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Ask HN: How does an engineer learn design?

6 points by BadassFractal ↗ HN
I'm thinking of following the common HN advice of not waiting for the magical designer cofounder to come and save the day, and instead try to do my best by myself for the time being, while hopefully learning from the experience. I'm 100% technical and can only draw stick figures, but I still feel I should try to do my best at designing a good looking modern web app.

I'm not too worried about the client-side coding as much as about actually creating appealing color schemes, icons, logos and have it all be part of a coherent theme. Also, it'd be amazing if I got decent at creating attractive mockups, slide decks and pitch videos with Photoshop (one could argue it's a step above using something like Balsamiq from a presentation standpoint) or other modern tools.

Has anybody else started from scratch and actually got decent at it? Is there a good place to start? Texts / tutorials? What's the most effective way of ramping-up to the point where what I'm producing isn't too embarrassing?

Thanks!

9 comments

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djKianoosh
Honestly, I've found the best approach is to learn another art form. Lots of devs get into photography, for example. Through that I think you gain an "eye for design", so to speak.
jefflinwood
The least hassle way I've found of doing what you're doing is to just purchase a theme from ThemeForest (http://www.themeforest.net/) and then customize it from there. Look under Site Templates and they're all just HTML/CSS/JS and around $10-$20.

Case in point: I just spent $14 on a theme, and then spent a couple of hours trading sections around, putting in custom graphics, changing colors, spacing, layout, etc. Doesn't look much like the original, so not a total copy.

Later if it takes off, you can hire a graphic designer and work with them to accomplish your vision.

BadassFractal
That's a good idea, it would handle most of what I need for a reasonable price and I can still tweak it a bit if I need to. Learning how to be a decent designer would be definitely a lot more time consuming than just getting done with it in a couple of hours.
jefflinwood
And I feel that if you actually do edit the original theme, you will start to pick up on some of these design issues - for instance, changing colors in CSS certainly isn't hard technically, but it can really affect the perception of your site.
coryl
Getting started is really the best and easiest way to acquire design skill and taste.

When I started out as a freelance "web designer" as a teen, I began to notice graphics and advertisements a lot more, unintentionally actually. I would look at designs and wonder how I could replicate it, the same way you probably look at software and wonder how its written.

As for getting started, do whatever is fun for you. Photoshop some satirical ads for PETA. Recreate the Nike logo. Etc. etc.

accomplice
I'm thinking about teaching a class on this, if you want to be a guinea pig and give me some feedback on what you think are the most relevant parts of a designers oeuvre are, we could try it over coffee and look at some of the specific problems you are trying to tackle. -michael@michaelburkett.com