How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education • Hacker News Board

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#21

Post by lobo_tuerto » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

revorad wrote: post #13

davidw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I do not fathom the people who have been downvoting my comment. By all means, if you find someone on this site who submits nothing but link spam, downvote and flag them. Otherwise, why get your knickers in a knot about me getting a pittance for recommending a book I happened to like?

I have learnt to ignore HN downvotes on my comments, and am now learning to also ignore upvotes. Thinking about internet karma is not worth anyone's time, especially because it robs you of your sense of humour.

I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence.

After stoping to care for downvotes and upvotes, I started to see my karma as a _wallet_, with it I could _spend_ points in irrelevant comments, bad jokes, etc., but not carelessly, just enough to have a good laugh without compromise or worry. Positive points in my _wallet_ means I'm still contributing positively to this community, just that.

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#22

Post by ig1 » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #20

I feel like I get all the theory. I can't sit down in Illustrator and make it happen. I'd really like to get a good book or course that can help me actually use the tools to design great sites.

There's a lot of good Photoshop walk through tutorials out there, I find they're a good place to get started, after you do a few you start to internalize the various techniques that are popular.

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#23

Post by michaelpinto » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

What so many programmers just don't get is that design isn't a programming language that you can learn in a few weekends in your spare time. When you got to art school you sit in a room with over a dozen other artists so you see every potential solution to a problem. When you go to art school you study with a wide range of teachers who have every sort of professional experience (which is different than reading a book or looking at a website).

I've been doing design for interactive media for over twenty years and I can tell you that most self educated "web designers" are really just decorators who know HTML. And not that there's anything wrong with that but there's a huge difference between a decorator and someone who thinks like architect when you need one. Simply put: Despite our love of the idea of the brilliant actor or rock star who becomes famous overnight most of us really do need an education.

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#24

Post by toumhi » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 5:38 PM UTC

I think most of HN users who fit that description (wanting to self-educate if you lack a formal design education) are programmers.

To these i say: learning design is good and valuable, but if you want to learn design because you want your next websites or web apps to look good, IMHO you'll be better off outsourcing to a designer who spent years studying these things (you won't become a great designer overnight). For a couple hundred dollars you can find somebody (good) on odesk to design a couple pages that would look much better than a starting designer could do.

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#25

Post by cageface » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 5:58 PM UTC

revorad wrote: post #13

davidw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I do not fathom the people who have been downvoting my comment. By all means, if you find someone on this site who submits nothing but link spam, downvote and flag them. Otherwise, why get your knickers in a knot about me getting a pittance for recommending a book I happened to like?

I have learnt to ignore HN downvotes on my comments, and am now learning to also ignore upvotes. Thinking about internet karma is not worth anyone's time, especially because it robs you of your sense of humour.

The whole karma system is childish and unnecessary. Assigning imaginary points to posts doesn't improve them any more than taking them away discourages trolling and juvenile behavior.

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#26

Post by telemachos » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 6:00 PM UTC

The book he recommends for grids[1] isn't available yet (and has no release date).

As an alternative perhaps Khoi Vinh's Ordering Disorder[2].

[1] http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/products/a-practical-guide-to...

[2] http://www.subtraction.com/2010/11/05/i-wrote-a-book

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#27

Post by dreamdu5t » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 6:04 PM UTC

tedkimble wrote: post #16

A question to web-designers: What are the metrics with which you test your design experimentations? Does it pass the test if it aligns to a grid, contains a pleasant color palette, has enough whitespace, hierarchy, and contrast? Or is there something more fundamental you strive for? I think a formal design education would be much less concerned with the former, and more concerned with the latter -- what are your most…

It's hardly ever actually about conversion. It's usually about what your superior accepts as looking "good."

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#28

Post by rapind » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 6:41 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #20

I feel like I get all the theory. I can't sit down in Illustrator and make it happen. I'd really like to get a good book or course that can help me actually use the tools to design great sites.

http://www.lynda.com/Design-training-tutorials/40-0.html

Plenty of free courses out there as well of course. I personally prefer paying for most self-learning stuff since I'll be investing so much time into it.

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#29

Post by duopixel » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 6:44 PM UTC

tedkimble wrote: post #16

A question to web-designers: What are the metrics with which you test your design experimentations? Does it pass the test if it aligns to a grid, contains a pleasant color palette, has enough whitespace, hierarchy, and contrast? Or is there something more fundamental you strive for? I think a formal design education would be much less concerned with the former, and more concerned with the latter -- what are your most…

You are right, there is something more fundamental to strive for: purpose.

Alignment, whitespace, hierarchy and contrast are elements of visual syntax. You internalize the rules so much that when you're designing you're not thinking about it; you are thinking about what you are trying to achieve.

Say you need to design a sign-up page for a newsletter, you need to:

1. Tell users what the newsletter is about

2. Say how often it's published

3. Make them feel comfortable giving out their e-mail

4. Give some demonstration of value

As you are designing, you are thinking about what is the best way to accomplish each of these goals in a visual manner. You often don't even think where to align stuff, it just falls into place because you know where it's supposed to be.

If I were to make a parallel to code, it would be clearly internalizing the syntax of the language. You no longer think about where to indent your code, or of a comparison operator in javascript is == instead of =, you have achieved enough fluency to stop thinking about how to write code and actually achieving something.

___

Since everybody is plugging their own stuff, I wrote on the subject of programming and design here: http://method.ac/blog/design/programmers-designers.html

Re: How to self-educate if you lack a formal design education

#30

Post by DenisM » Sun, Sep 04, 2011, 6:47 PM UTC

revorad wrote: post #11

davidw wrote: post #2

The "Non Designer's Design Book" is pretty good. It was suggested to me on this forum some time ago, and I got a lot out of it, even though it's still a struggle to really internalize it https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321534042/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=de... ; (And, yes, I have an affiliate link there. That's why I got a high karma score here, so I could start raking in the millions with affiliate links to books...)

You're clearly not greedy enough. Here's the UK link with my affiliate ID :-P : Papaerback - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Will... Kindle - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Non-Designers-Design-Book-3rd-ebook/...

I recommend against the Kindle version, as the illustrations are messed up. Which is really bad, because they are supposed to illustrate design