Focus on developing a solid workflow in a single design tool first. Just follow beginner video tutorials, especially playlists. As you develop a workflow, and make lots of mistakes, you will naturally pick up bits and pieces of UI/UX patterns and trends and learn the right questions to ask.
Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
11–20 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#12Anything by Adam Wathan is a great way to start.
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#13Refactoring UI's videos and book are great: https://www.youtube.com/c/SteveSchoger/videos https://www.refactoringui.com/book
Second this! Refactoring UI has very practical and effective advice for creating web UI's. Apart from this, I recommend "Learning Web Design" (5th Edition) by Jennifer Robbins. It has a broad sweep and still gives you all the practical tips. Learning React (2nd Edition) is a good one if you're going to use React. P.S: I did a similar Ask thread earlier this year where some of these were mentioned - https://news.ycomb…
Second Robbins’ “Learning Web Design.”
Also, if you’re really a true beginner, also try “HTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide” by Joe Cassabona.
VQS is great because as you’re trying to learn an aspect of code, it includes a text explanation, what the code looks like and what you should expect to see on screen.
Good luck! Have fun! :)
Edit: “Hello Web Design” by Tracy Osborne is good for learning graphic design principles as they relate to the web. If you can get a copy of “The Non-Designers Web Book” by Robin Williams, that one’s excellent, too. It’s old, but the principles still apply.
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#14It is not technically a "learning" resource, but Storybook[0] is useful resource for developing web UI. The tutorial[1] section is very helpful. This is a learning-by-doing type of resource. [0] https://storybook.js.org [1] https://storybook.js.org/tutorials
There's also "Don't make me think"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Make_Me_Think
For blogs Smashing Magazine is consistently solid.
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#15I learned a lot from the comprehensive udemy courses, one example
https://www.udemy.com/course/the-web-developer-bootcamp/
And I am sure you find some more geared towards UI/UX.
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#16this book: the non-designer's design book by robin williams.
this is on my list of best books about particular topics. this one is about design in general. i still remember the acronym the author came up with after all these years. parc for: proximity, alignment, r..., contrast. okay i lied, i don't remember what r stands for anymore haha :)
everything you see and like about good design have to do with these 4 terms. the web is no different.
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#17Focus on developing a solid workflow in a single design tool first. Just follow beginner video tutorials, especially playlists. As you develop a workflow, and make lots of mistakes, you will naturally pick up bits and pieces of UI/UX patterns and trends and learn the right questions to ask.
>Just follow beginner video tutorials,
Bad advice, I'm a beginner myself and it's bad. Because people make a lot of mistakes, watching video isn't going to cut it.
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#18this book: the non-designer's design book by robin williams. this is on my list of best books about particular topics. this one is about design in general. i still remember the acronym the author came up with after all these years. parc for: proximity, alignment, r..., contrast. okay i lied, i don't remember what r stands for anymore haha :) everything you see and like about good design have to do with these 4 terms.…
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#19this book: the non-designer's design book by robin williams. this is on my list of best books about particular topics. this one is about design in general. i still remember the acronym the author came up with after all these years. parc for: proximity, alignment, r..., contrast. okay i lied, i don't remember what r stands for anymore haha :) everything you see and like about good design have to do with these 4 terms.…
Robert, r is for Robert ;)
Re: Ask HN: Best self-starter resources to learn web design?
#20No mention of this? https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
> You probably build websites and think your shit is special. You think your 13 megabyte parallax-ative home page is going to get you some fucking Awwward banner you can glue to the top corner of your site. You think your 40-pound jQuery file and 83 polyfills give IE7 a boner because it finally has box-shadow. Wrong, motherfucker.
> I'm not actually saying your shitty site should look like this. What I'm saying is that all the problems we have with websites are ones we create ourselves. Websites aren't broken by default, they are functional, high-performing, and accessible. You break them. You son-of-a-bitch.