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Written by one of the Cluetrain authors, Gonzo Marketing takes the arguments to their logical extreme. And like Cluetrain, it'll make you laugh out loud. Only harder. Best read after Cluetrain. |
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Small Pieces Loosely Joined is a more reflective look at the web and why it works, written by another (slightly less irreverent) Cluetrain ringleader. (There were four). Subtitled rather tongue in cheeck as "a unified theory of the web" it's nothing like that grand, but provides a great deal of food for thought. |
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Everything is Miscellaneous picks up in 2007 where Small Pieces left off (in a way). What does the world look like when we can categorize things our way. By embracing the web's inherent messiness, and adding in social organisation, tagging etc... |
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The definitive book on web design. This second edition taught me almost all I know about any important design issues, and is an eminently practical book. Although it was published waaaay back in 1997 it is still very valid. Nowadays nobody seems to know when they should be using gifs not jpegs. Because they never read CKWS. |
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"Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer can't find a product, then he or she will not buy it". Couldn't have said it better. What I tend to say to clients is "build it as if all your potential visitors were idiots". Nobody ever lost money making a site too clear, too fast or too easy to navigate. |
