Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty -- About the Author -- Credits -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction -- Design as Literacy -- The Hacker Attitude -- The Gap in Design Knowledge -- Part I: Understanding Design -- Chapter 1: Why Design Matters -- What Design Really Is -- What Design Is Not -- The Layers of Design -- Conclusion -- Chapter 2: The Purpose of Design -- Visual Design and Its Relation to User Experience Design -- Sometimes a Visual Design Is Just Good Enough -- Sometimes Visual Design Is Your Advantage -- Reverse-Engineering the Twitter User Experience -- Knowledge Applied -- Part II: Medium and Form -- Chapter 3: Medium and Form in Typography -- The Tragedy of Misuse: Why You Hate Comic Sans -- The Shackles of the Typographer: The Unalterable Word -- The Formation of Our Alphabet -- The Birth of Our Letters -- The Type That Has Lived On -- Garamond Today: Why You Don't Use Garamond on the Web -- Knowledge Applied -- Chapter 4: Technology and Culture -- How Trends Are Created -- SEO Is Design -- Knowledge Applied -- Part III: Composition -- Chapter 5: Fool's Golden Ratio: Understanding Proportions -- What Is Proportion? -- Proportion and Design -- The Broken Promise of the Golden Ratio -- Other Pleasing Proportions -- Proportions in Our World -- Proportions at Work -- Knowledge Applied -- Chapter 6: Holding the Eye: Composition and Design Principles -- Compositional Relationships -- Design Principles -- Why the MailChimp Logo Is Beautiful: Use of Composition and Design Principles -- Knowledge Applied -- Chapter 7: Enlivening Information: Establishing a Visual Hierarchy -- What I Mean by "Hierarchy" -- Hierarchical Factors in Isolation -- Hierarchy at Work -- Knowledge Applied -- Part IV: Color -- Chapter 8: Color Science -- What Is Color? -- The Tricks Your Eyes Play -- How the Visual System Works.

Defining Color -- Color Models and Data-Driven Graphics -- Thinking in Hexadecimal Color: Understanding the Colors of the Web -- Color Models in Action: Why Your Business Card Doesn't (and Never Will) Match Your Website -- Knowledge Applied -- Chapter 9: Color Theory -- Color Response throughout Human History -- Color Response and Human Biology -- The Power of Red: Why You Don't Stand a Chance in the "Target Challenge" -- Research on Other Colors -- Color and Culture -- Color Schemes and the Color Wheel -- Color Choices and Web Conventions -- The Interaction of Colors: Why Monet Never Used Black -- Color Schemes -- Creating a Mood with Color -- Tools for Creating Color Palettes and Schemes -- Knowledge Applied -- Part V: Appendixes -- Appendix A: Choosing and Pairing Fonts -- Classifying Typefaces -- Looking At Letter Structure: The Form of the Skeleton -- Pairing Fonts -- All the Fonts You'll Ever Need -- Appendix B: Typographic Etiquette -- Distorting Type: What Not to Do -- Setting Body Copy -- Tending to Typographic Details -- Index.