Design For Programmers 🎨
Hello friends!
I hope you're enjoying this Serial Maker newsletter! If you missed any of the past editions, make sure to check them out. And if you know someone who might benefit from this newsletter, please forward this email to a friend :)
Design is subjective. We instinctively know when something looks good, and when something doesn't. But what makes something look good? Most likely, it's built on solid design principles.
I recently wrote Design For Developers, with a simple premise on consistency as the basis for all design decisions. This newsletter provides links to more resources to flesh out a solid foundation in design.
I received a surprising (for me) reaction to this article from another programmer, claiming I assume that developers are inherently bad at design, or not aware of why it's useful, and that management is often the bottleneck holding back developers from pursuing a design education. If you've experienced this sentiment in your own career, reply to this email and tell me about it. Maybe we can change this conversation to empower developers looking to improve their design skills instead of placing developers into this isolated box.
Let's talk about design for programmers. 🎨
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TLDR
My one rule for making designs look better: be consistent!
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Resources for design fundamentals
No matter your current design skillset, these links are chock-full of tips for making your designs look better.
Refactoring UI
Bite-size, specific tactics for developers looking to improve their designs. Tips like Use Fewer Borders. These are real-world tactical decisions you can make to make things look more polished. And they just released a book!
How Stripe Designs Beautiful Websites
Stripe continues to deliver gorgeous, trend-setting web pages. With each new feature release, their design team puts together a layout so compelling, copycats immediately start modeling their own websites after it. This article covers a few techniques the Stripe design team does to take their work to the next level. These aren't so much fundamentals, as they are examples of how to go above and beyond to make something special.
Spectrum, Adobe's design system
Learn from the pros by example. The Adobe team has compiled their entire philosophy on design. Design systems can get pretty far in the weeks, but there is some gold in there. Imagine putting together a comprehensive guideline for every possible visual element across an extensive suite of creative tools. That's Spectrum.
New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual
This classic book is a masterclass in design standards, including fascinating rules for numbers, arrows, symbols, and colors that anyone that has used the NYC subway simply takes for granted. Check out the Stand Clear essay by Christopher Bonabos, a love letter to the genius of the Unimark designers who crafted the whole system.
Collect UI
Handpicked, daily user interface inspiration. Browse by category, like Sign Up or Checkout. See what other designers are making, and learn from their techniques.
Brand New
Opinions on corporate and brand identity work. Read their thoughts on the Slack identity rebrand.
Tools for UI design:
Designers have lots of options today when choosing their UI design tool. Here are a few worth checking out.
Thanks for reading! 🙌
Hit reply to tell me what you're doing to improve your design chops. I'd also love to know what you thought of this issue, and what you want to hear about in the future.
Until next week,
Craig
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