If you are a website creator, designer, or developer, it's important to stay educated about the most up-to-date technologies, trends, and Concepts in the industry. There are tons of different books out there that offer the knowledge from experts in their field.

Our industry, creating websites with HTML, various content management systems, JavaScript, and other digital technologies is a very visual one, hence the robust libraries of development courses and YouTube videos, but sometimes having a hardcopy book or an E book to learn a specific concept related to web design is a nice thing.

In this article, we are going to talk about the best books for website designers and developers. We're going to cover several different aspects of the industry, from the business of website development to various digital technologies and upcoming trends in 2021 that you can easily learn about by purchasing a high quality ebook.

The majority of these paperback books or E books can be found on Amazon, but we're also going to link to some third party websites that offer their own education. Hopefully, this is the first time that you're hearing about them in this article, as we use them extensively in our own agency, and found it very difficult to come across these high quality written resources.

Without any further ado, let's get into our roundup of the best print and E books for website developers and designers, in early 2021. We will be updating this article as time progresses and new technologies slash products come out. We should also note that we have read about 75% of these E books, and the rest are highly recommended by colleagues in our industry, so this is an article that is created from experience.

Building Design Systems: Unify User Experiences through a Shared Design Language 1st Edition

The Building Design Systems book is a great resource if you are looking for information on creating a defined set of components and guidelines when building digital experiences. Even if you're a developer, understanding how design systems work, on both the creation side of things as well as the user experience side of things, can help you create much better final product. Not only will they look better, but they will work better for the user, eventually culminating in a higher satisfaction and conversion rate.

In this Building Design Systems ebook, the two authors, both product designers and developers with years of experience in creation, and both being employed as a git lab UX designer, cover 4 main topics. They teach you how to create communication strategies too help your team and stakeholders in your project stay on the same page. They discuss how to create principles based on the needs of the specific project client and end user. Following that section, they'll go over how to design and create the actual design system from the ground up. And they finally closed the book with information on how to measure the effectiveness of the design system.

If you're looking for an ebook that will help you increase the usability and design of all of your website creations, this is the resource for you. It's created by industry professionals, has very high reviews on Amazon, and comes in both Kindle and paperback format. It was also published in 2019, and because design guidelines don't typically change rapidly, all the concepts discussed in this book are up to date.

Atomic Design by Brad Frost

On the topic of creating design systems, this next entry in our list of the best books and ebooks for website designers and developers is called Atomic Design by Brad Frost. Atomic Design by Brad Frost discuss is everything that goes into creating design systems, allowing you to create more consistent user interfaces more efficiently. This book details a methodology and ideology for creating and understanding user interfaces via hierarchies. As the title suggests, it draws its inspiration on the atomic makeup of our universe.

As an agency, we purchased this ebook and had all of our designers and developers read through it. The resulting ideas and methodologies that were instilled in our team are used today , and help us create affective libraries that have really made a difference in our design and development workflow. We're a lot more efficient , and have a greater understanding of how to design great user interfaces.

This ebook is not available on Amazon, instead it is sold through the authors main website. It costs $10, and in our opinion it is definitely worth the purchase price.

The Complete Website Planning Guide

In The Complete Website Planning Guide book, author Darryl King discuss is how to affectively plan, create, and launch a website. This is created from the perspective of a digital agency founder and CEO, and has helped us refine our workflow when it comes to creating and launching WordPress websites.

It is essentially an annotated checklist that gives you all of the information you need when it comes to planning the scope of you or your clients website. Creating an accurate scope document , and delivering it to the client in a respectful way ensures that any website creation project will remain on track and not be derailed by last minute additions and changes. Understanding how to plan and create this scope is a necessary skill if you are looking to affectively run and manage a digital agency that builds websites.

And that's what this book does. It is created by an industry veteran who has more than 20 years of experience in running a design and development agency, and offers you a great blueprint to effectively plan website projects, leading to more efficient and easier project workflows.

In terms of being more efficient from the business aspect of website design, this book was insurmountable in helping us define our discovery process, which you can read more about in our FAQ.

Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set 1st Edition

Though the Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set 1st Edition book is a first edition, it is an instant classic in our industry, and a resource that anybody who builds websites professionally needs to own. This is actually a set of two books period the first being web design which HTML and CSS, and the second being web design with JavaScript and jQuery. They ship as a set, and are created specifically for web designers and front end developers.

The first book covers HTML and CSS, discussing this structure, links, elements, options, and styling capabilities that you get with HTML and CSS. This is helpful for understanding how the actual browser renders websites, and also helps you boost your knowledge of technical search engine optimization . There are a couple other topics interspersed throughout the first book in this set, such as Google analytics, FTP, and HTML5.

The second book gets into a bit more detail regarding JavaScript and jQuery. Because it is a part of the same set, it is the perfect complement for one of the best resources out there in regards to HTML and CSS. Book 2 gives you everything you need to know about JavaScript and jQuery, offering a visual approach using diagrams, photographs, flowcharts, and additional graphics. In our opinion, the visual nature of this second book is incredibly helpful if you have a beginning to intermediate level of understanding when it comes to these two web technologies.

While this set is irreplaceable to beginning website designers and creators, advanced professionals can also benefit from this guide. We use these two books as a handy dandy reference guide when it comes to understanding HTML elements, and various jQuery functions.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition)

This is the third edition of the incredibly popular Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited book. First published in 2000, virtually any professional web designer has read a variation of this book, or watched a video tutorial that draws inspiration from the concepts outlined here.

Don't make me think is essentially a manual for everything Accessibility and usability in regards to website design and creation. This topic is one of the most important ones to understand, and if you don't have formal education in design, this book is the best way to gain this essential knowledge. It's an interesting read, as the author is a great writer and presents the material in an engaging and sometimes humorous way.

There are a ton of unique tricks and techniques outlined here that will make you a better web designer for years to come. A must purchase if you are a new web designer looking for essential reading in the form of Kindle ebooks and paperback print books.

Laws Of UX

The Laws Of UX book is another timeless classic that discuss is exactly what the title implies, user experience laws that you should follow when creating any digital asset. This book draws from actual psychological studies and principles, converting them into easy to remember rules that apply to user experience.

It's a very visual book, and the author deconstructs well known applications and websites offering clear examples of how you as a designer can create similar experiences that are useful and easy for the end user. The book covers everything from the ethical implications of using psychology in design, offers a framework for applying user experience laws, and incorporates classical models including Jacobs law, fitts law, and more. Essentially, if you're trying to understand user experience and the psychological principles behind it, this is the book for you.

After giving it a read, you'll definitely be able to create higher converting websites using age old psychological methods.

The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization 3rd Edition

The final entry on this list has to do more with search engine optimization, and not as much with actual web design, but unfortunately for the creatives reading this article, in 2021, search engine optimization is more important than ever, and he will need to design for that. Therefore, accurately understanding how search engine optimization works, and the best practices in 2021 is an absolute necessity.

The book that taught us pretty much everything we needed to know about the art of search engine optimization is called exactly that, the art of SEO mastering search engine optimization. It's currently in its third edition, refreshed for 2021 and offers thorough search engine optimization education. Even if you have a decent understanding of how to rank on Google, this is a perfect reference for youOK now we do .

It will discuss everything from technical SEO, to off page SEO, to the impact of social media and links, to the effects of the recent Google panda and Penguin algorithms, to the future of the industry. We highly recommend giving this book a read in the form of a paperback or ebook version because this truly is something that any web designer or developer needs to be aware of.

The author behind the book is called Eric Enge, the founder and CEO of one of the leading search engine optimization firms in The United States. He publishes constantly to Search Engine Watch, and really does knows what he's talking about.

Conclusion

We hope that this list of the best E books and print books for web designers and developers was helpful for you. We recently updated this article for early 2021, including books that discuss the most recent technologies, and offer you a great understanding of how to design and develop high quality websites for yourself or your clients. If you are looking for web design books, or a list of web design books, we hope that this was a beneficial read. If you have any additions to append to this list, feel free to leave them in the comments below, and if it looks like a good addition, we will include it in the main article.