I can usually muddle through whatever programming task is put in front of me, but I can’t claim to have a great eye for design. I’m firmly in the conscious incompetence stage of making things look good.
The good news for me and people like me is that you can fake it. Sort of. I doubt I’ll ever compete with people who actually know what they’re doing, but I have found some resources for making something that doesn’t look like the dog’s dinner.
- Design for Hackers by David Kadavy - A great introduction to typography, colour theory and spacing.
- Refactoring UI by Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger - Great tips for layouts and UI components, with actionable tips, before/after, and clear explanations of why some things look good and some things look… not good. If you don’t want to take a chance on the book, which to be fair is quite expensive, it’s worth going through their list of design tips on Twitter and their Refactoring UI blog on Medium.
- Interactive Guide to Blog Typography by Tommi Kaikkonen - What it says on the tin. Extremely cool.
I’d like to add some more free resources to this, so hopefully I’ll get back to it.
