

How did you learn design? - toutouastro

this question is for people who are developers and learned design.how did you do it ?
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guywithabike
I sucked at it for years, that's how.

To get good at design, you have to suck for a long time. You have to make a
lot of sucky designs, of all kinds. Really awful, horrid stuff. You'll try
hard as hell and come up with a bunch of turds for years.

But the most important part is that every time you design something, take a
step back and evaluate how you could have done better. Then take that
knowledge with you for your next design.

Eventually you'll start to suck less.

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accomplice
1\. Read the good books in print. While the web is a wonderful resource for
developers, it is not the same for designers. Most of the tips and tricks
complied on the web are of little value for actually learning design. Most of
the articles out barely scratch the surface and are just SEO bait.

2\. Look at the whole, not just the pieces. Yes you need modularity in the
form of UI building blocks, but that comes later. The biggest difference
between design and engineering is that design solves every problem at once
first by considering the entire system and questioning the inputs and outputs.
Engineering tends to break problems into atomic units so it can work on them
serially. Good designers solve as many problems as possible in one solution.
Those include visual design, usability and product marketing problems.

I hate to be so cryptic but think of it as starting to sketch out the negative
the space around an object. Purposely being blind to the details until the
form has appeared. It's not magic but it;s really not engineering.

3\. Study, learn, appreciate and dabble in typography for print.

This is the detail part.

The web has not yet come of age in this department (but it's getting there
fast). By way of typography you will also learn grid systems and a few other
useful bits. Buy the Type Directors Club annual, but real font from real
foundries and appreciate them. Learn illustrator and appreciate those vectors
-- Its worth mentioning that I don't know any designers who use Photoshop for
UX.

4\. Recognize the mistakes of most developers starting out with design. They
are very often the same. Here are a few things I see often repeated.

No white space (because how is white space efficient right?)

Lack of hierarchy (because everything is important)

Dark backgrounds and overly masculine aesthetic

Too much contrast

Lack of interplay between elements and color

Fucking blue and black everywhere!

~~~
accomplice
oops, numbering got away from me there.

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detritus
I learnt not to try and do/invent everything myself (initially, at least -
'til I felt I sort-of knew what I was doing).

I learnt that there are rules and means, with good reason.

I copied - not absolutely, not directly.

I learnt to value the feedback of people who I trusted.

I learnt to ignore the urge to please everyone, all the time.

Oh, and the client's not always right. They're always right to have their
view, but they're not necessarily right about what that means. That's what
they're paying me for.

~~~
accomplice
This is really good advice!

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centdev
Created a bunch of bad designs that haunt me to this day on the Internet
archive. I don't think I've gotten really good at design over the years but I
make less crappy sites now. Being able to design and code whether your a dev
or designer is important to have. Helps you understand how to semi talk to the
other half.

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toutouastro
my problem with design is there is too many decisions : what color to use ?
what font to use ? what is the right height of the menu bar ? I just don't
know how to choose.

~~~
1123581321
Eliminate those other choices. Using only black Helvetica Neue font, design a
menu bar.

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DelvarWorld
None of the good designers I know read hn. Come to think of it, none of the
designers I know read hn.

~~~
accomplice
I do, but that's because I am not a developer so a lot of the information on
HN is novel and outside my usual knowledge base. That, and the designer
digests available on the web are so dumbed down it's hard to stomach. Like
watching repeats of MythBusters, the designer news outlets are ostensibly for
designers but it's more about disseminating easily digestible content.

