Book Review: The Form Book: Creating Forms for Printed and Online Use

This is the bible of form design. It's 324 pages thick and they even use form paper material for the first feel pages, eh, to get you into the mood.

It is comprehensive, covering not just the design but also on how to phrase questions to get the required response. There are tips on structure, style, typography, user friendliness and much more. Included are plenty of examples from real life, from the dreaded tax forms to popular lottery forms.

Here are the different types of forms covered:

Application forms
Registration forms
Declarations
Orders and contracts
Invoices, bills and receipts
Notices and statements
Questionaires
Certificates and passes
Tickets, cheques and shares
Records and checklists
Direct mail

The part on digital forms is just like printed forms, with the focus on collecting data -- huge amount of data. So you won't see examples of online user registration forms. Instead, it talks about the different ways printed forms can be translated for online use.

This book is a great resource on designing forms.

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