# Recommended Reading This is a short, growing list worth reading once you have built a few websites. None of it is required. Pick whatever speaks to you and read it slowly. Why a reading list in a course about building things? Because AI can write the code for you, but it cannot hand you taste, or the judgment to tell good work from the forgettable kind. That part stays with you, and these reads help you grow it. ## 🎨 Taste and Design - [Paul Graham: Taste for Makers](https://paulgraham.com/taste.html) Why good work has a quality you can recognize, and how you train your eye to see it. The essay that started this page. - [Dieter Rams: Ten Principles for Good Design](https://www.vitsoe.com/us/about/good-design) A famous, very short checklist for what makes a design good. Worth a look before your next round of polish. - [Jeff Huang: This Page Is Designed to Last](https://jeffhuang.com/designed_to_last/) The case for simple, dependency-free websites that still work decades later. It quietly backs up the plain HTML and CSS you are shipping to GitHub Pages. - [Anshu Chimala: How to Turn Your AI Into a World-Class Designer](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-turn-your-ai-into-a-world) Seven techniques for pushing a design agent past the safe, average choices it makes on its own. Read it next to [The Generic AI Look](/guides/ai-slop/), which starts from the other end and asks what to remove. Six of the techniques are free; the seventh is for paid subscribers. - [Sanyam Punia: Lab](https://sanyam.sh/lab) Small interface interactions that a frontend engineer rebuilt to understand how they work, such as a flip clock and a nav bar that opens into a menu. Each one runs live on its own page next to a write-up explaining what moves and why, with a link to the source file. Read a few write-ups before you ask an AI agent for an animation, and describe yours in the same detail. Pair it with [Design Direction](/guides/design-direction/), which asks who the page is for before you add any effect. ## 🖼️ Learn from Other Sites - [Name That UI](https://namethatui.com/) A visual dictionary of interface elements and effects. Search it with a plain description of what you saw, such as "the text that shuffles random letters until it spells the word", and you get the real name (a text scramble), a live example and a prompt for your agent. [Name That Vibe](https://namethatui.com/styles) does the same for visual styles. - [Minimal Gallery](https://minimal.gallery/) Hand-picked sites with a restrained look. Start here when you choose a site to show your agent, as the AI tip in [The Generic AI Look](/guides/ai-slop/) suggests. - [Lapa Ninja](https://www.lapa.ninja/) More than 7,000 landing pages collected since 2015, with full-page screenshots and categories. Browse it when your project is a single page about one product or person. - [loadmo.re](https://loadmo.re/) Unconventional mobile websites, archived by Kim Boutin since 2021. Open it on your phone. - [Dark Design](https://www.dark.design/) Websites with dark themes, sorted by category. Check it before you design a dark mode. - [Design Spells](https://designspells.com/) Micro-interactions, easter eggs and other small details that make a site feel alive. Sanyam Punia's Lab, above, shows how details like these are built. - [recent.design](https://recent.design/websites) A collection of website designs, with separate sections for app icons, App Store screenshots and link preview images. - [Supahero](https://supahero.io/) A library of nothing but hero sections, the big block at the top of a page. It is the first thing a visitor sees, so it is worth studying on its own before you design the rest. - [60fps.design](https://60fps.design/) Recorded interactions and animations, mostly from phone apps. Watch what moves and how long it takes, then describe that to your agent in the same detail. Most of it is built for a phone, so borrow the idea and work out the web version yourself. - [Awwwards](https://www.awwwards.com/) Sites of the Day, Month and Year, each scored by a jury. Take one idea at a time from a winner, and check it against who your page is for. ## 🌱 How to Learn - [swyx: Learn in Public](https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public) The habit behind your weekly notes. Share what you figure out and it sticks better, and other people find you along the way. - [Julia Evans: How to Ask Good Questions](https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/) A warm, practical guide to asking the kind of question that actually gets you unstuck. Pairs with the read it, write down your question, then ask habit. - [Paul Graham: How to Do Great Work](https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html) A long one, so save it for a quiet weekend. Paul Graham on curiosity, choosing what to work on, and doing work you are proud of. ## 🤖 Building with AI This space moves fast, so follow these writers over time. - [Simon Willison's blog](https://simonwillison.net/) Hands-on, honest notes on building real things with LLMs, from someone who codes with them every day. Notice how much of the work is steering the AI and checking what it gives back. - [Ethan Mollick: One Useful Thing](https://www.oneusefulthing.org/) A Wharton professor on what AI can actually do and how to use it well in real work. His angle is judgment and clear thinking about how to use AI. --- This list grows over the semester. If you find a short read that changed how you think about building things, bring it to a lightning talk and it may end up here.