The first line of code-Android cover birth note, the first line of code android

The first line of code-Android cover birth note, the first line of code android

The first line of code-Android has been on the market for almost a month. The current sales situation is still good, and I am particularly grateful to many friends for their support. In fact, if you want to sell a book well, in addition to the content must be awesome, the design of the cover is also crucial, the cover of this book is undoubtedly covered with a gorgeous coat in addition to the full content. As an author, my task is to write the content, and I am not responsible for all other related work. All the details of the book's cover design were first captured by Mr. Chen ice, who later recorded the birth of the book's cover in the Turing community. With his consent, I transferred this article to my blog, which is also a small story for interested friends to learn about.

All of the following first-person "I" refer to "Chen Bing ".

The birth of the cover of every good book is not easy. Not only is it easy, but the opposite is true, and almost no exception is a difficult process. But if a book finds its cover in the end, this difficult process will have a pleasant result.

What is a book that finds its cover? That is, when you get the cover, your brain has a strong awareness that no other cover is more suitable for this book.

This book, when I first gave it a title, I realized it was a good title, but it was a very difficult topic to design a good cover for this title. The "first line of code" is a series I planned for beginners of programming. This book is the first in this series.

When planning this book (this series), I want to have a unique form of breakthrough, to give readers a new and unique reading experience. To this end, I decided to introduce a system of experience, upgrades, and treasures, which was never done in any previous computer books (including all other types of books as far as I know.

Based on these considerations, the cover of this book must satisfy the following four features:
First, we should be solemn and trustworthy, so that readers can feel an internal force and the knowledge described in this book is trustworthy.
2. There is a mysterious feeling with some magical realism that makes readers feel this book is obviously different from other books;
3. Let beginners have a sense of intimacy, and the sense of IT must also be reflected in IT, so that readers can feel very familiar with this scenario and have a sense of identity.
4. There must be an absolute visual impact. Selling books on online stores is a display area of the stamp size. It is impossible for you to give it a closer look, if the cover cannot make you visually attractive on the area of the stamp size, but no matter how brilliant the design is, the cover fails. It is not difficult to design a cover, but it is quite difficult to design a cover that looks good and can be sold.

To achieve this, I began to design this cover. The idea of making an article on the font of the first line of code flashed through my mind, but it was immediately rejected by me, the effect will be too obvious, and will inevitably fall into the conventional style. If it is not good, it will be like a financial book.

I told myself that since it is a book for beginners, it is necessary to first give beginners a sense of intimacy and design a typical element, as soon as a beginner sees it, his or her sense of intimacy and familiarity comes to life. Eight years ago, when I was in Tsinghua, I planned a "first step" series. At that time, the cover element I designed was a "Hello, World" symbol in the center of the screen, which was very eye-catching.

Hello, World is undoubtedly the most familiar element for beginners, but I do not like to repeat myself. For this "first line of code" series, I want to rethink an element. I thought about my work in front of a computer in the middle of the night when I was just learning programming. I also thought about the scenario when I was writing a computer book late at night, whether it was code or a computer book, working in front of a computer late at night is a situation where every programmer, novice or veteran, is very familiar with the scenes with a sense of intimacy, and even you are like this at this moment. So I decided to use this image scenario to identify the key elements of the cover.

What are the specific components of this recognition element? I began to think about the specific elements of this scenario. With my intuition, I let my mind's spontaneous images take me forward. I saw a small programmer sitting in front of his desk, carrying his back to me, in front of a ThinkPad laptop, there is an iPad on the left side, a Samsung Note big screen mobile phone on the right side, and a bowl of instant noodles that are just waiting to be eaten, a cup of juice, and a pile of books because they are engaged in Android development, so there is also a hand-held Android robot, and a pot of green plants (I looked at it carefully in my mind, it turned out to be a pot of cactus ). I drew these elements on paper. To enrich the screen, I glanced at my desk and added a cup, several sheets of paper and a pen to the screen. In order to make the picture more active and interesting, I added a kitten to the ground at the table. It looked at the bottom of the table with curiosity and seemed to find something of a different dimension.

Here is the sketch I drew at the time:

At that time, I drew some furniture, a window around the main screen, and an astronomical telescope in front of the window (the appearance of a telescope has two meanings. This is a hobby of this small programmer, at the same time, it also meant a dream. Later I realized that the whole screen looked like my room.

I used Wu junwu, an illustrator I have been working with for many years to draw this illustration. This is the first illustration version:

Not cute, too realistic, lack some magic, so continue to modify and get the following version:

A little cute, a little tasty. So I asked Jun Wu to perform the coloring first to see the effect. At that time, I gave junwu an illustration (this is an illustration in the book "Dream or want to have it, in case of Implementation ), let him color according to the effect of this illustration. At that time, I hoped that the screen of this book would be warm, bright, and colorful. It would make people feel happy and bring people a feeling of sunshine, and at night, therefore, this illustration is very compliant with my requirements.

As a result, after being brave enough, I was surprised by the following:

At that time, I made some color adjustments, but they were always far from what I wanted (junwu was not very good at the color style I wanted). So I gave up coloring, I decided to use black and white to implement this illustration.

I began to think about how to make the black and white illustrations have enough strength, so I had to have enough details. At the same time, the strokes should be bold, and the rough strokes itself will bring a sense of detail and texture. The strokes are too thin, so there will inevitably be a thin sense and a lack of strength. Due to the lack of details, I found some sketch-style illustrations for the illustrator so that he could move closer to that effect. After several modifications, I can get the following version.

The screen began to have some heavy feelings and a sense of strength, but the character's head was wrong, not big enough to circle, continue to modify. After several modifications, I got a satisfactory version (the final version I thought at the time ).

Then, I asked Jun Wu to draw an illustration for the back cover according to my other sketch.

The back cover illustration is similar to the cover illustration. The cover illustration is seen at home (inside the house), while the back cover illustration is outside the house at the same time (in the community) the light in the whole building went off and everyone fell asleep. Only the small programmer's room was lit and he was working hard to write the code. His dream is to become a good programmer.

Therefore, I wrote such a remark in the back cover:
I waved my keyboard and notebook,
Swear to make the world clear.
The small gray block under the two lines represents the blinking cursor.

Then, I handed over a full set of cover design materials (including illustrations, cover posters, directories, sample chapters, and so on) to my designer Mung Bean (real name Pan jianyong ), he also communicated with him on the design requirements of the cover. A week later, I got the following version. I fell further into the chair while I was already in the chair.

It's just a mess, and the screen is monotonous and there's no idea for people to read. Mung Bean told me that he felt that this black-and-white illustration restricted his design, because in order to cooperate with a black-and-white painting, the background color of the cover is almost only black and white (at least I thought so with him at the time ). As a result, things have almost returned to the starting point, but we still have to figure out a colored illustration so that we can make full use of the subsequent design. I comforted me and decided to continue searching for a suitable illustrator. I read hundreds of pages on the chuangyiren.cn website and found many excellent plug-in artists. Then I chose one of them and asked him to draw the illustration by phone.

I have made some changes in my thoughts on the style of this illustration. I feel that if the picture is the same as the style of the book "dream" mentioned above, it will look too cartoon, somewhat younger, and lacks the mystery. It is not very good with the refreshing, incredible upgrades and treasure system contained in this book. At the same time, this kind of picture lacks a sense of depth and strength. Because there are too many colors, it is difficult to form a visual impact when it is displayed on small online stores. Therefore, I decided to give up on this style of painting and look for a style that can satisfy the mysterious, heavy, and powerful visual impact.

At this moment, I suddenly thought of a cartoon movie "The Secret of the kill Sutra" that I have watched before. The style of this cartoon is suitable for this book.

However, the ultimate illustration effect is still quite different from what I want.

I feel a little broken at this moment. I think the design I initially developed may be very good, but it is difficult to implement it, and even if it is fully implemented according to my ideas, the screen impact is probably not big enough.

While searching for a new illustrator and asking the new illustrator to try the new illustrator, I also asked Jun Wu to complete the original sketch illustration, because at this time I suddenly thought, I can't just write a sentence on the cover: "The first book introduces experience, upgrades, and computation machine books of the treasure system!" It is assumed that the reader will believe and feel what this sentence means. I have to present the unique experience and upgrade system added to this book in the form of pictures on the cover. Therefore, it is not enough to draw only a small programmer, there must also be the characters, roles, and items of the Android God community created in this system.

Therefore, I asked Jun Wu to add the following seven elements to the screen:

I. Practices lost by Android predecessors
2. Peripheral guardian
3. Enhanced confidence
Iv. Ancient qishu
5. Shenshu
6. coarse cloth Android shirt
7. Gui brick house (mage style)

I drew a sketch and explained the image of these elements with junwu.

The next day, I got a little ox demon (the peripheral guardian in junwu's imagination), and I forgot the Wizard (the Wizard in junwu's imagination) from which I ran ).

I calmed down my mood, adjusted my thoughts, and continued to communicate with junwu. I found every one of these seven elements on the Internet and asked Jun Wu to refer to them for painting. As a result, this time there were quite a few.

However, the guardian is not mighty enough and is not tall enough to feel the secret of God. It is more like a grumpy and kind fat seller selling pork in the free market, and the height of the Wizard is not high enough, it feels like a role like a land or dwarf in A Journey to the West. I asked junwu to imagine the statue of god standing in the temples of Greece and Egypt, to feel their volume and size, and to appreciate their majesty. After several modifications, I got a satisfactory version.

The illustration is perfect, but the problem of the overall design of the cover is still unsolved. I only want to concentrate on one problem. Obviously, how to make the screen have visual impact must be as large as possible in the monochrome color block, because once the screen is dispersed by multiple colors and color blocks, in the area of the stamp size on the online store, it cannot be a visual area, so I think that the whole cover must be used with a single color scheme, the optional colors are red, yellow, golden, blue, and green. After I have fully thought about them, I chose red and blue, which also has a great impact. But whether I have read this book or this system upgrade, you will not produce the blue color in your mind. The green color will appear in your mind, but the visual impact of green on the Web page is too weak, and the intensity of pushing people is also poor. Red is the most suitable, but it cannot be big red. It is too eye-catching and somewhat cheesy. So I used a dark red, and the green bean said that he added 20 black to the red, the results are very good.

In order to maximize the visual area of red, I thought of a solution to keep only the small programmer and the kitten white in the foreground, the other elements (guardian, God tree, ancient books, wizards, etc.) are put in the red background and displayed as the background, so that they will not be overwhelmed by the Lord, in addition, there is a kind of magical characters that are the imagination or memories of the small programmer's mind. In addition, even with the addition of these elements, the background is still slightly lacking, and I have added some plant leaves to the background. I chose the leaf of the fern that existed in the age of dinosaurs, because these leaves have an inherent mystery and a sense of vicissitudes, presents the mysterious and solemn taste of the book.

Previously, because there were too many posters on the cover and it was not easy to design, I asked Mung Bean to design some of the posters to the waist. WAF can play a better role in promoting these important slogans, while the cover itself is much cleaner.

So far, the whole cover design is complete.

Complete cover expansion:

Android listiew displays several lines of data. I want the first line to be blue or the default color, instead of the color produced by clicking item

ListView lv = new ListView (MainActivity. this );

MyAdapter adapter = new MyAdapter ();
Lv. setAdapter (adapter );

Public class MyAdapter extends BaseAdapter
{
@ Override
Public int getCount ()
{
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Return 10;
}
@ Override
Public Object getItem (int arg0)
{
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Return null;
}
@ Override
Public long getItemId (int position)
{
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Return 0;
}
@ Override
Public View getView (int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent)
{
TextView textView = new TextView (MainActivity. this );
If (position = 0 ){
TextView. setBackgroundColor (Color. BLUE );
}
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Return textView;
}

In android, how does a gridview display one graph in the first row and two images in the second row? Three graphs are displayed in each row. This is easy if only three images are displayed in each row,

I don't know much about the controls in android, but you can try to make a line break between the first image and the last two images in the first line.