The Smashing Book: Vote For Topics Now!
The Smashing Book project is coming along. At the end of February we announced our most interesting (and important) project for 2009: “The Smashing Book,” a smashingly written, beautifully designed and professionally printed book. The book’s title will be “The Smashing Book”; it will be a paperback; and the price is fixed, as is the release date, which is early September 2009.
We asked for your opinion about what the topics of the book should be, your wishes and ideas, and we were completely overwhelmed with the huge amount of great ideas and suggestions in our Smashing Book Forum. We express sincere gratitude to all those who helped us and discussed various ideas in the forum.
We took some time to go through all the suggestions and ideas, analyze them, find common interests and determine what you expect from the book and how it should look to meet your expectations. And now it’s time to get a little bit more concrete in the second round of our project.
Special Awards For Active Participants
Of course, we also came up with some exclusive, special awards for the active participants of the Smashing Book Forum. However, we don’t want to lay all our cards on the table — the special prize is not a free book copy, not a third-party gift: it is directly related to the book. The awards will be unique and are not for sale.
Here are the winners so far (or their forum nicknames at least): GeoEgo, mloclam, Furmi, ajcates, noirfatom, mWalk, fluxerj, mediocre, Norbert, mads, vladgidea, John, earthwormjim, rostek. Thank you for your participation, folks! We appreciate it! You’ll get the exclusive awards when the book goes into print.
Making the users’ wishes and interests the core focus of a new project is quite an old yet successful strategy. We don’t want to publish the book for us; we want to publish it for our readers and the whole design community. The book is supposed to become our common book. Unfortunately, not everyone understood the idea behind this project. That’s why we would like to explicitly point out that the articles for the book will be written by writers of Smashing Magazine. All authors and graphic artists who contribute to the book will be paid by Smashing Magazine.
The details of the book layout will be determined as we learn more about the content of the book. You can discuss book layout suggestions in this forum thread.
Topics Of The Book
We have carefully read through all comments in the magazine and the forum and tried to figure out which are the most popular ideas and most desired topics. It wasn’t easy, because users had different opinions about the same topics, so we sometimes had to find compromises.

Our readers clearly pointed out that they did not want a “general” book that would go through the boring basics of Web design as can be easily found on the Web. The book should not be a “beginner’s” handbook but instead should be written so that it remains useful and informative for at least a couple of years. Specifically, you would like a book of principal guidelines, filled with exciting practical examples and concrete ideas and suggestions. You want it, you got it! The book, then, will cover at least the following seven topics:
- Behind The Curtains: The Smashing Magazine Story
- Prototyping & wireframing
- Typography guide
- Color theory and practical examples (guide)
- Usability
- Performance Optimization for websites
- Business and freelancing guide, starting your own business
Of course, this isn’t everything. Many more topics can be covered in the book, and you can decide what those are. Please vote in the poll below!
Vote now and please spread the word!
What Won’t Be In The Book?
Unfortunately, the book will not contain a CD or DVD. All links and files will be made available online. The book will also not contain tutorials for specific applications — otherwise, it would become outdated very quickly.
What Will The Book Look Like? Stay Tuned.
Thank you for your participation, folks! And please feel free to let us know your ideas, thoughts and suggestions in the comments to this post!
You can decide on the book cover design next week. We have picked out the six most interesting book cover designs among a number of drafts suggested in the forum. And now we would like you to tell us which cover you like best. We think every design is appropriate for the Smashing Book. However, which do you think would make the book look really smashing? Please stay tuned.




Penia
March 26th, 2009 8:19 amI bet UI will take the cake
Dusan Vlahovic
March 26th, 2009 8:47 amThis book it’s gonna be amazing!
Simone
March 26th, 2009 8:51 amthe trend is: stay tuned or be crap!
Dimitry Z
March 26th, 2009 9:02 amCan’t wait to read topic #1. This book will be my next PHB (Player’s Handbook, D&D)
Fred Yates
March 26th, 2009 9:05 amSmashing should have a contest for the cover design :)
Marin Todorov
March 26th, 2009 9:05 amargh, my proposal on security & good practices didn’t make it … I guess people don’t care about that :))) Not surprising though, lol
Achilleus of Damascus
March 26th, 2009 9:10 amdesign, ajax, typography
Pacek
March 26th, 2009 9:12 amUser Interface Design :) building admin interfaces would be great!
martin
March 26th, 2009 9:22 amplease, interviews with profesionals
Pim
March 26th, 2009 9:33 amMaybe you could also add
**Do’s and Do’nts**
**Tips and Tricks**
I can’t wait to buy the book :-).
CULT OF D3ATH
March 26th, 2009 9:38 amweb standard, coding, database, Search engine optimization, web accessibility. = Behind the hood.
Almoste forget, web project management, team design.
j. DINH
March 26th, 2009 10:11 amLooking forward to the book!
Daniel
March 26th, 2009 11:38 amCan’t wait for the book. any ideas on the retail price yet guys?!
Daniel Correia
March 26th, 2009 11:44 amHoping price doesn’t match quality. :)
SuperChef
March 26th, 2009 12:55 pmdon’t talk about stats unless you’re going to talk about how to interpret them. Stats always change. It’s the quickest way to have a full chapter of your book be out-of-date
Marc Ambrose
March 26th, 2009 12:58 pmAll of them are great topics.
Mariella
March 26th, 2009 3:02 pmHow about asking the experts to try to forecast design trends of the near future? What will be hot after the current trends cool off?
frank achon
March 26th, 2009 3:24 pmI can’t wait for the book to get in the bookstores. :)
frankachon.com
CULT OF D3ATH
March 26th, 2009 3:55 pmDo what you do! You guy are truly awesome. You have simply Inspire me again and again and again.
I wil buy 2 just for the love <3
peace!
Jarryd
March 26th, 2009 4:18 pmVoted :)
rg
March 26th, 2009 4:43 pmGirls
jackparsons
March 26th, 2009 5:25 pmPersonally, I think you should use the words “beautifully,” “stunning” and “hoohawonderfully!” as often as possible.
Snookerman
March 26th, 2009 10:32 pmThis isn’t really related but I’m just wondering why the headings of the articles on SM link to themselves. It’s not very user friendly. Anywho, I’m really exited about the book.
Ram
March 26th, 2009 11:00 pmI want all.
Marina
March 26th, 2009 11:41 pmI can’t wait to buy it
Bleyder
March 26th, 2009 11:58 pmSure, I’ll buy it!!
Karl
March 27th, 2009 1:10 amAll topics sound interesting :)
Andris
March 27th, 2009 1:15 amLooking forward to have the book in my hands.
massimo nastasi
March 27th, 2009 1:32 amI’ll buy too…
laurel
March 27th, 2009 1:49 amPlease stay away from interviews and insights! Almost every design book is full of those and less on actual subject matter. In a design book I want projects and really useful information.
Danije
March 27th, 2009 2:54 amNo SEO chapter then?
ddz
March 27th, 2009 3:38 amthis book should be free
Tom Bradshaw
March 27th, 2009 5:10 amAll of these topics sound great… I looking forward to the interviews and insights (should it get in) Can’t wait for the book! it sounds smashing!
Valeriy
March 27th, 2009 5:51 amgood luck
ihsanrama
March 27th, 2009 7:46 amC’mon give it up for “Workflow: designing from scratch”
Sue
March 28th, 2009 6:09 amA half-chapter, or included in a “Tips ‘n Tricks” on “Start Here” or a brief outline for beginners would be really appreciated.
or
“How to Hire a Designer”
dog
March 29th, 2009 1:27 amI’m gonna order a copy if no Veerle is mentioned in the book, esp. as ‘expert’. I’m begging you guys, PLEASE forget Veerle this time.
Vahagn Grigoryan
March 29th, 2009 9:17 pmIf possible (please please), make downloadable PDF file too
m vysocka
March 30th, 2009 1:08 pmI’m a big fan of before and after screenshots for big redesign projects. In most cases there’s a lot of data that gets analyzed before these revamps take place, and it’s always interesting to hear their story, the reasons for the specific decisions they made and then try to relate them to your own site.
Bart Jan
March 31st, 2009 12:42 amcan’t wait untill it’s finished ;-p
I’t going to be GREAT!!!
mike
March 31st, 2009 5:51 amWhere is the ‘Security’ option ??
Danny
March 31st, 2009 12:26 pmI would appeal to you guys to be selfish now and have what you want in there. The Smashing philosophy, the Smashing ethos, the Smashing inside story. Perhaps give the job of threading it together to someone you respect, but who will squeeze out a documentary aspect to tie together all the Smashing interests.
Anna @crinkled
April 6th, 2009 3:55 pmThere absolutely needs to be a significant focus on the business side of designing. So many start-up designers fail because they lack solid business practices. Project management is just one of them (and I see it’s well lacking in the voting, which is alarming!). It’s one thing to be a great designer, but it’s quite another to be able to communicate effectively with your clients, to manage your projects properly, to market yourself well and generally to run a good business.
It’s overlooked so often. Starting a design business is easy – maintaining it is significantly less easy.
The Dude
June 22nd, 2009 8:12 amAWESOME. looking forward to it :)
Pedolf
June 26th, 2009 4:30 amQuestion: Wil they translate this book for other language like german.
Cause i will not be able to understand this book in english