Digital Design for Print and Web: An Introduction to Theory, Principles, and Techniques was written to help people succeed with digital design. It is a learning product that incorporates both video lessons and an in-depth textbook written from two perspectives—that of a student, and that of a teacher.

First I put myself in the shoes of a new designer or design student caught up in a frenzy of information. The melding of new technology, techniques, and principles causes many inexperienced designers to default to honing their computer skills, rather than establishing their design sense. This is dangerous: it creates a backlash against the creative process, which requires us to think creatively and then produce—not the other way around. As tools and technology become increasingly accessible—and powerful—I see this problem among more and more students.

To learn design, you need to recognize it and extract its principles for use in your own work. To be a digital designer, you must marry the principles of design to software techniques. You are thus engaged in using theory in practice. That is what this book is about. It will help you discover the principles of design and understand the most vital digital design techniques used today. Along the way, you will learn by seeing real-world design examples from highly prominent designers and artists. Then you will learn by doing, using step-by-step examples and tutorial movies.

As a teacher of digital design, I have come to realize that I must deliver lessons in principles, techniques, and technology. Having only two of the three components in my lectures jeopardizes the learning experiences of my students. Finding teaching resources, especially textbooks, is difficult; most simply don’t deliver the depth and breadth of coverage needed to teach both theoretically and pragmatically. When teaching digital design in the past, I have often been forced to use several books for a single course—or no book at all—simply because no one book could provide both the theory and practical application that I felt I must convey to my students. That is why I wrote this book: a text that can be used in a classroom and that can serve as a valuable professional resource after the formal learning concludes. This text covers and connects introductory theoretical design foundations and industry standard techniques for visual communication problem solving using print and Web media.