Web Design Navigation, Julius Wiedemann

I bought this book about three months ago but I have had too much work to port about it. You can find the resume and buy the book on line in the Taschen shop, where they say: "This addition to our popular Web Design series focuses on very carefully crafted navigation systems, where usability and narrative are taken in consideration in the development of the website. Featuring over 90 projects from more than 20 countries, as well as case studies on outstanding work by the world’s leading studios such as Fahrenheit, Clusta, and Sequence, this collection illustrates the ingenious solutions to one of the most difficult and important aspects of web design".

Well, the book is a good one, specially for people who don´t surf on the web. For me the most important thing of a website done in Flash or Flex, is the menu, and menu is a sinonimous of navigation. In this book the 90% of the websites are done in Flash and Flex (as usual in Wiedemann´s books).

As in other books of Wiedemann I miss some more content, a prototype section would have been a great idea for this book. Anyway, we find good works with masks as Elanskis, great websites from photographers as janknoff, towndrow, Mark Holthusen, Take Agency, Thomas Rusch.

Referring to navigation I like very much the websites from Asylum and glasshouse mixing illustration with navigation, iconic websites as Subraumstudio, mouse navigation sites as Worse than a fairy tail and CenterPlan, grid button ones as Tilt Design Studio, portfolios as Studio FM Milano, circular menus as DankaStudio, skinning navigation sites as this from volvo, perspective as AxeSaone, and lastly this from Julie Bayard.

Lots of french sites that I didn´t knew. Where are the japanese in the book?

Web Design Flashfolios

This is one of the last releases from Taschen.

I can say this time this book is a good one. Every Art Director should have it. There are good websites about revival as 2xu, from photographers like Chris Woods or Fabio Lana, color playing as Cheval Detroie, good french sites as hello hikimori ,Julie Bayard, Dankastudio and Lamoscope, fullscreen video sites as Gudrun Gudrun, other reference sites as Angle Management, Neutral or the one from N-load, Gringo or Uniform, cool!

The author is as usual, Julius Wiedermann from Brazil. You can get more info about the book here.

Other post about Julius Wiedermann:

- Web Design Video Sites
- Web Design Interactive & Games
- Guidelines for online success

Web Design: Video Sites

So, here is my opinion about this book. You can have it here in Taschen.

I miss more theory content instead of just screens and screens. There was a news in Spain some time ago saying that we spend more time in internet than in tv. This idea is taken by Wiedemann, he reminds the song "video killed the radio star".

Other main idea of the book is the "do it yourself", cos now everyone has access to make videos, but for me videosites should be more than just playing videos on the web, interactivity is the key. So the main points here are speed (see Japan sites please) and interactivity.

There are good examples from Adidas, transitions as the ones from blackbeltmonkey, or maximeperelmuter, music sites as muselive, funny sites as relearntodrive or wouldyoulikeawebsite. But I am more interested in whole video sites, so please visit feelSomething or the nice timeline of whalefootage or this one from Saab.

So although I like very much Wiedermann I would say many of us could make this book just in a day. I miss cue points, miss more about interactivity and definitelly miss vodafoneJourney

Other posts about Wiedemann:
- Web Design and Interactive games
- Julius wiedemann, guidelines for online success