Web Design. The Evolution of the Digital World 1990–Today Hardcover – Illustrated, 9 Oct. 2019

This book is the definitive history of web design, an entertaining Pandora’s box of design (and technical) firsts. It not only brings back fond and familiar memories of the internet but also offers a catalogue of references that would no doubt spark the imagination of creatives in the digital space. Absolutely stunning.

Bought for my brother as a Christmas present, he's very happy with the book

A fascinating insight into history of web design! Informative, well considered and presented with clear bold graphics that are visually attractive and easy to follow. Highly recommended read!

The big thing to note here is Taschen (the publisher) and their business model. They print great looking books, spending time on size/format/hardbacks and editorial quality - and make the saving by publishing subjects that are either out of copyright, or the author already owns rights.And that brings us to this book, and its relationship to the FWA website. All the images in this book look to be screenshots that previously existed in the FWA (with a few from the Web Design Museum). So, that's how Taschen have efficiently secured the image rights here; the author runs FWA.That's cool, because the book can be at a competitive price given the quality and page count, but it also means the book concentrates heavily on Flash websites for most of the period covered - as that is exactly what the FWA did.That's not a bad thing; as the FWA did not really exclude non-Flash sites; its just that Flash websites won most of the time for most of the high end advertising/marketing and conceptual content up until 2008-10.There's front end devs who will say different today, but few of them who were actually working in the field in 2000 (which I was) would say the same - you just could not get the high end media cross browser compatibility on native browser until the late 2000s. That plus features that flash did not have and (we think) traditional sites did - like responsive design - did not actually exist in HTML web design until at least 2010.So the close association with FWA makes this book biased, but also true to what actually happened.If you are looking for a source-book for traditional website design, then I would strongly advise you to look at a period starting from about 2010 onwards. Patrick McNeil's Web designer's Idea books (volume 1 to 4) are probably your best bet, noting that they cover arguably the biggest growth period for traditional web design (2010-2015). Later movements always have a nod back to this period.After 2015, I'd suggest design gave way to usability and content, and post 2016-17 is quite a fallow period for design as its own subject - that is, web design separated out from content and UX... to the point that if you say this to someone in 2022, they'll look at you as if you are mad; design is brand identity, content and UX today. It seems strange that there might have been a period when it often wasn't!