My new year’s resolution to blog once a week is a lot more difficult to accomplish than anticipated. The worst part is that I have tons of interesting thoughts to share at the moment.
As promised last month, here comes another book review. “Guidelines for online success – The Dos and Don’ts of the internet from the best interactive agencies around the world” by Rob Ford and Julius Wiedemann.
First impression, especially if you like to judge a book by its cover (I know it’s very shallow but I have to admit on occasion I do!), it is indeed a very aesthetically pleasing book. Funky big pink letters on a greyish paperback, with a white elastic band holding the book together. Very different! Each of the 6 chapters are colour coded and tabbed, so it’s easy to find the chapter you are interested in.
The book concentrates on these 6 key areas:
1) Interface & Design
2) Marketing & Communication
3) Technology & Programming
4) Technical advice
5) Content/ Content Management
6) E-commerce
I thought “wow, this could be essentially “the” bible for the internet world!”.
Each section within a chapter has an explanatory introduction, followed by 3 Dos & Don’ts. They are easy to read but don’t give you a very in depth analysis or explanation on important aspects of the web. Not “the” bible then… The information given in the book is really not appropriate for anyone having worked in an interactive agency for any length of time. The suggestions are often repeated and most of them don’t really tell you anything you didn’t know before, such as “Know your audience”. Hmm, that’s a thinker!
However, the pictures and images of example websites are a sight for sore eyes! Each chapter has outstanding glossy imagery of some of the best sites I’ve ever seen and alone for that the book is worth a look.
In overall, I was slightly disappointed with the written content, as it was voted “Book of the month” a while back by .net magazine and as I personally could not really take away major value from it. But I now own an unususal book with some amazing artwork in it. I would only recommend the book to anyone who is very new to working in a web agency as an account handler, it will give some sound (superficial) advice and a rough overview of what is part of the web development cycle and some online marketing aspects. If you are experienced in this area, only buy the book if you like great looking websites.
