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Design Expansion — Reading & Resources

resource-catalog updated 2026-06-30

Design Expansion — Reading & Resources

A reading plan to push the Design notes past a single source. Both Design, Condensed and Front-End Web Design are currently pure Norman (source-count: 1) — strong on interaction, silent on craft. The disciplines Norman deliberately punts on (typography, multi-script type, color, grid, reading research) are exactly what the tsumugu reader (Silk-Seam) and dictionary (Paper & Ink) are made of. Each resource below is tagged with the note it should feed, so this stays a set of named threads rather than a pile of bookmarks.

Quick Use

  • Work the Priority tier first — it closes the Norman-to-visual-craft gap fastest and is the most directly applicable to the tsumugu surfaces.
  • Treat each row as a source that graduates a specific note, not as standalone reading. The Feeds column is the point.
  • The CJK specs (jlreq / clreq) have no substitute in any general design book — they are the authority for ruby, line-breaking, and inter-class spacing.
  • Cross-link, don’t silo: Make It Stick bridges Design ↔ Learning, Condensed.

Priority — closes the actual gap

ResourceTypeFeedsWhy
Refactoring UI (Wathan & Schoger)Book[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]
Butterick’s Practical TypographySite (free)[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]
Web Typography (Richard Rutter)Site (free)[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]
W3C jlreq — Japanese Text LayoutSpecNew: Multi-Script / CJK TypographyAuthority on ruby placement, kinsoku (line-break prohibition), mojikumi (inter-class spacing), vertical text. tsumugu uses ruby + a reserved underline channel — correctness lives here.
W3C clreq — Chinese Text LayoutSpecNew: Multi-Script / CJK TypographyThe Chinese-side counterpart to jlreq; CJK leading (~1.7), punctuation, line composition.
Typotheque — Typesetting CJK textArticleNew: Multi-Script / CJK TypographyDeep, practitioner-grade walkthrough of CJK typesetting principles.
Google Fonts KnowledgeSite (free)[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]

Canon — typography & visual craft (depth, after the above works)

ResourceTypeFeedsWhy
Thinking with Type (Ellen Lupton)Book[[wiki/Design/Design, CondensedDesign, Condensed]]
Type on Screen (Ellen Lupton)Book[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]
The Elements of Typographic Style (Robert Bringhurst)Book[[wiki/Design/Design, CondensedDesign, Condensed]]
Grid Systems in Graphic Design (Müller-Brockmann)Book[[wiki/Design/Design, CondensedDesign, Condensed]]
Interaction of Color (Josef Albers)Book[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]
Universal Principles of Design (Lidwell, Holden, Butler)Book[[wiki/Design/Design, CondensedDesign, Condensed]]

Interaction — beyond Norman

ResourceTypeFeedsWhy
Nielsen Norman GroupSite[[wiki/Concepts/Design of Everyday ThingsDesign of Everyday Things]]
About Face (Alan Cooper)Book[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]
Microinteractions (Dan Saffer)Book[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]

Learning product — desirable difficulty

ResourceTypeFeedsWhy
Make It Stick (Brown, Roediger, McDaniel)Book[[wiki/Syntheses/Learning, CondensedLearning, Condensed]] ↔ [[wiki/Design/Front-End Web Design

Accessibility — deeper

ResourceTypeFeedsWhy
Inclusive Components (Heydon Pickering)Site[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]
Inclusive Design Patterns (Heydon Pickering)Book[[wiki/Design/Front-End Web DesignFront-End Web Design]]

How these feed the vault

The expansion is three named threads, not nineteen loose links:

  1. Graduate Front-End Web Design past source-count: 1 — Refactoring UI, Rutter, Butterick, and About Face give it real second/third sources for visual + interaction craft.
  2. Stand up a new Multi-Script / CJK Typography page — jlreq, clreq, and Typotheque. The reader and dictionary work should link into it; nothing in the general design canon covers ruby, kinsoku, or mojikumi.
  3. Bridge Design ↔ Learning — Make It Stick lets the guess-first design decision and the Learning, Condensed pedagogy cite the same source instead of asserting “desirable difficulty” twice.

Open Questions

  • Should the CJK typography page live under wiki/Design/ or wiki/Language/? It serves both.
  • Which one source gets read first to graduate Front-End Web Design — Refactoring UI (visual craft) or Rutter (web type), given limited reading time?