

Merry Doomsday HN: All of my YC Facelifts are free to download and use - kyro
http://kyrobeshay.com/post/38495077960/merry-doomsday-yc-facelift-psd-bundle

======
brianchu
Some of my design thoughts. I am not an expert, so you've all been warned:

I actually like the Exec redesign, except for 1) the awful gold color, and 2)
the bottom half of the page. After the 1-2-3-steps the layout gets a little
bipolar (no pun intended) and cluttered with a two-columned layout. I would've
put all those elements in a single column. But I actually find the overall
layout of the upper half to be more intuitive than Exec's actual design.

Not a fan of the Flutter redesign. The actual Flutter page is really cool and
unique, even if at the expense of readability. The redesign looks like every
other startup/app landing page.

Ditto for the Pebble redesign. It looks too "corporate." The actual Pebble
site has less clutter and a warmer feel to it.

Big fan of the Instacart redesign. A lot better use of limited space, and the
foldout detail panel is definitely something Instcart should have. Instacart's
current design of having a rotating bar of categories is really unintuitive
and pretty bad design IMO.

I think having other people redesign your website/app is actually a great
thing, because it's a way of getting different perspectives. Too often we
optimize for the local max (moving a button around) instead of looking at the
big picture (wondering if we even need that button in the first place).
Designers at Apple, for example, create 10 entirely different designs for each
new feature, which is whittled into 3, and after more work on those three they
decide on one design.

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giles
As a person who doesn't have an eye for design these are very helpful, thanks
for sharing!

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JacobIrwin
Thanks for sharing kyro.

2 Problems I encountered:

1.) At <http://cl.ly/0s0N0b41262a>, the "view in browser" link is broken and
forces a download (in Chrome).

2\. ) When I opened these in Photoshop CS5 (12.0.4) I got an error message,
saying: "Some text layers contain fonts that are missing. These layers will
need to have the missing fonts replaced before they can be used for vector
based output." (see screenshot: <http://pbrd.co/12wfmxs>)

~~~
kyro
Yeah, no problem.

1) That's just the way CloudApp handles zipped files.

2) That's because I didn't include the fonts that I used. Wouldn't have been
appropriate to distribute them.

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erohead
Thanks Kyro, it's great to see what another mind things about our site.

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eriktrautman
Thank you for the designs. It is quite helpful to occasionally see inside the
creative mind of someone else.

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joshmlewis
Did anyone end up buying them from you?

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sergiotapia
What is this? Just photoshop files of startup websites you made?

~~~
kyro
Just that, yes!

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vini
thanks kyro, rly good stuff to learn.

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rizky05
and.. it's down

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jspthrowaway2
Am I the only one that gets slightly annoyed when people redesign a Web site
without being solicited? I understand redesigns like this are part of practice
for a designer, but sometimes I feel like these designs are "I don't like
yours, mine is better," when design can be such a subjective thing.

I don't really see a benefit, for example, in his redesign of EXEC:

Before: <https://iamexec.com/>

After: <http://kyrobeshay.com/post/20746111679/yc-facelift-exec>

I actually think the redesign looks worse. Is there a tangible benefit here
design-wise that I'm just simply not smart enough to grasp? I find it ironic,
by the way, that I'm so vehemently against rhetoric that decries skinning
Bootstrap without design sense (as in that prior thread), but finding myself
defending an obvious Bootstrap here as looking better.

I can't connect with the feeling because I'm not a designer, but in code, if I
wrote something one way and someone else rewrote it just because they like
their way better, then showed it around to get buy-in, I'd be a little
annoyed. If there was a tangible benefit like faster runtime, or better
maintainability, that's one thing, but just because of preference? That annoys
me. Maybe it's different between our lines of work.

~~~
jenius
I mean this in the least insulting way possible -- I think you just lack
design sense. His redesigns are very clearly significantly better (which is
why they have been so popular here on HN), and default bootstrap ALWAYS looks
bad on a professional company's production site. It screams "I don't give a
shit about real design so i just used bootstrap".

I would urge you to study design a little more before you start critiquing
designs. Design and code are vastly different disciplines -- I started as a
designer then learned code later (now full time developer) and I can tell you
this from experience. I regularly see you discussing design on hacker news,
and everything you post about it is misguided. Educate first, then discuss.

~~~
jspthrowaway2
Whenever a reply to me starts with "I don't mean to be insulting," I know that
the comment ahead is doomed to be insulting. Yours was certainly no exception
and delivered every bit of insult that you claimed to not intend. I'm going to
tackle your comment point-by-point to reinforce to you just how arrogantly you
come across here:

> _I think you just lack design sense. His redesigns are very clearly
> significantly better_

...to you. Design is subjective and, as a designer, you should know that such
a statement of universal truth cannot be spoken of a design. What looks good
to you, or perhaps even a majority of people you can find that agree with you,
might look abhorrent to another person. There are very few universal appeals
in the humanities. There's what I find appealing visually, and there's what
you find appealing visually. Sometimes they align, sometimes they don't.

I know designers have quantified some things like subtleties of typography and
the mathematics of color, but in the end design comes down to what looks
appealing in most cases (or to the client). I'm sharing my personal opinion on
the specific redesign that I've pointed out, and I'm asking Hacker News if I'm
missing something plainly obvious in that I don't think it's better.

You implore to me that his designs are not only _better_ , they're _very
clearly_ better, implying that not only am I stupid for asking, I'm stupid for
missing the glaringly obvious reason it's better that's somewhere right in
front of me. That's precisely the question I asked, and you haven't answered
it; you've instead made me feel stupid for asking by reiterating it to me
another way. This sort of dismissal is something I've come to expect from many
designers, and it's unfortunate for the designers that genuinely love
interacting with people and discussing their craft without the inherent
elitism that the rest of you seem to bring into threads like this[1].

I'd say from that linked thread you tended to agree with 54mf. Hey, he said
the same thing I just did[2]!

> _(which is why they have been so popular here on HN)_

Because popularity on Hacker News is an implication of something.

There's two general trends for a story on Hacker News. Either something kills
it early on (like a flag) and it's doomed to a life below the fold for
eternity, or it gains a few crucial early votes and hits page 1. Once on page
1, what I call the bandwagon effect kicks in and it's guaranteed a trip to
near the top.

In either case, the popularity of a specific item on Hacker News indicates
absolutely nothing. There are things regularly voted to the top that shouldn't
be, merely because they hit page 1 and got to ride the bandwagon.

> _and default bootstrap ALWAYS looks bad on a professional company's
> production site. It screams "I don't give a shit about real design so i just
> used bootstrap"._

To who? You? Depending on the audience, it might not matter.

A Bootstrap site for paying electric bills, for instance, isn't a big deal. We
had this fight in the other thread, and I'm not going to rehash it here. It
looks bad _to you_ because you're a designer and you're looking for it.
Paradoxically, you and numerous other designers were arguing _against changing
Bootstrap_ because _Bootstrap looks fine_ in the other thread.

> _I would urge you to study design a little more before you start critiquing
> designs._

Here's that elitism coming back. I don't need to study anything to know what
appeals to me and what doesn't. I _especially_ don't need to study anything to
critique design. To imply otherwise is to silence dissent.

Do you think film critics go to film school before they're "allowed" to write
about film? Do you think automotive journalists have, by and large, designed
their own vehicles? Has your average food critic earned a Michelin Star? If I
tell you that the contrast between the text and the background on roots.cx
makes the text nearly illegible, are you going to tell me to go study
typography and color before I'm allowed to say that to you?

No.

Because we can identify with what appeals to us or repulses us _without
training of any kind_ , we hire designers and then work with them until we
find something that we like. When's the last time you had a client that you
could tell "this looks good, and you're not trained enough to tell me
otherwise, here's your invoice"?

> _I regularly see you discussing design on hacker news, and everything you
> post about it is misguided_

No, you don't. I called you and other elitist designers out on that thread you
shit all over about making Bootstrap look a little bit better, and you're
remembering that and trying to paint me with a larger brush. That's the only
design-related thread I've participated in on this account. Go check. I'll
wait.

Each and every comment I made in that thread wasn't about design. It was about
the arrogance and elitism of people like you. I stand by every single one and
only regret that I can't render them in boldface, since it was _entirely lost
on you_.

I abhor you for making my comment about me rather than its own merits. Yes,
shoot the messenger for not being educated enough to discuss design with
"real" designers, then go through my comment history and pigeonhole me as the
"bad commenter re: design". Get over me and start reflecting upon your own
qualities, because they leave a lot to be desired.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4927249>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935556>

~~~
jenius
Yes, I thought you would probably take some offense at it (which you clearly
did), which is why I said "I mean it in the least offensive way possible". I
have nothing against you personally, and frankly I'm sure you are a wonderful
person. I just strongly disagreed with your critiques in this particular
subject.

As a response, I'll say this: you're right about design being subjective. This
is something I tend to consider common knowledge, and when one says that a
design (or anything subjective, like a song) is 'better' or 'worse', you must
assume this means that the majority of people would judge it as such. I can
promise you that things are popular for a reason, whether you personally think
so or not.

However, this 'majority rule' is not the singular and sole influence - often
times experts or tastemakers can influence how 'good' something is perceived
to be. Great examples of this are modern art and wine -- the overwhelming
majority of people do not have sophisticated taste in these two areas, so they
often allow themselves to be guided by experts who have dedicated a lot of
time and study to the area. And this makes sense, no?

So let's think about how you can figure out if you have good taste or not in
an area. If you find that your taste often aligns with _both_ those who have
experience and training, and the majority of normal people, whether or not you
have expertise yourself, it's likely that your taste in this area is good. On
the other hand, if you find it to be quite the opposite, it's likely that your
taste isn't so good. Again, it doesn't matter here whether you an expert or
not, although the more expertise you have, the more likely it is that your
taste will 'improve'. If the masses and experts are at odds, although this
doesn't happen super often, I'd be more likely to side with those with
training, but that's just a personal opinion.

This is nothing really to take too personally. I find that I have terrible
taste in movies, for example. Most movies that critics like and that are
popular with my friends and the masses, I really don't like very much. And
that's fine, I just accept it, move on, and know that I'm not going to be
writing movie critiques any time soon, since I don't have good taste in
movies. I don't write poor quality movie reviews anyway, then rage on anyone
who tells me that my taste in movies isn't so good. That's some American Idol
shit right there.

There's no arrogance or elitism here, it's self-awareness. I made this comment
about you rather than the contents of the comment because the the comment you
wrote is about you, not the contents of your comment. It's about this -- what
we're talking about: subjective critiques, how valid they are, and how they
can be backed up. You are arguing against both (many) trained designers and
heavily up-voted items -- don't you think that means anything?

I would like to truly apologize for the extent that I offended you with this
comment though, I really honestly didn't mean for it to go over quite so
poorly as it did. You don't seem to draw any difference between the two, but
intentions and results are different things, really. And my intention was (and
still is) not to incite anger, just to discuss.

Also, I agree that the type on roots needs a little bit more contrast, other
people (both designers and non-designers) have mentioned this as well. I'll be
making that change soon : )

~~~
jspthrowaway2
> _I don't write poor quality movie reviews anyway, then rage on anyone who
> tells me that my taste in movies isn't so good. That's some American Idol
> shit right there._

Quit being disingenuous. You didn't just tell me that my taste in design isn't
so good, you urged me to go get trained in design before I'm allowed to speak
about it. You're entitled to your opinions regarding film, and I'm entitled to
mine that your reviews reflect poor taste in film. I will not, however, tell
you that you're not allowed to write about film until you've graduated film
school. There's a difference.

I have no idea what "American Idol shit" is supposed to mean.

> _You are arguing against both (many) trained designers and heavily up-voted
> items -- don't you think that means anything?_

Actually, my comment bitching about you and loud designers like you in the
other thread is the single most heavily upvoted comment on any account I've
ever had. Put it this way: it singlehandedly gave me downvote privileges on
this relatively new account.

I think many people in tech, myself included, are tired of know-it-alls that
poopoo everything that doesn't meet their standards. You are that, and the
worst kind; the one that appeals to "taste" and other ivory tower ideals in
their zealotry to squash all things below them.

> _There's no arrogance or elitism here, it's self-awareness._

The absolute last thing you are is self-aware.

~~~
jenius
I think this has descended into you making ad hominem attacks on me, so I'm
not going to reply anymore, since it's no longer an argument. I feel as if my
point has been made and there is no need to continue this back and forth.
Again, I'm sorry that you were offended, and it's too bad this is how you
react.

And please, if I do write about film and it's bad, just tell me. I'd rather
know than continue doing it poorly. And if I was still passionate about it,
yes, I would think education, perhaps film school, would help.

~~~
jenius
Hey, if you ever come back to this comment thread, I've got a great
conversation to add to this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002037>

