Ask HN: basic web design for small projects?

If a small demo, as you put it, is important enough that you need to show it for your career, it's important enough to either spend the time learning web design basics to make a decent looking demo, or else to enlist outside help.

(This doesn't necessarily mean hiring an expensive web designer or design firm; I regularly consult on projects for cheap or free in order to help clients, business contacts, and friends, and have found that it almost always pays off in terms of establishing better relationships with people, who in turn refer projects back to me, etc.)

So, I guess what I'm saying is, if you're not the greatest at design but need design services, then, uh, try to make friends with a good web developer with altruistic tendencies.

Basic design competency can be learned. Sure, you may not be able to learn to be a brilliant designer, but anyone can learn how to use Photoshop and CSS and how to produce a decent design.

I'm no designer either, yet I can make some decent designs (e.g. http://danieltenner.com) that, imho, look far from horrible.

The key is to practice and to get comments/criticisms from other people. It also helps to join a web designer forum and offer critiques of other people's designs. What you need is basically to train up your own internal critical engine so that you can point out the flaws in your own designs and correct them.

Being able to make things look good is a pretty useful skill in all walks of life, I'd recommend learning it rather than trying to outsource it.

I think where one's design skills can be considered lacking, as I very much consider my own, simplicity becomes increasingly important and attractive as a design philosphy.

Plenty of white space, clear typography, showing only what is needed, and aligning vertical and horizontal edges helps hugely.

Two tools that also help enormously: http://www.906.gs - a grid system for layout and http://www.colourlovers.com - Colour Lovers for awesome colour palettes.

Use "Google Design": as simple as possible, no fancy css / photoshop / effects.

If worked for Google it will work for you.

This depends on the project. I'm a non-visual person myself. If it's open source or non-commercial then I recommend http://www.oswd.org -- I have to admit your site will look very Web 1.0 but I've had luck outfitting my open source projects from here.

I'll second what others are saying: you should learn HTML, CSS (properties, selectors, box model, etc.), and become competent with Photoshop or The GIMP.

These skills let me modify (with mixed results) existing templates. They also save me money when working with a designer. I'm able to provide direction by modifying his mockups saving time (= $$$) and confusion in the process.

Photoshop, GIMP, CSS, etc. ara just tools. You should first get some good taste. It can be learnt. And it will pay well in the future (for example, you'll avoid hiring a bad designer).

Learn a bit of color theory, as to avoid creating horrible mashups. Don't trust just pre-baked palettes. The proportion you use of each color is even more important.

Learn some composition, read a pair of introduction books on design. The more you learn, the better.

Good design is hard to come by. In programming and in arts.

Most color wheels will help you pick three colors, but this isn't really necessary in basic sites. One of the things I've used to overcome this is to just use two colors. Even better is to just stick to the grey scale.

From there, learn a bit about typography. Typography can make a huge difference on whether a site looks great or looks like utter crap. I've seen a few sites that kept color choice really simply without a lot of fancy graphics that truly looked beautiful.

Another thing that will definitely help is practice. Do a couple practice mockups and breakdowns. You can follow along to a tutorial like http://is.gd/Lpx4 or just wing it. The first design I did was a royal pain, but by the second or third design, the process became much more natural and a lot easier. Each subsequent design has gone a lot smoother as well, and I can only attribute this to practice and reading about design.

You should learn basic design principles first. Start reading this book:

Non-Designer's Design Book

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-3rd-Designer...

If the template didn't work for you - perhaps you do just need to look around a bit - there are tons of good solid templates out there. here is 100 for starters: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/01/100-free-high-qua...

Learn illustrator for the web or fireworks before photoshop if you want to do it yourself and nice curves work wonders.

I'm doing a slinkset site up at the moment (in my profile) which I haven't promoted yet as it need some finishing touches but it's going to be somewhere you can post for jobs like this, look for advice or find templates etc.

The advice above is great if you have a real passion and talent for design or if you really need to save the $$$. However, as a counterpoint I'll share some compelling reasons to hire/borrow a real designer, even if that means paying some $$$ for a short-term contract: (1) It takes time to learn design skills. Can you really afford the opportunity cost? Wouldn't that time be better spent on business/hacker work? (2) For a credible product, you need a professional finish. Sure, you can go for a simple look like Google but even doing that well takes serious skills. Design is like DIY in your home - it's easy to 'get by' but hard to do a real professional job. (3) You will probably take longer to do this work than a professional. This means that not only are you spending valuable business/hacker time but you're spending even more time than a professional would.

Minimalism can get you pretty far. Good examples: Cutline by Chris Pearson, Daring Fireball blog, Google.

It sounds like you'd like to hire a designer, but the size of the project doesn't warrant paying for one. In this case, I'd recommend 99designs.com. Have a simple custom design created for a very reasonable price. Best of both worlds!

Design is a subject to be learned like any other - there's whole books and schools dedicated to it. Go to the library, look through some art and design books, if you see a style you like then write it down and emulate it (don't copy it outright, just use it as a framework or guidance). If you're into what a lot of people here are calling "minimal", look at modernism and the swiss-style. Browse published graphic design poster histories and start to pay attention to how the compositions are put together and what makes styles similar and different, and typography. In no time you'll have a greater appreachiation of the craft and your own designs will look a lot better. It's a lot like programming actually.

http://blueprintcss.org/ is much like 960.gs - a clear concise framework designed to give you nice typography with easy layout - look into it. It will save you serious time.

Get someone else to do graphics if that's not your thing.

Make sure any content (phrasing, wording, etc.) is TARGETED towards your users. As a developer, you will think you have the right content, but likely you won't.

If you are in a hurry and do not have the patience, then you will only get frustrated if you try to learn from scratch. I suggest you go with ready-made stuff - like for CSS, take a look at BlueprintCSS (it makes CSS a hell a lot easier) -- go for minimalism with nice typography. Then get a good photo and in some minimalist design and it should be good.

Or better yet, ask your friends to do it ;-) there are guys out there who are trying to build up a portfolio and will be willing to do simple jobs for free.

Just curious, do you have a URL for your site?

I'm in the same boat and while I will ultimately design a web site for the project, right now I am using WordPress which has a lot of really nice themes.

Probably unrelated, but I could whip up a design comp for you quickly, minus the coding (I'm REALLY busy at the moment). Nothing in return, I just like to help :)