

Ask HN: How does an engineer learn design? - BadassFractal

I'm thinking of following the common HN advice of not waiting for the magical designer cofounder to come and save the day, and instead try to do my best by myself for the time being, while hopefully learning from the experience. I'm 100% technical and can only draw stick figures, but I still feel I should try to do my best at designing a good looking modern web app.<p>I'm not too worried about the client-side coding as much as about actually creating appealing color schemes, icons, logos and have it all be part of a coherent theme. Also, it'd be amazing if I got decent at creating attractive mockups, slide decks and pitch videos with Photoshop (one could argue it's a step above using something like Balsamiq from a presentation standpoint) or other modern tools.<p>Has anybody else started from scratch and actually got decent at it? Is there a good place to start? Texts / tutorials? What's the most effective way of ramping-up to the point where what I'm producing isn't too embarrassing?<p>Thanks!
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jefflinwood
The least hassle way I've found of doing what you're doing is to just purchase
a theme from ThemeForest (<http://www.themeforest.net/>) and then customize it
from there. Look under Site Templates and they're all just HTML/CSS/JS and
around $10-$20.

Case in point: I just spent $14 on a theme, and then spent a couple of hours
trading sections around, putting in custom graphics, changing colors, spacing,
layout, etc. Doesn't look much like the original, so not a total copy.

Later if it takes off, you can hire a graphic designer and work with them to
accomplish your vision.

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BadassFractal
That's a good idea, it would handle most of what I need for a reasonable price
and I can still tweak it a bit if I need to. Learning how to be a decent
designer would be definitely a lot more time consuming than just getting done
with it in a couple of hours.

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jefflinwood
And I feel that if you actually do edit the original theme, you will start to
pick up on some of these design issues - for instance, changing colors in CSS
certainly isn't hard technically, but it can really affect the perception of
your site.

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coryl
Getting started is really the best and easiest way to acquire design skill and
taste.

When I started out as a freelance "web designer" as a teen, I began to notice
graphics and advertisements a lot more, unintentionally actually. I would look
at designs and wonder how I could replicate it, the same way you probably look
at software and wonder how its written.

As for getting started, do whatever is fun for you. Photoshop some satirical
ads for PETA. Recreate the Nike logo. Etc. etc.

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djKianoosh
Honestly, I've found the best approach is to learn another art form. Lots of
devs get into photography, for example. Through that I think you gain an "eye
for design", so to speak.

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accomplice
I'm thinking about teaching a class on this, if you want to be a guinea pig
and give me some feedback on what you think are the most relevant parts of a
designers oeuvre are, we could try it over coffee and look at some of the
specific problems you are trying to tackle. -michael@michaelburkett.com

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roam
You might want to have a look at "Design for Developers":
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3283162>

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BadassFractal
Cool, thanks!

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bmelton
You might also check out "Design for Hackers"[1] by David Kadavy.

[1] - <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1119998956>

