
Black Design – Design tools for early stage startup founders - ArmandGrillet
http://www.black.design/
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Untit1ed
For those others who tend to go to the comments before clicking through, these
aren't tools for _visual_ design, they're for _product_ design - how to pitch
your product, how to plan your MVP etc.

Glad to see these hit the front page, they were a big inspiration behind the
product design parts of [https://nichetester.com](https://nichetester.com),
particularly the idea of visualising a tagline by throwing it up on a T Shirt.

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Tracist
I just did the MVP design quiz. Here's the result

[http://www.black.design/wp-content/themes/make-child/mvp-
out...](http://www.black.design/wp-content/themes/make-child/mvp-output.php)

This output document doesn't make any sense to me. Ticks and crosses
everywhere, some lines are blue, some not.

I feel bad that I have to ask for help on how to interpret this document from
a website that is all about design.

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wowDude
It just doesn't display your own answers (relative to the static correct
answers), giving the impression that there's no correlation between what you
attempted, versus the actual expected answers.

Also, I agree that _" X"_ usually is an indicator of a " _wrong_ " answer. And
why place check marks (⍻) across all of the other answers, when check marks
ordinarily indicate correct/approved answers?

It seems like a bug. It would make sense if there were _NOTHING_ for incorrect
answers left unmarked, an X for _YOUR_ unmarked correct answers or marked
incorrect answers, and check marks for the answers you marked off correctly.

Given that it's a quiz, people want to compare their answers to the expected
answers, so I think they need to create this logic, or patch whatever bug is
preventing the answer markings from rendering properly.

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keithnz
to be a little bit cynical..... is this a way for them to harvest ideas?

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JusticeJuice
It's content marketing. They run two design businesses on the side.

[http://blackappl.com/main](http://blackappl.com/main)
[http://www.hatebranding.com/](http://www.hatebranding.com/)

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ryanSrich
A bit pedantic, but this is more product management. Not design.

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bobbygoodlatte
I think the strongest Product Designers wind up taking on responsibilities
that PM's might traditionally hold (and vice versa).

I'm fairly biased here, but I'd argue that product vision is often best
executed in the hands of product designers rather than PMs. Having a design
leader who takes the product or feature from high level goals, to flows &
interactions, and finally down to the pixels often leads to a less-compromised
end result. I usually find that singular vision beats design-by-committee.

Of course, this rarely happens due to company politics, which PMs tend to
excel at versus designers.

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hbosch
As much as I want this to be true, there is (in my experience) an observable
difference between product designers and product managers when it comes to
understanding technical and business problems... especially in communicating
with engineers.

As egotistical and tyrannical as PMs can sometimes be, I have learned to
appreciate their function... however, they love to believe that they are
miniature CEOs which is hilarious and incredibly annoying at the same time.
Designers in lead roles don’t seem to have this problem. Maybe it comes with
the MBA.

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saudioger
Nice tool set. I've definitely seen more than a few startups that would
benefit greatly by filling out the details asked here.

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rawoke083600
Man these are good ! I was very impressed with the professional look and
downright usability!

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colinhmit
Do (did?) you work for bloomberg? Very similar to their old online style - I
like it!

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lbj
This should be pinned somewhere. So much time could be saved.

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motohagiography
In the messaging design, I love that you put it on a t-shirt and on the side
of a van.

Thanks to you, whether we understand it or not, we are all in the t-shirt
business now.

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yusee
Huh. Design is so subjective. I would not call this site "aesthetic".

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andrewingram
This is about the design process, not a particular visual aesthetic.

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rawoke083600
agreed !

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reagan83
Great concept! Minor feedback/nit: bottom of landing page is (c) 2016 in Aug
2018.

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JimDabell
Copyright notices aren't there to tell you what the current year is. What
would the point of that be? Everybody knows what the current year is.

Copyright notices are there to declare when a creative work was created.
That's when the copyright term starts. If you just set it to the current year
you're lying about when the copyright expires and it renders the notice
invalid (at least in the USA).

In this case, you can see from the Wayback Machine that this was, in fact,
created in 2016 [0]. So that copyright notice is correct, and you're implying
it should be changed to be incorrect.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20161128194614/http://www.black....](https://web.archive.org/web/20161128194614/http://www.black.design/)

There's already tonnes of bad advice out there telling people that copyright
notices should always display the current year. Please don't spread this idea.

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reagan83
Thanks Jim for highlighting this and teaching about a common misconception. My
intent was to help the author avoid the “dead website” feel of a 2-3 year old
(c) label. Updating the year to current year could be one solution but I was
not proposing anything.

I hear your point on the legality angle and have done a ton of reading to
update my own stance on this.

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cygned
Wonderful design - I’d consider this to be brutalist design already!

Too bad I cannot value the usefulness of the product, but it looks great.

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omnimus
Suprisingly to me to lot of people it looks bad. Same goes for Bloomberg which
is similar. The reason why it is suprising to me is because this is how lot of
the things looked in 60s and 70s. The medium/bold helvetica with clear colors
coming from swiss design school. Lots of stuff used to be like this.

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tropdrop
The problem with the design of this page isn't with the font, or with the
decision to minimize decoration. The execution in that regard is done well.

The big problem is an aggressive blue (RGB 0,0,255) and similarly extreme
Yellow (255,255,0). My eyes actually hurt when I scrolled to the bottom of the
page and observed the yellow - there's a reason that these shades are reserved
for CSS testing purposes only. This service is letting me know that they think
their own time is too precious to spare a potential user a headache. It's not
edgy or cool - it's entitled and lazy.

Lack of padding (aka breathing room) around text elements is a second but
admittedly much more minor problem.

I would like a service that touts Design in the name to be at least semi-
conscious of some very basic user-friendly design principles.

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omnimus
I mean about colors i actually like pure RGB colors. It is very lively
vibrant, but i guess that is taste.

About the spacing admitedly i saw this on mobile and it looked great but now
after seeing on desktop it is not that great. I am not fan of long lines of
text.

