
Bootstrapping Design - timf
http://bootstrappingdesign.com/
======
kreek
I'm all for getting developers some design skills and I'm sure the book will
help. That said mastering anything takes time. Could you give a designer a
Rails for Dummies book and claim "Save thousands by not hiring a developer"?

Update:

I'm a full time developer now but I graduated with a design degree. It took me
two years of full time development to become a competent developer. Mostly
because when I started out I didn't know what I didn't know.

From time to time I pick up design gigs, but I'm a mediocre designer now,
mainly because my skills have atrophied. I obviously have a leg up on my dev
colleagues, but that's not saying much! However if I had a startup I would
definitely hire a pro designer. They're not really that expensive, think of it
this way; you're a developer your time is worth, what $100-150/hr? Spend your
time developing and pay a designer $50/hr.

~~~
hopeless
If a designer had a great idea for a simple app, then yes a Rails for Dummies
book would suffice I'd say. So why not the other way round?

Also, it's not always the case that a developer has spare money to pay a
designer with (the ideal situation). I don't have cash but I do have some
spare time in the evenings to work on my businesses.

~~~
ed209
this is false economy. saving money is not the objective in testing an idea.
The objective is to launch the best product you can in the smallest amount of
time. mvp. time trumps money - always.

It's like this. I want to fit a new bathroom in my house. I could do it, but
it would take me a week, it won't cost me any money. If I hire a plumber,
he'll do it in 2 days and charge $500.

Damn, $500? Well my freelance day rate is $250, so I'll just freelance for a
couple of days. Net result is I just saved myself 5 days.

~~~
rodh
I'd say it's sometimes a little risky thinking this way. 1. wage-days are not
a good way of measuring things. You don't take into account recurring
expenses, taxes and costs of doing business. 2. Spending your own time on
something is rarely a loss.

Do your own plumbing while you have a 2-day work drought: you've learned some
plumbing.

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studiofellow
Thanks for submitting this. I'm the author. I'm still in the process of
writing and would love to make this a collaborative project.

If you have topics or ideas you'd like to see covered, please leave a comment
or shoot me an email. hello@BootstrappingDesign.com

I'll also be sharing excerpts with the mailing list and on my blog.

~~~
Vindexus
As a developer I often struggle with the following things:

Picking a color scheme. What colors work well together? Why do they work well
together? How do I find good color schemes? Is there a formula or something?

White space. How much should I have? I normally just operate in increments of
5px until I think something looks good. "Looks good" ends up being smaller
than other sites when I actually compare though.

Font choices and colors. I always just use arial for body text and I'm fine
with that. My headers always look very bland though. What fonts compliment
what? Should my headers be darker or lighter than my body text?

Gradients and box shadows. I know they can look nice and I know some people do
it well, but whenever I add this kind of stuff to my graphics I think it looks
corny.

Those are some things I find frustrating when designing.

~~~
studiofellow
Thanks so much for the list. I'll make sure it's covered.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Also: I am a colorblind engineer. How can I pick color schemes that don't make
infants cry and write copy that isn't a legendary cure for insomnia?

~~~
286c8cb04bda
John Hicks (of Firefox-icon-fame) is a colorblind designer. He gives some
hints for coping on his blog sometimes --
<http://hicksdesign.co.uk/tag/colourblindness/>

~~~
studiofellow
Thanks so much for sharing this. Fantastic. I had no idea Hicks is colorblind.

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hvs
This looks like it could be an interesting book, and I'll most likely buy it
when it comes out. In the meantime, another great book is "The Non-Designer's
Design Book":

[http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-
Willia...](http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-
Williams/dp/0321534042/)

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fourmii
Looking forward to the book. We're in the situation at the moment where we
have a back-end founder working on our product and me (with no web design
background) working on the front-end because I've always had interest in it.
Being bootstrapped means that we've had to scour blogs, HN etc and other
peoples' designs and consume large amounts of UI/UX books to try do at least
the initial release ourselves..

~~~
studiofellow
Completely understand your situation and have heard similar stories too many
times. That's why I decided to start the eBook.

If you would like some design feedback, shoot me an email. That offer stands
for anyone else too, time allowing!

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hopeless
I'm really looking forward to this book. It seems like the perfect thing for a
developer like me. Usually I just buy a template from ThemeForest and
extensively modify it but I'd really like to start from a blank page one day.

~~~
mcteapot
Like programming good design takes practice. Just because you read a book is
not going to make you a great designer. The question is are you willing to
stop developing and put aside the time to design well or pay someone to do it
for you.

~~~
studiofellow
False dichotomy. People are capable of doing more than one thing. I'm a
designer who writes code. Developers can learn design basics, and doing so
will serve them well!

You're right though about practice. That topic is on my outline.

~~~
nsfmc
well, i think the point is more "any time you're designing (or learning to
design) is time you're not coding" (which, let's be honest, the times that you
can _actually_ be doing both at the _same time_ are few and far between) for
some folks that's not an acceptable tradeoff, for others it is.

~~~
keeptrying
You rarely have to do both at the same time.

IMHO if you've just started out on a startup - its better to be a designer
because you can do customer devleopment without touching a line of code but by
having a design which shows the customer exactly what to expect.

After you get a bunch of people begging you to build, then you build.

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jamieforrest
Great idea for an eBook. As a developer without a design background, it would
be really handy to know the basics so I could bootstrap things without having
to bring in a real designer early on in a project.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Funny thing is that I'm currently "pair-designing" with a designer. He told me
he is actually really happy that there are books like that and frameworks like
twitter bootstrap out there: it allows him to start working from higher
grounds (logo, branding) and avoids dealing with the very basics.

~~~
jamieforrest
Yeah. There's also just a huge amount of boilerplate HTML an CSS you need when
you start a project, it would be great to be able to leap frog some or all of
that.

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thibaut_barrere
Great looking page, subscribed. I know a good bunch of developers who will be
happy to read this!

~~~
studiofellow
Thanks for spreading the word! And seriously, feel free to email requests and
feedback.

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keeptrying
A lot of people who buy this book are going to be developers who think that
they can learn good taste in design from a book. It doesnt work that way.

Its all about practice, feedback from someone knowledgeable and iteration.
Open up photoshop and try to create a design. You will bumble around like a
fool for the first day - even if all your trying to draw is a smiley face.

But as you do this and as you scour the internet for tutorials and start
practicing, it gets easier.

Get feedback from someone in the biz (it takes 10 minutes to look at a design
and give feedback). Heed the advice and do more designs.

And all said and done the information to do this is already out there on the
internet.

All in all, for me, it was just another case of overcoming my learned
helplessness.

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goldensaucer
I'm a designer learning to code, and I'm all for devs learning design
principles—I just wish that all these design guides for programmers wouldn't
offer themselves as a replacement for an actual designer, or downplay the
value of a designer.

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mshron
I love the idea, but I don't think the page does a good job of selling itself
on design merits. Your eyes immediately go to the tertiary copy ("The new
eBook for bootstrappers..." etc) because that's where the highest contrast is
highest.

The ostensible header ("Become the designer...") is almost invisible (I didn't
see it for the first 30 seconds). My eyes keep wanting to drift back down to
where the contrast is higher.

So paint me as skeptical.

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bobbywilson0
The hardest thing to develop as a designer is good taste. This book may
provide some quick tips to make a typical developer made design less bad, and
maybe that's the goal, but good taste takes time.

As developers what would you think of a designer picking up a book that says
"Bootstrapping Development"? Would you think that your designer buddy could
read through this book in a weekend and not need a developer for his start up?

~~~
studiofellow
You make a fair point, but don't we often see threads that designers should
learn to code, if only to be better designers? How is the inverse not true?

I'd never say someone new to design could get results equal to those from a
professional designer from day 1. Of course not.

Many bootstrappers don't have the option of working with a designer, but they
can still do well enough on their own. At least while their businesses grow
and until they can hire someone.

~~~
bobbywilson0
You're right about being able to improve your development skills by learning
some design. I was a designer first, and I feel like I channel my inner
designer a lot coding every day.

I do think this book will be a great tool, and many people will find value in
it. I played out in my head biz guy gives developer your book, and saying "We
don't need a designer I got you this!" Which you have corrected me on.

Your last statement is spot on, I was a bit off in my original comment.

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betterlabs
Great idea and I am looking forward to the eBook. I have always used and
created designs based on what I have liked / what has inspired me and it would
be awesome to have a high level structure to go by, that comes from a
professional designer. It would be helpful to have a "Checklist" of the most
important aspects to ensure which would help validate / update past designs.

~~~
studiofellow
Working from what you like and what inspires you is really the best place to
start.

I'm planning to include a checklist in the book that's more detailed than the
simple preview/cheatsheet on the site right now. Thanks for the suggestion and
interest!

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nchuhoai
Good idea, but geez, its really hard to read the tooltip/arrows.

<http://contrastrebellion.com/>

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raju
I am thinking this will be a good follow up to "Design for Hackers".

~~~
davidw
Did you get that one? The reviews at Amazon weren't stellar, so I held off.
I'd be curious to hear what others think of it.

~~~
petercooper
The majority were 5 stars, to be fair. (Lest anyone pick up an unfair vibe
here :-))

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kitsune_
Cool idea! Some inputs: I don't want to spoil your party, but on Windows 7
this site is barely readable because of the used web font. This is happening
in Chrome and IE9. In Firefox it looks a bit better.

By the way, personally I think some parts of the page feel a bit cramped.
Overall, I don't 'get' it intuitively.

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c4urself
Like that bootstrap in the Bootstrapping Design logo, it's simple just like
the concept and adds a cool touch

~~~
studiofellow
Thanks! Cool that you noticed. It's a ligature built into the font. (Calluna:
<http://www.exljbris.com/calluna.html>)

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petervandijck
"Whitespace feels modern"?

I like the concept, but I wouldn't be taking design advice that starts with
that.

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MostExtremeCake
It's unfair to judge this book before reading it, but the web page promoting
it reads like an infomercial. Specifically, "You are a designer." and "Save
thousands by not hiring a designer." make me feel like there is going to be a
chapter about making font size smaller and jacking up leading.

What am I getting by reading this? Is it design basics that let me get started
with modifying something? Is it the fundamentals? Is it a rundown of common
contemporary design elements that can be combined to make a reasonable looking
page?

Professional designers aren't selling overpriced witchcraft.

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tapp
My experience is primarily back-end development, so I'm a complete UI design
dummy. I have a stupid question that I always mean to look into "when I have
time" - - given topic, perhaps someone on this thread can answer.

Why does the font in the input box on the bootstrappingdesign lander look so
screwy and hard to read, relative to the rest of the page? (I'm running Chrome
on a vanilla Windows 7 box.)

<http://i.imgur.com/TgQjV.gif>

~~~
fistofjohnwayne
As mentioned it is a problem Windows has rendering fonts. More accurately, it
is a problem all non-IE Windows browsers have rendering fonts. Open the site
in IE9 and you'll be able to enjoy it as intended.

I would also advise you not to fiddle with the ClearType tuner, in my
experience it will not help you with this problem.

~~~
kcima
So what is the solution here? I'm sure its not that I should be running IE9
:-)

I'm experiencing the same problem rendering the site on Chrome in Windows 7. I
tried running through the ClearType tuning thing - with no success.

However, it appears that Chrome on Windows is the problem here, as it also
renders fine in Windows Firefox. Chrome and Firefox in Ubuntu works fine as
well.

Here is a Windows 7 comparison of Chrome vs Firefox rendering:

<http://i.imgur.com/Qq05Z.png>

~~~
fistofjohnwayne
This is getting interesting. For me on Windows 7 Firefox (both 7.0.1 and the
current Beta version), Chrome, Safari and Opera all have this issue while IE9
does not. Which version of Firefox are you running?

Edit: Additionally, if I use the so-called "F12 Developer Tools" in IE9 to
switch the browser mode to IE8 the font will have the same problem.

Edit 2: I found this article [http://www.owlfolio.org/htmletc/legibility-of-
embedded-web-f...](http://www.owlfolio.org/htmletc/legibility-of-embedded-web-
fonts/) \- I also found a few references to being able to activate hinting for
the fonts used in the embedding process. Not sure what the options are from
TypeKit (the service used on this site) and I can't check on my own TypeKit
account as their website is currently down for maintenance.

~~~
kcima
The version in the screenshot is 7.0.1. Now I am realizing that Chrome is
rendering lots of sites without anti-aliasing, not just
bootstrappingdesign.com. Just something about that site made me notice it.

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nyrb
I think I will buy this book when its out. I like the free preview of the book
after subscribing my email. It will be an interesting book to receive.

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phil
Really nice site and cover design.

This stuff is so much more credible when it's self-exemplifying.

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davidw
eBook? I love them, and... now work producing them, however I wonder if
they're the best format for a design book.

