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Bootstrapping Design

bootstrappingdesign.com

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Re: Bootstrapping Design

#41

Post by keeptrying »

A lot of people who buy this book are going to be developers who think that they can learn good taste in design from a book. It doesnt work that way.

Its all about practice, feedback from someone knowledgeable and iteration. Open up photoshop and try to create a design. You will bumble around like a fool for the first day - even if all your trying to draw is a smiley face.

But as you do this and as you scour the internet for tutorials and start practicing, it gets easier.

Get feedback from someone in the biz (it takes 10 minutes to look at a design and give feedback). Heed the advice and do more designs.

And all said and done the information to do this is already out there on the internet.

All in all, for me, it was just another case of overcoming my learned helplessness.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#42

Post by nyrb »

I think I will buy this book when its out. I like the free preview of the book after subscribing my email. It will be an interesting book to receive.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#43

Post by hopeless »

mcteapot wrote: post #36
hopeless wrote: post #12

I'm really looking forward to this book. It seems like the perfect thing for a developer like me. Usually I just buy a template from ThemeForest and extensively modify it but I'd really like to start from a blank page one day.

Like programming good design takes practice. Just because you read a book is not going to make you a great designer. The question is are you willing to stop developing and put aside the time to design well or pay someone to do it for you.

You're obviously right. But I don't want to be a great designer. As I said, I've got by with modifying ThemeForest templates but that's always someone else's design. I'd like to work on my own design fron scratch but, at a minimum, I'd like to have more design knowledge when selecting and modifying those templates.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#44

Post by nsfmc »

studiofellow wrote: post #37
mcteapot wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like programming good design takes practice. Just because you read a book is not going to make you a great designer. The question is are you willing to stop developing and put aside the time to design well or pay someone to do it for you.

False dichotomy. People are capable of doing more than one thing. I'm a designer who writes code. Developers can learn design basics, and doing so will serve them well! You're right though about practice. That topic is on my outline.

well, i think the point is more "any time you're designing (or learning to design) is time you're not coding" (which, let's be honest, the times that you can actually be doing both at the same time are few and far between) for some folks that's not an acceptable tradeoff, for others it is.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#45

Post by teej »

kreek wrote: post #39

I'm all for getting developers some design skills and I'm sure the book will help. That said mastering anything takes time. Could you give a designer a Rails for Dummies book and claim "Save thousands by not hiring a developer"? Update: I'm a full time developer now but I graduated with a design degree. It took me two years of full time development to become a competent developer. Mostly because when I started out I…

On paper, it doesn't make any sense. Why should an expensive developer spend time learning cheap tasks? Surely we can hire someone to do it.

But the math doesn't work like that on a team.

The paper value I've seen in my company is a huge reduction in communication overhead. We aren't constantly pinging each other for revisions of this or changes to that. The design expert will set the original design. Design-savvy developers pay more attention to detail, implement designs more thoroughly, and can make small changes perfectly. It doesn't sound like a lot, but these details are exactly what make a great product.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#46

Post by studiofellow »

nsfmc wrote: post #44
studiofellow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. People are capable of doing more than one thing. I'm a designer who writes code. Developers can learn design basics, and doing so will serve them well! You're right though about practice. That topic is on my outline.

well, i think the point is more "any time you're designing (or learning to design) is time you're not coding" (which, let's be honest, the times that you can actually be doing both at the same time are few and far between) for some folks that's not an acceptable tradeoff, for others it is.

That's fair. I think it's about prioritizing. At some point, coding new features becomes less important than improving aspects of the design. So the tradeoff will vary with each situation.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#47

Post by hopeless »

kreek wrote: post #39

I'm all for getting developers some design skills and I'm sure the book will help. That said mastering anything takes time. Could you give a designer a Rails for Dummies book and claim "Save thousands by not hiring a developer"? Update: I'm a full time developer now but I graduated with a design degree. It took me two years of full time development to become a competent developer. Mostly because when I started out I…

If a designer had a great idea for a simple app, then yes a Rails for Dummies book would suffice I'd say. So why not the other way round?

Also, it's not always the case that a developer has spare money to pay a designer with (the ideal situation). I don't have cash but I do have some spare time in the evenings to work on my businesses.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#48

Post by corford »

studiofellow wrote: post #2

Thanks for submitting this. I'm the author. I'm still in the process of writing and would love to make this a collaborative project. If you have topics or ideas you'd like to see covered, please leave a comment or shoot me an email. hello@BootstrappingDesign.com I'll also be sharing excerpts with the mailing list and on my blog.

Something that would be hugely useful to me (a code monkey who knows good design when he sees it but is incapable of producing anything that looks nice himself) is a chapter that covers a few essential skills in Photoshop or Fireworks.

Basic nuts and bolts stuff like:

- how to use a few simple effects and filters to blend images in to backgrounds or do a cutout or colorize an image to match the sites colour palette

- useful tips or tricks for designing the chrome of the site (e.g. how to make a menu bar with rounded edges and a gradient effect, how to make nice looking buttons, how to make a textured background, how to blend edges etc.

- how to use transparency and/or layers effectively

Why would this be useful?

Like lots of coders (I assume!), my approach to design is to surf around the web for hours and bookmark sites that I think look good or have ideas I can use. I then spend ages kack-handedly trying to bash bits of screen shots together and introduce new elements (buttons, stock photography etc.) until I have ended up with a design that looks vaguely appealing. If I had a quick cheat-sheet for Photoshop or Fireworks that aided this process it would be a god send!

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#49

Post by keeptrying »

nsfmc wrote: post #44
studiofellow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. People are capable of doing more than one thing. I'm a designer who writes code. Developers can learn design basics, and doing so will serve them well! You're right though about practice. That topic is on my outline.

well, i think the point is more "any time you're designing (or learning to design) is time you're not coding" (which, let's be honest, the times that you can actually be doing both at the same time are few and far between) for some folks that's not an acceptable tradeoff, for others it is.

You rarely have to do both at the same time.

IMHO if you've just started out on a startup - its better to be a designer because you can do customer devleopment without touching a line of code but by having a design which shows the customer exactly what to expect.

After you get a bunch of people begging you to build, then you build.

Re: Bootstrapping Design

#50

Post by javek »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #22
studiofellow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for the list. I'll make sure it's covered.

Also: I am a colorblind engineer. How can I pick color schemes that don't make infants cry and write copy that isn't a legendary cure for insomnia?

I'm in the same boat - a colorblind engineer. I always browse kuler, and google stuff like "web design awards" to find examples. Also, if you can pick up a copy of Illustrator it has a cool color picker feature that allows you to look at different color options based on color theory (complimentary, analogous, etc.)
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