Creating Flat Design Websites by António Pratas

Creating Flat Design Websites by António Pratas ( http://goo.gl/ZK3CWp) provides a great background for design principles of Flat Design, an approach which is both minimalist and trendy. He really makes a good case to justify the title.

The book is replete with design information and resource links that should be very useful. The preparation of the book uses Photoshop and the exercises slant towards web sites with Mac but the discussion and the ideas of flat design are quite general. The exercises are quite simple and the step-by-step guidance to creating a 1 page site should be very helpful. The codes in the book should be available on the Packt site.

The book provides examples, side by side, a traditional design and a makeover of the same using flat design principles and in most of the cases a great deal of visual clarity and greatly improved usuability has been achieved.

He describes several of the features that one should look for. For example,this is what the author says about usability:

"Most of the times, usability is
just about organization and common sense, and this is a way of working rather
than a technique to be applied. A more innovative interface will be harder to use
in the beginning, but the designer can choose to take this risk to achieve a different
experience."

This brings to my mind the arguments for and againt Desktop and Metro feature differences. Metro is a different experience and if you are used to desktop as in Windows 7 for example, you feel a little intimidated, but it is a different experience.

The author provides this link to how Wikipedia had its makeover going in for flat design. This summarizes what can be achieved with a flat design to get a great looking web page.
http://blog.weare1910.com/post/75576312730/a-readable-wikipedia

This book is about web design and the author does not discuss how the design responds to the different device sizes, a topic the author would no doubt consider for his next book.

In Windows 8.1 Update Microsoft creates a number of templates which are great starting points for creating basically flat design but where you have the opprtunity to tweak to add your signature.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/hh781237.aspx

While looking at flat design you may also want to watch this video:

http://www9.buyerpricer.com/Video.aspx?videoid=skn8pMfbWqY&slk=flat+ui+web+design&cid=3323989914&kwid=20466517441&uq=flat+design+web+sites&nid=2&iscid=2000005&term=flat+ui+web+design&vx=0

I whole heartedly recommend this book if you are contemplating building your own web site.

I was requested by PACKT to write a review and I have received a eBook.