The old adage about judging a book by it's cover... I have been proven wrong here. I thought Andy Clarke was all about image, Stuff and Nonsense. After all, what kind of idiot still smokes in this day and age, and then puts a pic of themselves doing so on/in a book? [...] In all fairness, perhaps this pic isn't on a book -- it was simply the first pic I personally ever saw of this designer). I expected the usual arrogant head-in-the-sky advertising idiot with ideas that completely don't jive with reality.
However, I hit a wall with some of my CSS education, and was desperate, so I gave it a go, and purchased the For a Beautiful Web Microformats dvd, as it was relevant to a project. Hmm... this is looking good, making sense, and it helped me do better work for my client. So, I tried another, Designing with CSS (also For a Beautiful Web), and it was pretty good. Then, I thought, well, let's see what "Inspired CSS" is about. And that had the good stuff. I could have skipped Designing with CSS entirely.
It's about the information provided in this one -- that's where I'm won over. I'm not particularly happy with the designs presented themselves, but some of the example works of others, and the discussion of those in relation to the particular topic, those were the real moments of inspiration.
I think this dvd should be required viewing for any web designer who wants to do truly authoritative work. It's all about the attention to details, and this succinctly outlines the info to control those details for maximum effect.