Howells.

I had an interesting email from someone the other day:

Love your site—a really great reference for designers like myself who don’t programme but just make things look pretty.

I was wondering whether you know of any books that exist which showcase web design in the same way your site does? Pure design, not coding tutorials etc

Maybe you should do one?

While I’m aware that physical books do exist for web design (most notably, the Web Design Index series), I hadn’t considered that siteInspire could offer some sort of annual; a collection of some of the most interesting sites I have posted over a given year.

I asked this question on Twitter and had some interesting responses. Relatively speaking, many said they’d be interested in a book, but others pointed out various problems which can be summarised thus:

• Websites date quickly – on the whole this is true, and picking up an early copy of the Web Design Index proves this. Yet at the same time I look back at the first sites posted on siteInspire (which date back to March 2009), and some of the sites hold up impressively well against newer ones. Some could even be seen as web design classics, which endure to this day. I feel the date issue could be overcome by dating the book clearly; making the book a compendium of web design for a given year.

• Printed screengrabs look awful – this is a problem that’s going to be insurmountable until we’re all designing at 326ppi. To get around the problem most printed sites are printed small, reducing the impact the designs have. One suggestion would be that the book take the form of an iPad application. I’m undecided about this, even. As a community I don’t feel we’ve nailed the format of the digital book/magazine yet, so before committing time and expense to this approach I’d like to wait until I find a digital editorial format that feels great to use.

• You can’t interact with the designs – again, true. But this is true of any reference book that distils the work of architects and product designers into the pages of a book. The question is how much worth is there in the book being an index of sites that you should then go and explore if they pique your interest.

• A book would only be useful if it also contained insights into the design and development process – I agree with this point, and featuring written articles about the effort that went into creating the selected sites would be a welcome addition to the publication. However, as I discovered curating the content for design/array, extracting useful and comprehensive information from designers, developers and companies is very difficult indeed, with many people not being willing to come forward with information. I wonder whether asking for contributions to a “book” rather than a “blog” might influence this.

So this post is intended as a placeholder for the idea, so that we can have a discussion about it away from Twitter. I’d love to know your thoughts and ideas about this in the comments section.