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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 kada

by 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.

by 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.