Rating: 
Summary: Send Lynda back to school
Review: "designing web graphics 3"
by lynda weinman - I've decided I really don't like Lynda Weinman's books, CD's, taste in art or anything else.
Although she was the first to capitalize on her ability to make gifs and jpegs, she hasn't really learned anything new since then. Yet she continues to produce volumes of sophmoric material. Case in point: Chapter 3:
page 39
Metaphors: Help or Hindrance? I immediately thought of the indispensable book "Killer Web Sites" in which the metaphor is conceived as the next level of thinking, an inspiration to reach for higher ground. But Lynda is a low brow - she admits it, constantly, but then she forgets her humble roots and tries ineptly to describe metaphor as we understand it. "Sometimes metaphors can help your site design, but sometimes metaphors can hurt. At Cigar Aficionado the use of metaphor works. Cigar boxes and wrappers are beautifully designed, so the use of them on the Web site provides an appropriate visual reinforcement." Weinman obviously thinks that images are in and of themselves metaphors, which is an interesting and imminently arguable case. I think however, that every image has the potential to be metaphoric, if it evokes another contextual sense. The accepted definition of metaphor according to Webster is: Metaphor:
Word or picture or phrase denoting one kind of idea or object is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
Transferring the sense of one word to the sense of another. Using a cigar label on a cigar site is as direct as you can get. It in no way uses metaphor anymore than does using a picture of a potato to sell a potato. Image as metaphor. The idea:
Juxtaposition Gallery coming soon...
Rating: 
Summary: Professionalize yourself with this book!
Review: A great book to familiarize yourself with professional graphics for the web and to boost your general knowledge and skills of working with computer graphics. This book comes with colored pages to enhance clarity. Lynda Weinman is the leading name in graphics and web training.
Rating:
Summary: When web designers print...
Review: Any useful information in this book was overshadowed by sloppy errors and dumb mistakes. The amount of mistakes I found in the coded examples was ridiculous. This book desperately needed an editor. Deconstructing Web Graphics was just as bad. I used to enjoy Lynda Weinman's books for their simple, low pressure aproach to web design, but I doubt I'll be buying another one of her books at this point. This sloppy, what-the-hey-they'll-buy-it-anyway attitude shows a blatant disregard for people who have been reading her books in the past. Shame, shame...
Rating: 
Summary: A light at the end of the tunnel
Review: Anyone reading this review is likely aware of the avalanche of books about all aspects of the web. In the field of design for the web, Lynda Weinman shines fourth as the most no-BS author I've yet come across-and I look a lot! The contents are well organized, the subjects relevant. She takes you from the general & conceptual (including considerations of a career in web design) to production specifics. She includes workarounds to bypass the numerous design landmines which, unfortunately, HTML so generously provides. I'm a full-time design professional who is now self-teaching web design. If I could have only one book (in addition to an HTML reference), this book would be it. It's written by one smart lady. I've also bought her "Creative HTML Design", which I will soon begin to devour.
Rating:
Summary: Authoritative All-In-One By A Teaching Design Pro
Review: Are you a web developer who lacks graphics design skills? Have you created your first several sites and wanted to go beyond the design elements in the FrontPage templates? Then this is the book for you since the author assumes that you have hacked a few web sites and have a strong interest, but little formal training, in design. Or perhaps you are leading a project team and come from a programming backgound. You are comfortable with ASP, Java, Perl, and SQL, but graphics design is a bit of a mystery. This is your book too, since it is a serious book by a design professional and has sufficient depth to make you comfortable in any project meeting. Lynda Weinman is not only a skilled designer but an experienced teacher. This beautifully illustrated 430-page book covers all of the graphics basics. This book may be the only one you need.
Rating:
Summary: A Worthwhile, Inspirational Book for Designers
Review: As a designer experienced with print media, I found this book useful in getting me up-to-speed with the basic technology and techniques of Web design. While lacking technical depth, this book inspired me to look beyond the technicalities of HTML and think about the Web as an untapped visual medium. Sure, I noticed a few typos here and there, but generally I think it's a great book for beginners such as me. After buying a few Web design books, I've realized that the best books are those that integrate learning HTML with visual examples. Some books have this backwards; they're full of HTML code, but lack any useful or inspirational visuals. By contrast, this book has given me some creative vision, while providing the necessary code to experiment on my own.
Rating: 
Summary: This woman is, like, so full of herself.......
Review: At first I was very impressed by this book. It looked so good (nice illustrations) and I thought it was just what I needed. But was I disappointed! I can get this useless information in any $ 20.- book, and better. But the worst part is that Lynda thinks so much of herself. What it comes down to is what she herself calls in this book: "shameless self-promotion"! So if you're interested in her father's website.....
Rating:
Summary: Not for code junkies, but ...
Review: Clearly, if you dream (or aspire to dream) in HTML and JAVA etc., this is neither the reference nor even a starting point for you. But if you would like a comprehensiveÑand funÑintroduction to the essentials of visually appealing as well as user- and browser-friendly web pages, don't pass on this one! You will see web pages through the designer's eyes, i.e. from a purely asthetic standpoint (of course asthetic always translates into drawing and keeping an audience in media such as this), and then learn the best ways of tweaking your concepts for that perfect balance of good looks and download speed. There's a LOT about graphics optimization in the book, and most examples are demonstrated in several of the standard graphics editing programs. But that is not allÑI have not found a single question about working with the web unanswered here ... what is CSS? What are the differences between GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs? What programs should I own and how do they compare? What is XML? DOM? Etc., etc. Wanna do web design? Get this book, I can't imagine you'd regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Not for code junkies, but ...
Review: Clearly, if you dream (or aspire to dream) in HTML and JAVA etc., this is neither the reference nor even a starting point for you. But if you would like a comprehensiveÑand funÑintroduction to the essentials of visually appealing as well as user- and browser-friendly web pages, don't pass on this one! You will see web pages through the designer's eyes, i.e. from a purely asthetic standpoint (of course asthetic always translates into drawing and keeping an audience in media such as this), and then learn the best ways of tweaking your concepts for that perfect balance of good looks and download speed. There's a LOT about graphics optimization in the book, and most examples are demonstrated in several of the standard graphics editing programs. But that is not allÑI have not found a single question about working with the web unanswered here ... what is CSS? What are the differences between GIFs, JPEGs, and PNGs? What programs should I own and how do they compare? What is XML? DOM? Etc., etc. Wanna do web design? Get this book, I can't imagine you'd regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Looking to design web graphics??? Look no more.
Review: I am Johnathan Mark Smith and I been designing web sites forover 5 years now and I am always looking at other web designers workto learn new stuff. Lynda Weinman is one of the great designer out on the internet and her book designing web graphics.3 will help anyone get up to speed on designing graphics for the web. This book will show you how to prepare images and media for the web and it will also go into Style Sheets, Flash, Shockware and Browser-safe colors. Yes designing graphics for the web takes some time but with this book you can get up to speed in no time.
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