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Ask HN: How do you make your websites/apps beautiful? What tools do you use?
I am on the cusp of finishing my first side-project, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to make it appealing. Even though I can easily implement functionality in React, on the design side of things I don't know what to do aside from throwing together some components from different libraries.
What do you guys use? Got any tips?
- donnanorton 5y agoWebsite should be well designed. Good colors catch the eye, and provide an instant layer of communication. Even before the conscious mind has started thinking, the subconscious has already assessed if something is interesting or not. Purely based on colors.
- julienreszka 5y agoYou could look at some codepens for inspiration
- jabo 5y agoThis is a pretty good book on the topic: https://www.refactoringui.com/ https://www.refactoringui.com/
- yen223 5y ago+1 for the book. I can also recommend TailwindCSS, which is a CSS framework by the same guys behind Refactoring UI.
- PinkPigeon 5y agoFunnily enough, I guess I use my own website builder to do this.
- egfx 5y ago> throwing together some components from different libraries That's actually a winning strategy.
- cercatrova 5y agoHave you been to Dribbble, Behance and other design sites? They have great inspiration for me.
- m33k44 5y agoThe way I do it is, use "raw" bootstrap+jquery* for development. And before deplyoing, use themes for beautification e.g. https://bootswatch.com https://bootswatch.com * I am not a front-end developer, so I use the easiest tools for the job.
- zzo38computer 5y agoI don't make them "beautiful"; I like to make them compact and workable, with everything relevant displayed in a compact format, and to put the rest in the documentation. Show what you have and then see if it looks like good or not, I suppose. Maybe it is good for whatever it is being done or maybe not, depending what you are making, I suppose.