
Show HN: Want to learn design? Try Design Lab. - hv23
http://www.trydesignlab.com
======
pazimzadeh
In my experience, of the best ways to get started in design is to replicate
other people's designs as perfectly as you can, just to get the hang of
designing something good.

For example, the other day I recreated the hat icon here:
<http://hicksdesign.co.uk>. This is mine: <http://cl.ly/GYHw>.

If you make one thing every day, you'll eventually be pretty good at fleshing
out your own ideas.

 _Resources:_ <http://pttrns.com>; <http://teehanlax.com/blog/iphone-4-gui-
psd-retina-display>; <http://dribbble.com>

~~~
MaxGabriel
Hey that sounds like a great idea. Could that also be a good way to practice
iOS or android development?

~~~
pazimzadeh
If only apps released their source code more often..but you could look at open
source apps: [http://maniacdev.com/2010/06/35-open-source-iphone-app-
store...](http://maniacdev.com/2010/06/35-open-source-iphone-app-store-apps-
updated-with-10-new-apps).

------
mnicole
Not to be an ass, but the first thing I questioned when I came to the site was
"If this is the best design they could come up with, what does that mean for
the education?"

Sign up and design failure aside, I question what this site will do. Design a
logo in 30 minutes? Design a one-page flyer with a minimum of 5 typefaces?
Those aren't exercises, those are bad practices.

There's an overabundance of people who call themselves designers and not
enough people who truly understand it and care about it at a depth that
creates good products, not broken experiences. There's already an influx of
graduates with degrees that show nothing except that they put the time in.
There's an abundance of sites ( _ahem_ Awwwards, Smashing Magazine, Dribbble)
that do their part to promote bad design as good design. And not to speak ill
of any good designers who work for Google, but as a company they're not
exactly known for it - quite the opposite. I would prefer qualified guest
designers or actual professors as opposed to 'vetted' corporate employees to
judge my work.

I don't think people need Design 101 anymore. I think we need a place for
seasoned designers and people who are making the switch from print to web or
design to front-end coding to fully understand what they're getting into.

~~~
ebiester
Ah, but as a developer, if we cannot speak the language, how do we communicate
effectively? Let's say that I'm design an app - I'm looking through portfolios
for a contractor to do some design work. If I have that vocabulary, I can more
effectively judge what is good from what isn't good, and I can quantify things
past, "this looks a bit weird."

I got to work with a good UX/UI crew at exactly one of my jobs, but it
completely changed how I thought about thinking about design. That, combined
with some reading, was my "design 101" education. I would argue that every
full stack developer needs that "design 101" education, and we have new
developers every day.

I'm going to take the class - It's an interesting stretching exercise for me.

------
jellicle
As others have pointed out, the signup is broken/down.

But also: how much does it cost? "Get started for free." is interpreted by my
cynical self to include the closing phrase "and as soon as you're interested,
it's going to cost a lot to continue."

No contact information, no price information... what is this except an email
harvesting exercise?

~~~
hv23
It's free with no plans to charge for anything, don't worry! "Get started for
free" is simply a call-to-action to make that apparent. Cynicism warranted...
that should've been more clearly explained.

email us at hello@trydesignlab with any questions or issues!

~~~
tomelders
If it's free, don't ask people to sign up. My email address has value to me.
I'll give it to you if you earn it.

------
michaelpinto
If you're going to design an online course to teach design, you actually have
to know something about teaching design.

The foundation of a solid design education is actually the fine arts -- that's
why since the days of the Bauhaus first year students study fine arts in a
foundation year, and then spend the next few years studying applied design.
The reason? Because before you can play with layout and typography you need to
know about color theory and yes even subjects like art history. Learning the
techniques of design without the basics is like trying to be a writer by
learning all the functions of MS Word but not having read Shakespeare.

PS It's also slightly dishonest to put to put a photo of Steve Jobs down there
which indirectly implies that he would approve.

~~~
shioyama
> Learning the techniques of design without the basics is like trying to be a
> writer by learning all the functions of MS Word but not having read
> Shakespeare.

You can be a perfectly good writer without having read a word of Shakespeare.

~~~
gbog
Do you really think you can be a good writer without having read any good
writers?

~~~
shioyama
I didn't say _any_ good writers, I said Shakespeare. There are many routes to
becoming a good writer.

------
AVTizzle
Hey guys - cool idea. I tried entering my email, and there's no success
indicator. Click the button, and nothing. Not sure if I just signed up 10
times, or failed to sign up at all :/

~~~
citricsquid
Request URL: <http://www.trydesignlab.com/>

Request Method: POST

Status Code: 500 Internal Server Error

It's broken

------
leftnode
This sites design is....not good. The font is hard to read at that size, the
icons are blurry, the quotes at the bottom look like endorsements on first
view.

Needs some more time in the oven I think.

~~~
prezjordan
Looks great on my mac! Maybe they use a font-face that they should've tested
cross-platform?

~~~
brandoncordell
Agreed, well the icons still aren't great on my Mac, but the font looks fine
to me. Then again, I'm also a developer so I don't know everything about good
design.

------
hv23
Hey HN, we've noticed that people are starting to understand how valuable
design is these days - in order to make great products, design is arguably as
important as engineering. Like HN-er @shl says, "everyone in a company needs
to learn design literacy" ([http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669189/pinterests-
founding-desi...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669189/pinterests-founding-
designer-shares-his-dead-simple-design-philosophy)). The problem is, we
haven't yet found a straightforward way to learn how to become a better
designer.

We built a simple product to address this, based on one core principle: the
best way to learn design is by doing projects that force you to master the
concepts, while allowing you to practice your creativity.

We'll start sending out the first project emails in a couple weeks, so sign up
and save a spot! We'd love any and all feedback about this. Thanks!

~~~
jstanley
Any idea if the sign up is broken?

~~~
hv23
Hey guys-- this is terrible, we were not expecting this much traffic. Signups
are indeed working, we're pushing a quick fix to address the issue. (if you
already signed up, you don't have to enter your email again)

~~~
huma
Can you reveal the traffic figures and your server spec?

------
simonsarris
Not to be mean but the site's fonts look absolutely horrible on Chrome 20 in
Windows 7. The top ones look messy and thick and the bottom one looks much too
thin:

<http://i.imgur.com/KUVwh.png>

~~~
tkazec
Presumably Windows' fault, since it has awful font rendering systemwide. Looks
fine in Chrome 20 on Lion.

~~~
davidjohnstone
Windows has a couple of different font rendering systems. Chrome uses GDI, IE9
uses DirectWrite, and Firefox can use either. DirectWrite is a lot smoother,
and that's most of the reason why I prefer Firefox in Windows.

The fonts on this site look worst in Win/FF. They're not great in Win/Chrome,
but at least they look well matched. It looks good in OSX/Chrome. Probably
because that's what it was developed in.

Protip: different browsers render fonts differently. Test your site before you
release it into the wild.

------
floppydisk
Tried signing up through your Sign Up text box on the website, but when I
click the "Sign Up" button to submit my email, nothing happens.

~~~
briandw
Same here. Good design lives or dies on the details. Not a good sign.

~~~
prezjordan
Same. Just got a confirmation email though!

------
nsmartt
For those experiencing issues, I can attest that it was working perfectly a
short time ago.

I've gotten a confirmation email, and the "View the full curriculum" link
resulted in an overlay.

 _Edit_ : Just a note here. The "View the full curriculum" link doesn't work
because designlab.js contains HTML instead of the script.

Link: <http://s3.amazonaws.com/designlab_static/js/designlab.js>

------
alpb
There was that book called Bootstrapping Design
(<http://bootstrappingdesign.com/>)

[http://blog.studiofellow.com/2011/11/01/bootstrapping-
design...](http://blog.studiofellow.com/2011/11/01/bootstrapping-design/)

------
limedaring
As a designer, it makes me sad to see that while Design Lab is using a dot
grid background, they failed to align the elements on top of the grid. (Good
example of this: [http://gridness.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sushi-and-
rob...](http://gridness.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sushi-and-
robots-2.jpg))

It's that kind of attention that really makes designs shine, not to mention
aligning elements like that does a lot to make a design feel cohesive and less
chaotic. It's disappointing to see a website purporting to teach design to
miss a detail like that.

------
petercooper
(Big fat notice: This is not a criticism!)

I love how the row of quotes about design from Jobs, Graham, and Maeda look
and feel like testimonials due to their format and placing, yet are not. This
is an interesting technique. As a random visitor used to analyzing my internal
responses to things like this, it makes me feel good yet analytically I
realize anyone can throw up quotes like this. Clever!

------
miles_matthias
I'm excited about this. I've been reading design books for a while looking to
become a more well-rounded developer but have struggled turning reading a book
into actual design projects. So I'm excited about this format - weekly design
challenges, feedback from peers and experts, and progressively advanced
challenges.

Also, the sign up worked for me. So it must be fixed by now.

------
fratis
Are you guys part of the H&FJ web font beta? Or are you using Gotham on the
web in violation of your license agreement with them?

~~~
estel
The fonts appear to be 404ing now, so I'm guessing the latter...

(The site doesn't appear all too well designed in its new Times New Roman
guise).

------
venturebros
I don't think I want to learn design from a site that hurts my eyes. Great
concept but should be done by people that can design.

------
duopixel
I must confess my heart sunk for a split second as we're working on the exact
same problem with a very similar approach at <http://method.ac>, but as they
say: if there's no existing competitors it means that the problem likely
doesn't exist in the first place.

Looking forward to competing when we launch too!

------
MoOmer
Very cool, but this portion is hard to read - and made me an immediate skeptic
of the authority behind the product: <http://i.imgur.com/1kddf.png>

------
zdgman
Great idea but wish sign up wasn't busted (as everyone points out).

I am interested to actually see what the curriculum looks like when you get
in. I think you can cover a lot of design principals effectively without
studying art history. I am sure you will find a great many designers just fell
into their current field with no formal training.

I don't know if it's so much about having the formal training and instead
would be having an eye and then developing that eye. Design is really whatever
you want it to be.

------
dreamdu5t
The site is functionally and visually broken:

\- Not cross-browser compatible, completely broken in IE

\- UI lacks instant feedback for submitting forms

\- Not pixel perfect (icons are blurry, poor font choice)

\- Broken links

~~~
manuletroll
Yep, it apparently triggers quirks mode in IE9. Probably because of the
missing doctype ?

------
danso
I want to describe this as the "Codecademy for Design" but Codecademy lets you
complete lessons before pushing you to sign up. I would've never signed up
otherwise -- because I already know how to code but the interface/approach
appealed to me. I know it would require a slight infrastructure change on your
part to implement this but might pull in more users in the end.

------
sbochins
No offense. But if you are making a site to teach people how to be better
designers, you shouldn't make the site so ugly. This seems like a simple
bootstrap site, but much uglier. I think it would have been better to just use
the defaults. You might want to work on the design of the site to get more
people to sign up. I probably would have signed up otherwise.

------
hluska
I have some good things and some bad things to say.

In the good column, I signed up (looks like you fixed the signup) and am
looking forward to taking the course. Alas, I can't design my way out of a wet
paper bag, so it may prove to be an exercise in futility...:)

In bad news, the site looks horrid in Chromium 18 for Ubuntu 11.04. Feel free
to send me email if you'd like a screen shot.

------
larrys
In a "watch and learn" example of the halo effect, note the quoting of people
on why to learn design. Personally the effect would work much better if they
hadn't quoted Jobs. At a quick glance if they had just Graham, John Maeda and
one other person or equal stature it might have seemed like a personal
endorsement of sorts.

------
helipad
I like the idea of setting challenges, it's certainly more useful to me than
the tutorial route.

------
jason_shah
This is a cool idea. Initially I wondered how you would be able to 'teach'
such an amorphous skill set but your use of experts/peers seems smart.

I'd like to be more involved than a user= if you all were open to it but I
don't consider myself an 'expert'.

------
mdoyle
I would expect a site like this to provide a good user experience, e.g.
confirmation that my email address was accepted. Signed up all the same
because it sounds like a great idea and just what I'm looking for.

------
tnorthcutt
Nothing happens when I click the Sign Up button. Chrome Beta, Win7.

------
fumar
I like the site. I decided to sign up. There was problem. After, I hit the
sign up button, nothing occurs. I have not received a confirmation email. Am I
missing something?

------
TYPE_FASTER
I bet there are designers who read HN who would like to teach developers
design in exchange for development tutorials. Is there a HN Academy? Perhaps
we should start one.

~~~
mnicole
I would love this. Sign me up.

------
equilibrium
I think a plain white background for the site would have sufficed. It adds
contrast, minimizes the noise and makes things cleaner and more legible.

------
mtjeantaylor
Has anybody tried to email the website to ask a specific question and the
delivery failed? I could possibly be emailing the incorrect email.

------
kibaekr
I wasn't really sure what to do after I got on the website..I just gave you my
email but is the curriculum supposed to come via email?

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pknerd
I think the OP needs to pay attention a bit on the UX of his site first,
getting 500 error is not a good sign.

------
Gabriel_Martin
Not exactly a confidence booster, is it possible that hits are the goal?
Pretty weak sauce if so.

------
uses
Being as commenters here are criticizing this site, what are some
alternatives?

------
danthewireman
My Chrome JS console gives me a 500 error when I try to sign up.

------
endlessvoid94
I get a 500 when I try to sign up.

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pknerd
Getting 500 error.

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CChristie
Site's down.

~~~
jsh4ft
500.

------
pcopley
My lord, someone look at it in IE9.

This is just laughable.

~~~
twunde
Yes it is. Designed for Mac users? I also like that there is minimal client-
side validation for when you out in a nonemail. The easy fix would have been
to use HTML5 form validation especially since it's not like they support older
browsers

