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Design Secrets For Engineers

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Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#2

Post by typicalrunt »

I never thought of using KeyNote to design a UI. I always thought designers use Photoshop or InDesign for that purpose.

Is KeyNote used just for the ease of use, or is there some other requirement that the Adobe products don't measure up to?

Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#3

Post by ThomPete »

typicalrunt wrote: post #2

I never thought of using KeyNote to design a UI. I always thought designers use Photoshop or InDesign for that purpose. Is KeyNote used just for the ease of use, or is there some other requirement that the Adobe products don't measure up to?

There are no rules for what to create your UI in.

I have used everything from Keynote to PowerPoint, to Photoshop, to illustrator, to indesign to FireWorks and a number of other applications.

KeyNote is fairly good as long as we are talking overarching UI

Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#4

Post by markbao »

typicalrunt wrote: post #2

I never thought of using KeyNote to design a UI. I always thought designers use Photoshop or InDesign for that purpose. Is KeyNote used just for the ease of use, or is there some other requirement that the Adobe products don't measure up to?

I'm a big fan of OmniGraffle for this purpose. A lot of the same arrangement snaps and all, and it's extremely simple to create primitives and text and whatnot.

Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#5

Post by th0ma5 »

typicalrunt wrote: post #2

I never thought of using KeyNote to design a UI. I always thought designers use Photoshop or InDesign for that purpose. Is KeyNote used just for the ease of use, or is there some other requirement that the Adobe products don't measure up to?

i use inkscape or open office's presentation tool all the time... or sometimes scripts that make svg files depending on what it is, or hell notecards and a pen! :P

Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#6

Post by vladimirm »

Good general advice. One remark though: while it is generally better to use designer typefaces, it's important to remember a lot of them weren't designed for the screen, but paper. As such, Garamond, for example (it's mentioned in the post), which is probably one of the best typefaces made, often doesn't work well on the web.

Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#7

Post by Anechoic »

I hate to be that guy, but this isn't "Design Secrets For Engineers", it's "Design Secrets For Software Engineers." (or developers/UIX/etc).

"Keep visual hierarchy in check" and "Use designer fonts" isn't very useful advice in designing an instrumented hammer...

"Engineering," especially in the colloquial usage of the word, covers a lot areas that have things in common, but there are lots of things those areas don't have in common. Software engineering /= all of engineering anymore than mechanical engineering represents all of engineering.

Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#8

Post by kirillzubovsky »

Very good advice, although this is more of a reminder for designer-wanna-bees, like myself, as opposed to a guide for software engineers. Chances are, really good software engineers are really terrible designers, and they won't understand what you are talking about or why, no matter how hard you try. But try!

Re: Design Secrets For Engineers

#9

Post by cpeterso »

vladimirm wrote: post #6

Good general advice. One remark though: while it is generally better to use designer typefaces, it's important to remember a lot of them weren't designed for the screen, but paper. As such, Garamond, for example (it's mentioned in the post), which is probably one of the best typefaces made, often doesn't work well on the web.

Beware that designer fonts are expensive! Most people don't realize that fonts bundled with Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop might require a license for commercial use!
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