Critical Web Design

Most web design books teach you to build interfaces that work smoothly for companies and their customers. This one asks you to look harder at the technology culture those interfaces belong to, and to design with that scrutiny in mind. It is a hands-on textbook for learning to design and build websites while questioning what the web does to the people who use it.

The approach is called critical web design. Like critical design, it puts social usefulness to work as a way of challenging how technology enters everyday life. It takes the tools, methods and habits normally used to build commercial and coercive interfaces and turns them around, using design and networked information to test our assumptions about the medium itself. The thinking draws on new media art and speculative design.

xtine burrough and Owen Mundy walk readers through conceiving, designing and programming responsive websites as both a practical skill and a creative practice. Along the way you build technical ability in interface design, usability and accessibility, and in coding with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The aim is to put professional front end development tools within reach of anyone, not only trained developers.

Historical, political and philosophical background explains why learning to code matters, so the technical lessons are never detached from their context. Case studies and interviews with artists and designers show the ideas at work, and supplemental resources, including code, exercises and demonstrations, support the exercises in the book.