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No. No, you can not. You can't even do it while you don't suck at design. You actually need to be really good at web design to create great looking websites. G

No. No, you can not. You can't even do it while you don't suck at design. You actually need to be really good at web design to create great looking websites. Great design is hard. If you have seen a cool, simple design and thought "well, that's easy, it's just a bunch of text, a few lines and one primary color" and tried to copy it, you know how hard. Everything matters and you have no clue why it does. Or how. Sure, you can just do the 1-to-1 copy and there's frameworks to allow for exactly that-- but that is when you get a bootstrap-material-tailwind look and while that's fine and ticks some boxes, most people would probably agree that that does not feel like great design. Design is hard hard every time anew, because more so than with code, it requires something different every time (whereas good code, in my opinion, should strife to be as boring and repetitive as you can get away with, and if it's all tried, tested and recycled more power to you) Let's not buy into the bait and don't get deterred either. I am all for enabling the maximum amount of people to do cool shit, but it would be great if we could in the process not berate that which we aspire to accomplish by lying to ourselves. You don't need to be a great designer to create something cool. Go ahead and create. But if you want great design, you actually need to get great at design. Fortunately, you can just start by doing shitty design and take it from there.

Stevvo 4y ago
I think it's a matter of scope. Building a simple personal blog? Most developers can probably make something fairly readable and pretty with some thought and a CSS framework. Increase the complexity to something that has more interaction with users and their data and you would do yourself a service to hire a competent designer.
tootie 4y ago
I think the stuff in this article is very useful and it is definitely easier than ever to create a non-terrible design. They can create guardrails that makes your design is legible, responsive and mostly accessible. That's not a "great" design, that's a passable design. The bigger trick is UX. How do you actually optimize user behavior and minimize frustration. That's a whole other skill.
xmprt 4y ago
> but that is when you get the bootstrap-material-tailwind look and that is not so great either now, is it The crux of your argument rests on this point and I think it's worth taking a step back and realizing that this is subjective and also that many people think the bootstrap-material-tailwind look is actually pretty good if not great. It probably looks like crap to your trained eye but if the average person can't tell if something is wrong then it's probably just fine. I've seen a lot more cases of overzealous designers trying something custom and new and having it fail. Boring technology is often the best kind.
- enraged_camel 4y ago
  It certainly is subjective. However, there is definitely something to be said about the usage of Bootstrap/Material/Tailwind resulting in your site looking like thousands of others, with little character or distinguishing “feel” of its own.
  - unmole 4y ago
    Why does every website need a distinguishing feel? Does every published book try to come up with a new typeface?
    - enraged_camel 4y ago
      I mean, a lot of websites are landing pages for products, and therefore serve a marketing purpose. Most books are just books.
      - xmprt 4y ago
        The landing page for a product *should* look like most other landing pages. I want to see all the important information in places that I would expect. Pricing, customer testimonials, list of features, documentation/tutorial links, etc., should all be presented up front and there aren't many ways to do that well. An amazing design could stand out from the crowd but something custom would probably more than likely end up looking worse than using bootstrap/tailwind. Especially since these SaaS companies aren't spending their headcount on hiring designers - they'd probably prefer to hire more engineers to build the actual product. If I see a design company with a boring website then I'd be a bit disappointed but I don't expect that from a run of the mill SaaS company.
passivate 4y ago
I am not a designer, so I take a more pragmatic view. If the intent is to earn money through your website and you are earning a ton of it, then you've succeeded. It doesn't matter if an outsider considers it good or bad design. But that' s just my simple-minded view.
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  The whole conversation has been a bit sloppy about the differences between design and looks (and the difference is not entirely clear most of the time) but suffice to say: If you intent for your page to do x and you accomplish that because of and not in spite of the design, then, by definition, the design is good (and it might even be great). > If the intent is to earn money through your website and you are earning a ton of it, then you've succeeded Sure, but just as that does not mean your code is great, it doesn't mean your design is. "Earning a ton of money" is not exactly a well defined company goal. For example, if a better design (or code) could yield 2x what you make, even if 1x is "a ton", you might reconsider your stance on either. Or you maybe you wouldn't. Who am I to say.
  - passivate 4y ago
    >"Earning a ton of money" is not exactly a well defined company goal. Well, okay, but you'll have to agree that at-least it is easy to quantify, "Good design" OTOH isn't, but again I'm not a designer so I see things differently. "Good design" "good code" in the abstract does nothing for me personally. The older I get the more I care much more about results, and the less I care about purity/aesthetics of design/code, etc. I'm around purpose-built biotech software all the time and to any UX person its going to look like ass. Janky, confusing menus, clusterfuck of various icon styles, seemingly random buttons littered everywhere etc, etc. No cohesive UX flow. But then this is expert software and is used in many aspects of vaccine r&d/production, and supports the production of high quality life saving products. I respect that, and therefore I respect the software as well.

Stevvo 4y ago

I think it's a matter of scope. Building a simple personal blog? Most developers can probably make something fairly readable and pretty with some thought and a CSS framework. Increase the complexity to something that has more interaction with users and their data and you would do yourself a service to hire a competent designer.

tootie 4y ago

I think the stuff in this article is very useful and it is definitely easier than ever to create a non-terrible design. They can create guardrails that makes your design is legible, responsive and mostly accessible. That's not a "great" design, that's a passable design. The bigger trick is UX. How do you actually optimize user behavior and minimize frustration. That's a whole other skill.

xmprt 4y ago

> but that is when you get the bootstrap-material-tailwind look and that is not so great either now, is it The crux of your argument rests on this point and I think it's worth taking a step back and realizing that this is subjective and also that many people think the bootstrap-material-tailwind look is actually pretty good if not great. It probably looks like crap to your trained eye but if the average person can't tell if something is wrong then it's probably just fine. I've seen a lot more cases of overzealous designers trying something custom and new and having it fail. Boring technology is often the best kind.

enraged_camel 4y ago
It certainly is subjective. However, there is definitely something to be said about the usage of Bootstrap/Material/Tailwind resulting in your site looking like thousands of others, with little character or distinguishing “feel” of its own.
- unmole 4y ago
  Why does every website need a distinguishing feel? Does every published book try to come up with a new typeface?
  - enraged_camel 4y ago
    I mean, a lot of websites are landing pages for products, and therefore serve a marketing purpose. Most books are just books.
    - xmprt 4y ago
      The landing page for a product *should* look like most other landing pages. I want to see all the important information in places that I would expect. Pricing, customer testimonials, list of features, documentation/tutorial links, etc., should all be presented up front and there aren't many ways to do that well. An amazing design could stand out from the crowd but something custom would probably more than likely end up looking worse than using bootstrap/tailwind. Especially since these SaaS companies aren't spending their headcount on hiring designers - they'd probably prefer to hire more engineers to build the actual product. If I see a design company with a boring website then I'd be a bit disappointed but I don't expect that from a run of the mill SaaS company.

passivate 4y ago

I am not a designer, so I take a more pragmatic view. If the intent is to earn money through your website and you are earning a ton of it, then you've succeeded. It doesn't matter if an outsider considers it good or bad design. But that' s just my simple-minded view.

jstummbillig 4y ago
The whole conversation has been a bit sloppy about the differences between design and looks (and the difference is not entirely clear most of the time) but suffice to say: If you intent for your page to do x and you accomplish that because of and not in spite of the design, then, by definition, the design is good (and it might even be great). > If the intent is to earn money through your website and you are earning a ton of it, then you've succeeded Sure, but just as that does not mean your code is great, it doesn't mean your design is. "Earning a ton of money" is not exactly a well defined company goal. For example, if a better design (or code) could yield 2x what you make, even if 1x is "a ton", you might reconsider your stance on either. Or you maybe you wouldn't. Who am I to say.
- passivate 4y ago
  >"Earning a ton of money" is not exactly a well defined company goal. Well, okay, but you'll have to agree that at-least it is easy to quantify, "Good design" OTOH isn't, but again I'm not a designer so I see things differently. "Good design" "good code" in the abstract does nothing for me personally. The older I get the more I care much more about results, and the less I care about purity/aesthetics of design/code, etc. I'm around purpose-built biotech software all the time and to any UX person its going to look like ass. Janky, confusing menus, clusterfuck of various icon styles, seemingly random buttons littered everywhere etc, etc. No cohesive UX flow. But then this is expert software and is used in many aspects of vaccine r&d/production, and supports the production of high quality life saving products. I respect that, and therefore I respect the software as well.