It’s been a little less than a week since my IA Summit presentation. To my great surprise, it went really well. I mean really well. In the next day or so I will be posting a summary of my experiences preparing and discussing my topic, which was, in a word, style.
Many people came to me after my presentation asking me not only to post the slides themselves, but also to post the reading list since I did discuss a lot of books and sites that deeply influenced my thinking. So here’s all the stuff:
Slideshow
- Slideshow as PDF (19mb PDF)
- SlideShare presentation (Part 1 of 5)
- SlideShare presentation (Part 2 of 5)
- SlideShare presentation (Part 3 of 5)
- SlideShare presentation (Part 4 of 5)
- SlideShare presentation (Part 5 of 5)
Reading List
These readings are in roughly the same pedagogical sequence that the concepts appeared in my presentation. Note that not all of these were actually cited in the talk, but I did have all of them either at hand or in mind as I wrote.
(My strongest recommendations are indicated with a 
icon.)
- Stewart Brand’s Opinion on Fashion and Style
- How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand (book)
- IA Summit 2003 Keynote notes from Erin Malone (website)
- IA Summit 2003 Keynote notes from Amy Lee (website)
- History of Style and Style in Other Disciplines
- fashion: 20th-Century Fashion: The Complete Sourcebook by John Peacock (book)
- fashion: Exactitudes, by Ari Versluis (photographer) and Ellie Uyttenbrook (stylist) (website and book)
- music: Geneology of Pop/Rock Music (poster)
- literature: Graphs, Maps, Trees by Franco Moretti (book)
- writing: The Elements of Style by Strunk & White (book)
- art: Alfred Barr’s diagram of the history of Modern Art (via Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence)
- typography: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst (book)
- (also see The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (website) )
- graphic design: Stylepedia, by Steven Heller and Louise Fili (book)
- architecture: The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton (amazing book)
- Style Culture & Style as a Virtue
- The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel
- “Style is Not a Four Letter Word”, Emigre #62 by Mr. Keedy (magazine article)
- “Emotion & Design: Attractive things work better” by Donald Norman (website)
- Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald Norman (book)
- Style and IA Methodologies
- Jess McMullin on Design Maturity (website)
- Leisa Reichelt on appearance vs. proposition (website)
- The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett
- “The User Experience Honeycomb” by Peter Morville (website illustration)
- Design Thinking
- Victor Lombardi on Design Thinking (website)
- “Strategy as Design” (2mb PDF), by Jeanne Liedtka (magazine article)
- Luke W on Design Thinking (website)
- Awesome Charts comparing Design Process to Waterfall Methodology (website)
- Corporate Design Pattern Libraries
- Design Patterns for Interaction Design
- Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell (book and website)
- Martijn van Welie’s Web Design Patterns Library
- Chris Messina’s flickr Design Patterns (website)
- Luke W’s SXSW Presentation on Design Patterns (lecture)
- Luke W’s panel discussion/series on design patterns (website)
- Design of Sites by Douglas Van Duyne, James Landay, & Jason Hong (book and website)
- Christopher Alexander & Pattern Languages
- A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander (book)
- The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander (book)
- www.patternlanguage.com is Christopher Alexander’s web site. All 253 entries from A Pattern Language are included in this site, and they are hyperlinked to each other. Many have been updated, too. This is an amazing resource and a fascinating site overall. Well worth the $5/month access fee.
- Web Style Repositories/Galleries
- Fresh Styles for Web Designers by Curt Cloninger (book and website)
- Design Meltdown by Patrick McNeil (website)
- Current Web Style by Ben Hunt (website)
And, of course, none of this would have been possible without Wikipedia and Google Images.
Hi Chris, yours was one of the best presentations I saw at the Summit this year. Thanks for posting these materials!
BTW, I ordered “The Architecture of Happiness” based on your recommendation, and am awaiting its arrival.
Chris — Excellent talk, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
You might also enjoy this HBR article that discusses the success of companies like Alessi based on their deep understanding of style…
http://noisebetweenstations.com/personal/weblogs/?p=2003
This is amazing – you’re pretty much making me feel like crap for not being at IA Summit 2007. Particularly loved the references to the fashion, architecture and literature worlds – great job!
238 slides? You’re a courageous man, Chris. ;-) Did you pick and choose your slides as you went along?
I had fun attending your talk too, refreshing to have someone talk about the visual aspects of UX.
wow… i live in a dumpster and still think this is wierd… funny :)
see http://inusinternational.com/website-designing.html
Hi Chris,
Emotional Design in Online Travel:
http://www.sotopia.com/designingemotionsbook.htm
Thanks for posting your reading list. I remembered a few but not all
Very informative. I am glad I was paying close attention to this months InfoDesign.org newsletter.
This presentation is fascinating!
I imagine you’ve read Richard Dawkins -The Selfish Gene?
The notion of “Memes” came to mind as I paged through your images on the evolution of stylistic traits.
I wasn’t there and stumbled on your presentation accidentally. As a presentational designer and author of Presentational Skills for the Next Generation I have one word for what you presented, WOW! Looks like I really missed a fabulous presentation.