Creating a Sustainable Design System Practice

A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition)

37signals' 2006 manifesto for building a web application by building less — fixed time and budget, flexible scope, the interface before the code, and the words as design. Ninety-one short chapters, free online.

10 ways to stay creative in good times and bad

Jon Yablonski's field guide to the psychology behind good interfaces — thirty named laws and effects (Fitts's, Hick's, Jakob's, Tesler's, Postel's, the peak-end rule, cognitive load) each with the research, an example and a design takeaway. A free site first, then an O'Reilly book, now in its second edition.

Creating reusable components for user experience design and documentation

Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger's design book for developers — hierarchy, spacing, typography, color, depth, images and finishing touches as tactics you can apply without a designer's eye, from the two people who then built Tailwind CSS around the same instincts. A 218-page PDF, three screencasts, and a component gallery; DRM-free.

Martin Fowler's catalog of named, small, behavior-preserving changes — the second edition, rewritten in JavaScript so the refactorings apply to functions as well as classes. The book behind the third step of red–green–refactor.

Jeremy Keith's short history of the web's ideas — progressive enhancement, the layers of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and why building to the standard outlasts building to the browser. Free to read online.

Sarah Drasner's guide to animating SVG — CSS transitions and keyframes on paths, SMIL where it still helps, GreenSock for sequencing, responsive and accessible motion — from the loading spinner to a full illustrated scene, with the performance and browser trade-offs of each technique.

Ryan Singer's account of how Basecamp plans and builds — six-week cycles, an appetite instead of an estimate, work shaped before it is bet on, and hill charts to show what is still unknown. Fixed time, variable scope. Free online.

10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered

How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations

A groundbreaking tour of the mind and the two systems that drive the way we think