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Thank HN: Design for Hackers

142 points by kadavy 16y ago

christopherslee 16y ago
Congratulations! The original blog post was pretty awesome, and I look forward to the book.
lukev 16y ago
This is exactly what I've been looking for. Will definitely buy.
- kadavy 16y ago
  That's great to hear! I'd love to learn about your situation RE learning design. I hope you signed up for the email list, but feel free to say hi: david at kadavy dot net
  - ericb 16y ago
    Do you have a list of topics? I'd like to see what will be covered. For example, Photoshop? Gimp? Typography? Effects? Etc.
    - kadavy 16y ago
      I do have a rough outline at this point and tons of barf draft. It will be more in-line with previous D4H posts: concentrating more on explaining principles behind attractive design, rather than technical know-how. There are tons of resources on that stuff, and it's not what I'm good at. So, I'll be talking about composition, geometry, color, typography, and other design principles.
      - kertap 16y ago
        That's exactly what I've been looking for. Finding stuff on the tools seems to be easy / every one is doing it.
      - dhugiaskmak 16y ago
        You should probably mention this somewhere on your page about the book. I read it and came away thinking that it was a book about marketing and SEO techniques. I couldn't understand why the book was called "Design for Hackers" when the site didn't mention design at all.
  - lukev 16y ago
    My background is general back-to-front development. However, I've always worked on teams that had dedicated designers so I never had to actually make something look good. I have pretty strong CSS and HTML skills, but it was always for implementing someone else's design, not doing anything on my own. I've recently been doing some of my own projects and realized that pretty much everything I make looks like ass. It's the one piece missing from my ability to do a complete website by myself. Plus, for personal philosophical reasons, I'm growing more appreciative of visual aesthetics in every aspect of life, so being able to incorporate that into my chosen profession is important to me. There are some good resources out there, and I feel that learning even just a few things about design makes a big difference. Learning to recognize different font families, the importance of alignment, etc. have all made a big difference. But I still feel there's something lacking - I still find it difficult to cross the boundary "doesn't suck THAT bad" and "beautiful." Aside from getting a degree in graphics design, I'm still not sure how to get the knowledge and techniques needed. I suspect part of it is that I just need to practice a lot more, and design lots of sites just to see what happens and develop my style. But some "hacks" to make the process faster would be very welcome.
    - kadavy 16y ago
      Wow, thanks a ton for that, Luke! Your feeling that this is the final piece to being able to produce a complete website is exactly why I'm exploring this topic. So much friction can be reduced in the development process if a single person is self-sufficient. I don't know if I'll be able to provide "hacks," but your observation on it requiring a lot of practice is right on. My goal at this point is to change the way you see things, so when you see a good design, you understand what about it is making it great.
enjo 16y ago
I plan to send out about an email a month, and have already started drafting some sample content. A lot of this stuff I had thought about releasing on kadavy.net, but it’s too valuable to just put out into the ether. I want to make sure only those who are really interested in it learn these secrets. Find out: Just sounds like an infomercial to me.
- kadavy 16y ago
  Thanks for reading that far - I'm not sure if I understand, are you implying that is a bad thing?
  - acangiano 16y ago
    Programmers are a crowd that fundamentally hates marketing speak. So yes, infomercial tones are seen by most as a negative thing. In my experience, programmers who are also entrepreneurs understand the merit of marketing, even if they instinctually dislike the wording you choose, so they'll be less judgmental (ergo your upvotes).
  - bricestacey 16y ago
    It was an interesting read until the heading "So, here we go." Then, it turned into a creepy infomercial about professional blogging.
    - St-Clock 16y ago
      I agree, it was my first time on the website and I genuinely liked the idea of "design for hackers", but when I read things like see "How 6 of my last 9 blog posts made it to the front page of Hacker News", I got irritated. Was this book and newsletter supposed to be about design? Maybe a refocus is in order here.
- kadavy 16y ago
  Thanks for the feedback from everyone on this thread. I massaged that part a bit. I happen to think infomercials are pretty brilliant with marketing, but of course, they can be heavy handed. Thanks for caring enough to say something.
subbu 16y ago
Hackers are used to teaching themselves whatever is necessary to achieve their vision; Can't be more succinct.
shrikant 16y ago
Just did a bout of gratuitous clicking and selecting text all over the page a few hundred-odd times to confound the profoundly annoying Crazy Egg tracking script.
- kadavy 16y ago
  What do you find annoying about the Crazy Egg script? EDIT: since this person is being upvoted, I removed the script (yay?); but I'm still interested to hear why it bothers people. Thanks.
  - petewailes 16y ago
    May I recommend http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html for heatmapping.
  - MichaelGG 16y ago
    If it's like other trackers, every time you click/select, it loads a resource, causing the status bar to flicker. Many people read while clicking and selecting text. This means sites that do stupid things when the user selects text (popup definitions, ads, change the status bar, etc.) become very annoying.
mortenjorck 16y ago
Increasing design literacy among hackers is a great thing. Now who will step up with a "Hacking for Designers"?
- petewailes 16y ago
  I'll do that.
  - Shamiq 16y ago
    I'll do that Now we have you on record. Please deliver :)
    - petewailes 16y ago
      It'll have to be in the new year, but it'll come. Look for posts around Jan announcing the start.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
DanI-S 16y ago
Sounds pretty good, I look forward to reading it. If anyone clicked on the link looking for information, I posted an 'Ask HN:' a while back on the same topic. Loads of people responded, with some great advice. It's here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839022 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839022
martinkallstrom 16y ago
Congratulations to the book deal! I'm happy for you! Don't burn out that flame of yours too soon, it's a long way from here to the finished book. I'm looking forward to reading it! My suggestion is that as soon as you've written one chapter you're sort of happy with, put it on HN for for feedback.
- kadavy 16y ago
  Thanks, Martin - yeah, I have a ton of work ahead of me, but I'm having a blast so far. I'll definitely be seeking input and feedback from the HN community every step of the way.
swecker 16y ago
My thought process were as follows; "Oh great, it's just an ad for a book." to "It's a future book, could be interesting." to, "Hey this is the guy that wrote that article on Monet's use of black!" I guess it's a really good idea to give a good sample of what you have to share. I really love implementing more real art into design, rather than simply following web trends. I'm looking forward to reading more.
- kadavy 16y ago
  Whoa, someone just referred to me as "...the guy who [did certain thing]..." Pardon me while I e-mail this comment to my mother.
  - swecker 16y ago
    I only get on hacker news once every couple of days and usually read only a couple of articles. I thought it a huge coincidence that I read two articles by the same person.
- martinkallstrom 16y ago
  Here's the link to the Monet article: http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-color-theory/ http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-color-theory/

142 points by kadavy 16y ago

christopherslee 16y ago

Congratulations! The original blog post was pretty awesome, and I look forward to the book.

lukev 16y ago

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Will definitely buy.

kadavy 16y ago
That's great to hear! I'd love to learn about your situation RE learning design. I hope you signed up for the email list, but feel free to say hi: david at kadavy dot net
- ericb 16y ago
  Do you have a list of topics? I'd like to see what will be covered. For example, Photoshop? Gimp? Typography? Effects? Etc.
  - kadavy 16y ago
    I do have a rough outline at this point and tons of barf draft. It will be more in-line with previous D4H posts: concentrating more on explaining principles behind attractive design, rather than technical know-how. There are tons of resources on that stuff, and it's not what I'm good at. So, I'll be talking about composition, geometry, color, typography, and other design principles.
    - kertap 16y ago
      That's exactly what I've been looking for. Finding stuff on the tools seems to be easy / every one is doing it.
    - dhugiaskmak 16y ago
      You should probably mention this somewhere on your page about the book. I read it and came away thinking that it was a book about marketing and SEO techniques. I couldn't understand why the book was called "Design for Hackers" when the site didn't mention design at all.
- lukev 16y ago
  My background is general back-to-front development. However, I've always worked on teams that had dedicated designers so I never had to actually make something look good. I have pretty strong CSS and HTML skills, but it was always for implementing someone else's design, not doing anything on my own. I've recently been doing some of my own projects and realized that pretty much everything I make looks like ass. It's the one piece missing from my ability to do a complete website by myself. Plus, for personal philosophical reasons, I'm growing more appreciative of visual aesthetics in every aspect of life, so being able to incorporate that into my chosen profession is important to me. There are some good resources out there, and I feel that learning even just a few things about design makes a big difference. Learning to recognize different font families, the importance of alignment, etc. have all made a big difference. But I still feel there's something lacking - I still find it difficult to cross the boundary "doesn't suck THAT bad" and "beautiful." Aside from getting a degree in graphics design, I'm still not sure how to get the knowledge and techniques needed. I suspect part of it is that I just need to practice a lot more, and design lots of sites just to see what happens and develop my style. But some "hacks" to make the process faster would be very welcome.
  - kadavy 16y ago
    Wow, thanks a ton for that, Luke! Your feeling that this is the final piece to being able to produce a complete website is exactly why I'm exploring this topic. So much friction can be reduced in the development process if a single person is self-sufficient. I don't know if I'll be able to provide "hacks," but your observation on it requiring a lot of practice is right on. My goal at this point is to change the way you see things, so when you see a good design, you understand what about it is making it great.

enjo 16y ago

I plan to send out about an email a month, and have already started drafting some sample content. A lot of this stuff I had thought about releasing on kadavy.net, but it’s too valuable to just put out into the ether. I want to make sure only those who are really interested in it learn these secrets. Find out: Just sounds like an infomercial to me.

kadavy 16y ago
Thanks for reading that far - I'm not sure if I understand, are you implying that is a bad thing?
- acangiano 16y ago
  Programmers are a crowd that fundamentally hates marketing speak. So yes, infomercial tones are seen by most as a negative thing. In my experience, programmers who are also entrepreneurs understand the merit of marketing, even if they instinctually dislike the wording you choose, so they'll be less judgmental (ergo your upvotes).
- bricestacey 16y ago
  It was an interesting read until the heading "So, here we go." Then, it turned into a creepy infomercial about professional blogging.
  - St-Clock 16y ago
    I agree, it was my first time on the website and I genuinely liked the idea of "design for hackers", but when I read things like see "How 6 of my last 9 blog posts made it to the front page of Hacker News", I got irritated. Was this book and newsletter supposed to be about design? Maybe a refocus is in order here.
kadavy 16y ago
Thanks for the feedback from everyone on this thread. I massaged that part a bit. I happen to think infomercials are pretty brilliant with marketing, but of course, they can be heavy handed. Thanks for caring enough to say something.

subbu 16y ago

Hackers are used to teaching themselves whatever is necessary to achieve their vision; Can't be more succinct.

shrikant 16y ago

Just did a bout of gratuitous clicking and selecting text all over the page a few hundred-odd times to confound the profoundly annoying Crazy Egg tracking script.

kadavy 16y ago
What do you find annoying about the Crazy Egg script? EDIT: since this person is being upvoted, I removed the script (yay?); but I'm still interested to hear why it bothers people. Thanks.
- petewailes 16y ago
  May I recommend http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html for heatmapping.
- MichaelGG 16y ago
  If it's like other trackers, every time you click/select, it loads a resource, causing the status bar to flicker. Many people read while clicking and selecting text. This means sites that do stupid things when the user selects text (popup definitions, ads, change the status bar, etc.) become very annoying.

mortenjorck 16y ago

Increasing design literacy among hackers is a great thing. Now who will step up with a "Hacking for Designers"?

petewailes 16y ago
I'll do that.
- Shamiq 16y ago
  I'll do that Now we have you on record. Please deliver :)
  - petewailes 16y ago
    It'll have to be in the new year, but it'll come. Look for posts around Jan announcing the start.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

DanI-S 16y ago

Sounds pretty good, I look forward to reading it. If anyone clicked on the link looking for information, I posted an 'Ask HN:' a while back on the same topic. Loads of people responded, with some great advice. It's here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839022 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839022

martinkallstrom 16y ago

Congratulations to the book deal! I'm happy for you! Don't burn out that flame of yours too soon, it's a long way from here to the finished book. I'm looking forward to reading it! My suggestion is that as soon as you've written one chapter you're sort of happy with, put it on HN for for feedback.

kadavy 16y ago
Thanks, Martin - yeah, I have a ton of work ahead of me, but I'm having a blast so far. I'll definitely be seeking input and feedback from the HN community every step of the way.

swecker 16y ago

My thought process were as follows; "Oh great, it's just an ad for a book." to "It's a future book, could be interesting." to, "Hey this is the guy that wrote that article on Monet's use of black!" I guess it's a really good idea to give a good sample of what you have to share. I really love implementing more real art into design, rather than simply following web trends. I'm looking forward to reading more.

kadavy 16y ago
Whoa, someone just referred to me as "...the guy who [did certain thing]..." Pardon me while I e-mail this comment to my mother.
- swecker 16y ago
  I only get on hacker news once every couple of days and usually read only a couple of articles. I thought it a huge coincidence that I read two articles by the same person.
martinkallstrom 16y ago
Here's the link to the Monet article: http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-color-theory/ http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-color-theory/