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Ask HN: Design for Developers?

8 points by poppysan ↗ HN
I am thinking about doing either a workshop or web class about design, especially for hackers.

For those that don't know me Ive been doing design and animation (plus frontend dev) for forever, and I have noticed that every developer seems to want to increase their design skills.

Here's the question - Should I focus on the theory, the tools (more photoshop/illustrator, less css/js that everyone already is pro at), or the a combination of both?

Would anyone even be interested? Thanks in advance for the comments and suggestion!

8 comments

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frankdenbow
I would definitely be interested in this. Focusing on the theory would be best, since we can probably figure out the tools with practice.

David Kadavy is also writing a "Design for Hackers" book, so there is definitely an interest. http://bit.ly/hazXRX

joshuacc
I would suggest using a rule/guideline based approach that will allow developers to rack up some quick wins with comparatively little effort.

1. Show a horribly crowded page of text.

2. Give them the rule: "For most text use a line-height of about 1.5 to increase readability."

3. Show how much the page is improved.

In order to demonstrate all of the rules at work, you might want use one example page and show the process of applying one rule after another, till the end product is quite presentable.

poppysan
Good idea! I can visually collect samples of typical issues, then give quick overall solutions that support a broader theory, so that they have tips to use immediately, as well as the theory to apply to other issues that may arise.
peteypao
Definitely would be interested.
petervandijck
Do the "Hello World" of design. Developers like that approach.
JoachimSchipper
I'd steer clear of Photoshop - it's a big investment, both in time and in money, for someone who occasionally does a little web design on the side.

Focus on typography, as joshuacc suggests: a simple page with good typography is fine for most purposes, and an extremely elaborate page with bad typography is almost always bad.

Sargis
You should focus strictly on theory and css. For example, you can give advice on how to align certain things on a web page in order to make it visually appealing. Then you show the css required to make it happen.