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Ask HN: How do you make your websites/apps beautiful? What tools do you use?

9 points by mmdoda ↗ HN
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?

9 comments

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julienreszka
You could look at some codepens for inspiration
jabo
This is a pretty good book on the topic: https://www.refactoringui.com/
yen223
+1 for the book. I can also recommend TailwindCSS, which is a CSS framework by the same guys behind Refactoring UI.
PinkPigeon
Funnily enough, I guess I use my own website builder to do this.
egfx
> throwing together some components from different libraries

That's actually a winning strategy.

cercatrova
Have you been to Dribbble, Behance and other design sites? They have great inspiration for me.
m33k44
The way I do it is, use "raw" bootstrap+jquery* for development. And before deplyoing, use themes for beautification e.g. https://bootswatch.com

* I am not a front-end developer, so I use the easiest tools for the job.

zzo38computer
I 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.

donnanorton
Website 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.