5 ms·

Merry Doomsday HN: All of my YC Facelifts are free to download and use

98 points by kyro 14y ago

joshmlewis 14y ago
Did anyone end up buying them from you?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sergiotapia 14y ago
What is this? Just photoshop files of startup websites you made?
- kyro 14y ago
  Just that, yes!
jspthrowaway2 14y ago
Am I the only one that gets slightly annoyed when people redesign a Web site without being solicited? I understand redesigns like this are part of practice for a designer, but sometimes I feel like these designs are "I don't like yours, mine is better," when design can be such a subjective thing. I don't really see a benefit, for example, in his redesign of EXEC: Before: https://iamexec.com/ https://iamexec.com/ After: http://kyrobeshay.com/post/20746111679/yc-facelift-exec http://kyrobeshay.com/post/20746111679/yc-facelift-exec I actually think the redesign looks worse. Is there a tangible benefit here design-wise that I'm just simply not smart enough to grasp? I find it ironic, by the way, that I'm so vehemently against rhetoric that decries skinning Bootstrap without design sense (as in that prior thread), but finding myself defending an obvious Bootstrap here as looking better. I can't connect with the feeling because I'm not a designer, but in code, if I wrote something one way and someone else rewrote it just because they like their way better, then showed it around to get buy-in, I'd be a little annoyed. If there was a tangible benefit like faster runtime, or better maintainability, that's one thing, but just because of preference? That annoys me. Maybe it's different between our lines of work.
- kyro 14y ago
  I've spoken to almost all of the founders of those companies and they've all been totally fine with it. If anything, they got some traffic, I got design practice and exposure, a few of the companies actually went on to change their site design, and now potentially dozens of people (probably more with 600+ downloads) have a template to play around with for their own purposes. Seems like a win-win-win-win.
  - jspthrowaway2 14y ago
    Thank you for replying. Did you ask permission or forgiveness, to use the common expression? (Did you reach out before doing it or after?) I find if I do work and then approach people, people tend to be guilty about revealing their true feelings regarding the situation lest they offend me due to the work I've put in. That's the only reason I ask.
  - AlphaSquared 14y ago
    I for one am glad you did what you did and then shared. The designs will help me learn more and get inspired. Thank you.
- jenius 14y ago
  I mean this in the least insulting way possible -- I think you just lack design sense. His redesigns are very clearly significantly better (which is why they have been so popular here on HN), and default bootstrap ALWAYS looks bad on a professional company's production site. It screams "I don't give a shit about real design so i just used bootstrap". I would urge you to study design a little more before you start critiquing designs. Design and code are vastly different disciplines -- I started as a designer then learned code later (now full time developer) and I can tell you this from experience. I regularly see you discussing design on hacker news, and everything you post about it is misguided. Educate first, then discuss.
  - noibl 14y ago
    Sorry but to me the overuse of gold just says 'You can be Donald Trump.' I understand the idea behind it but the contrast between the designs highlights a problem with this kind of project: lack of input. Exec's current design makes the whole proposition feel more normal and the way they've put the personal elements up-front helps allay any latent worries about somebody being exploited. I don't think this is accidental. Web designers sometimes forget that visual communication is about so much more than layout, colours and fonts. The visual content is extremely important. And I suspect that with reference to their marketing goals, Exec have done well here. (Of course there's room for improvement.) FWIW, I think this is the weakest of the designs the OP has presented, and that because of a difference in message. Not at all saying you're bad at what you do, Kyro. Speaking of exploitation, I've downloaded the pack and will no doubt learn something from it. Thanks!
giles 14y ago
As a person who doesn't have an eye for design these are very helpful, thanks for sharing!
erohead 14y ago
Thanks Kyro, it's great to see what another mind things about our site.
brianchu 14y ago
Some of my design thoughts. I am not an expert, so you've all been warned: I actually like the Exec redesign, except for 1) the awful gold color, and 2) the bottom half of the page. After the 1-2-3-steps the layout gets a little bipolar (no pun intended) and cluttered with a two-columned layout. I would've put all those elements in a single column. But I actually find the overall layout of the upper half to be more intuitive than Exec's actual design. Not a fan of the Flutter redesign. The actual Flutter page is really cool and unique, even if at the expense of readability. The redesign looks like every other startup/app landing page. Ditto for the Pebble redesign. It looks too "corporate." The actual Pebble site has less clutter and a warmer feel to it. Big fan of the Instacart redesign. A lot better use of limited space, and the foldout detail panel is definitely something Instcart should have. Instacart's current design of having a rotating bar of categories is really unintuitive and pretty bad design IMO. I think having other people redesign your website/app is actually a great thing, because it's a way of getting different perspectives. Too often we optimize for the local max (moving a button around) instead of looking at the big picture (wondering if we even need that button in the first place). Designers at Apple, for example, create 10 entirely different designs for each new feature, which is whittled into 3, and after more work on those three they decide on one design.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
eriktrautman 14y ago
Thank you for the designs. It is quite helpful to occasionally see inside the creative mind of someone else.
rizky05 14y ago
and.. it's down
JacobIrwin 14y ago
Thanks for sharing kyro. 2 Problems I encountered: 1.) At http://cl.ly/0s0N0b41262a http://cl.ly/0s0N0b41262a, the "view in browser" link is broken and forces a download (in Chrome). 2. ) When I opened these in Photoshop CS5 (12.0.4) I got an error message, saying: "Some text layers contain fonts that are missing. These layers will need to have the missing fonts replaced before they can be used for vector based output." (see screenshot: http://pbrd.co/12wfmxs http://pbrd.co/12wfmxs)
- kyro 14y ago
  Yeah, no problem. 1) That's just the way CloudApp handles zipped files. 2) That's because I didn't include the fonts that I used. Wouldn't have been appropriate to distribute them.
vini 14y ago
thanks kyro, rly good stuff to learn.

98 points by kyro 14y ago

joshmlewis 14y ago

Did anyone end up buying them from you?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

sergiotapia 14y ago

What is this? Just photoshop files of startup websites you made?

kyro 14y ago
Just that, yes!

jspthrowaway2 14y ago

Am I the only one that gets slightly annoyed when people redesign a Web site without being solicited? I understand redesigns like this are part of practice for a designer, but sometimes I feel like these designs are "I don't like yours, mine is better," when design can be such a subjective thing. I don't really see a benefit, for example, in his redesign of EXEC: Before: https://iamexec.com/ https://iamexec.com/ After: http://kyrobeshay.com/post/20746111679/yc-facelift-exec http://kyrobeshay.com/post/20746111679/yc-facelift-exec I actually think the redesign looks worse. Is there a tangible benefit here design-wise that I'm just simply not smart enough to grasp? I find it ironic, by the way, that I'm so vehemently against rhetoric that decries skinning Bootstrap without design sense (as in that prior thread), but finding myself defending an obvious Bootstrap here as looking better. I can't connect with the feeling because I'm not a designer, but in code, if I wrote something one way and someone else rewrote it just because they like their way better, then showed it around to get buy-in, I'd be a little annoyed. If there was a tangible benefit like faster runtime, or better maintainability, that's one thing, but just because of preference? That annoys me. Maybe it's different between our lines of work.

kyro 14y ago
I've spoken to almost all of the founders of those companies and they've all been totally fine with it. If anything, they got some traffic, I got design practice and exposure, a few of the companies actually went on to change their site design, and now potentially dozens of people (probably more with 600+ downloads) have a template to play around with for their own purposes. Seems like a win-win-win-win.
- jspthrowaway2 14y ago
  Thank you for replying. Did you ask permission or forgiveness, to use the common expression? (Did you reach out before doing it or after?) I find if I do work and then approach people, people tend to be guilty about revealing their true feelings regarding the situation lest they offend me due to the work I've put in. That's the only reason I ask.
- AlphaSquared 14y ago
  I for one am glad you did what you did and then shared. The designs will help me learn more and get inspired. Thank you.
jenius 14y ago
I mean this in the least insulting way possible -- I think you just lack design sense. His redesigns are very clearly significantly better (which is why they have been so popular here on HN), and default bootstrap ALWAYS looks bad on a professional company's production site. It screams "I don't give a shit about real design so i just used bootstrap". I would urge you to study design a little more before you start critiquing designs. Design and code are vastly different disciplines -- I started as a designer then learned code later (now full time developer) and I can tell you this from experience. I regularly see you discussing design on hacker news, and everything you post about it is misguided. Educate first, then discuss.
- noibl 14y ago
  Sorry but to me the overuse of gold just says 'You can be Donald Trump.' I understand the idea behind it but the contrast between the designs highlights a problem with this kind of project: lack of input. Exec's current design makes the whole proposition feel more normal and the way they've put the personal elements up-front helps allay any latent worries about somebody being exploited. I don't think this is accidental. Web designers sometimes forget that visual communication is about so much more than layout, colours and fonts. The visual content is extremely important. And I suspect that with reference to their marketing goals, Exec have done well here. (Of course there's room for improvement.) FWIW, I think this is the weakest of the designs the OP has presented, and that because of a difference in message. Not at all saying you're bad at what you do, Kyro. Speaking of exploitation, I've downloaded the pack and will no doubt learn something from it. Thanks!

giles 14y ago

As a person who doesn't have an eye for design these are very helpful, thanks for sharing!

erohead 14y ago

Thanks Kyro, it's great to see what another mind things about our site.

brianchu 14y ago

Some of my design thoughts. I am not an expert, so you've all been warned: I actually like the Exec redesign, except for 1) the awful gold color, and 2) the bottom half of the page. After the 1-2-3-steps the layout gets a little bipolar (no pun intended) and cluttered with a two-columned layout. I would've put all those elements in a single column. But I actually find the overall layout of the upper half to be more intuitive than Exec's actual design. Not a fan of the Flutter redesign. The actual Flutter page is really cool and unique, even if at the expense of readability. The redesign looks like every other startup/app landing page. Ditto for the Pebble redesign. It looks too "corporate." The actual Pebble site has less clutter and a warmer feel to it. Big fan of the Instacart redesign. A lot better use of limited space, and the foldout detail panel is definitely something Instcart should have. Instacart's current design of having a rotating bar of categories is really unintuitive and pretty bad design IMO. I think having other people redesign your website/app is actually a great thing, because it's a way of getting different perspectives. Too often we optimize for the local max (moving a button around) instead of looking at the big picture (wondering if we even need that button in the first place). Designers at Apple, for example, create 10 entirely different designs for each new feature, which is whittled into 3, and after more work on those three they decide on one design.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

eriktrautman 14y ago

Thank you for the designs. It is quite helpful to occasionally see inside the creative mind of someone else.

rizky05 14y ago

and.. it's down

JacobIrwin 14y ago

Thanks for sharing kyro. 2 Problems I encountered: 1.) At http://cl.ly/0s0N0b41262a http://cl.ly/0s0N0b41262a, the "view in browser" link is broken and forces a download (in Chrome). 2. ) When I opened these in Photoshop CS5 (12.0.4) I got an error message, saying: "Some text layers contain fonts that are missing. These layers will need to have the missing fonts replaced before they can be used for vector based output." (see screenshot: http://pbrd.co/12wfmxs http://pbrd.co/12wfmxs)

kyro 14y ago
Yeah, no problem. 1) That's just the way CloudApp handles zipped files. 2) That's because I didn't include the fonts that I used. Wouldn't have been appropriate to distribute them.

vini 14y ago

thanks kyro, rly good stuff to learn.