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The issue with most 'basic principles', is for somebody who's looking for the basics (a beginner), they're super hard to apply to their actual work. I think bas

The issue with most 'basic principles', is for somebody who's looking for the basics (a beginner), they're super hard to apply to their actual work. I think basic principles are much better learnt through analysing, and imitating other works.

hluska 9y ago
When I was learning how to layout a print magazine, I read as many of these beginner level tutorials as I could stomach. But, no matter how much I read, I would always be left thinking, "what the hell do I actually do?" So, I went out and bought a dozen magazines that I liked the looks of, then grabbed a ruler and starting taking measurements and drawing grids. Sure enough, just as you said, within a couple of hours, I had a very solid sense of how these principles worked in the real world.
naasking 9y ago
> I think basic principles are much better learnt through analysing, and imitating other works. Well then you aren't understanding principles so much as developing heuristics. If you actually learned principles this way, you could describe them at least semi-formally such that a beginner could actually study them and then understand how to apply them.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  The original article here doesn’t really have “principles” to explain. It is just a list of 10 topics related to graphic design. Each of those topics could be expanded into a book filled with many principles, criteria, heuristics, etc., formal or otherwise. To be honest I’m not sure who is upvoting the article or why. It doesn’t really have much concrete content. It’s sort of like if you had an article “Principles of software engineering: logic, programming languages, compilers, networking, operating systems, data structures, computational complexity, hardware, system architecture”, and then wrote a paragraph of oversimplified fluff about how each one was related to software. First, those aren’t principles, but more to the point, that wouldn’t be particularly useful for someone trying to learn the discipline of software engineering.
maroonblazer 9y ago
John McWade's site and magazine "Before and After"[0] does a wonderful job of combining principles and imitation by way of taking a problematic design and deconstructing why it's not as good as it could be and then showing how it can be made better. In the process he touches on many foundational principles of design but in a practical, applied setting. I learned more about good design from watching/reading him than anyone else. His examples often focus on print materials but the concepts are universal and medium-agnostic. He's since joined Lynda.com/LinkedIn and is still teaching. [0]http://www.bamagazine.com/ http://www.bamagazine.com/
deleted 9y ago
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hluska 9y ago

When I was learning how to layout a print magazine, I read as many of these beginner level tutorials as I could stomach. But, no matter how much I read, I would always be left thinking, "what the hell do I actually do?" So, I went out and bought a dozen magazines that I liked the looks of, then grabbed a ruler and starting taking measurements and drawing grids. Sure enough, just as you said, within a couple of hours, I had a very solid sense of how these principles worked in the real world.

naasking 9y ago

> I think basic principles are much better learnt through analysing, and imitating other works. Well then you aren't understanding principles so much as developing heuristics. If you actually learned principles this way, you could describe them at least semi-formally such that a beginner could actually study them and then understand how to apply them.

jacobolus 9y ago
The original article here doesn’t really have “principles” to explain. It is just a list of 10 topics related to graphic design. Each of those topics could be expanded into a book filled with many principles, criteria, heuristics, etc., formal or otherwise. To be honest I’m not sure who is upvoting the article or why. It doesn’t really have much concrete content. It’s sort of like if you had an article “Principles of software engineering: logic, programming languages, compilers, networking, operating systems, data structures, computational complexity, hardware, system architecture”, and then wrote a paragraph of oversimplified fluff about how each one was related to software. First, those aren’t principles, but more to the point, that wouldn’t be particularly useful for someone trying to learn the discipline of software engineering.

maroonblazer 9y ago

John McWade's site and magazine "Before and After"[0] does a wonderful job of combining principles and imitation by way of taking a problematic design and deconstructing why it's not as good as it could be and then showing how it can be made better. In the process he touches on many foundational principles of design but in a practical, applied setting. I learned more about good design from watching/reading him than anyone else. His examples often focus on print materials but the concepts are universal and medium-agnostic. He's since joined Lynda.com/LinkedIn and is still teaching. [0]http://www.bamagazine.com/ http://www.bamagazine.com/

deleted 9y ago

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