First, a bit of philosophizing about design in general

So many things that people perceive as either natural talent or tediously acquired skill are so much easier to get good at when you start to approach them as habits or mindsets. The very first step to becoming a good designer, at least in my experience, is to take a deep breath and realize that (unless you live in the woods and are reading this on a bear) every single thing around you has been meticulously designed by someone. Being aware of this fact, and moreover, thinking critically about how you might do it and why you would do it that way is the design mindset.

Design is not arbitrary

Actually, that’s not true–Bad Design is arbitrary. Good Design is intentional. Pick up the nearest man-made object, single out a characteristic and spend a couple of seconds thinking about why it is the way it is. No aspect of Good Design should ever be arbitrary. Good Design has no clear distinction between form and function, meaning that no design choice is purely arbitrary. It’s easy to think of design as wallpaper that you slather on top of things. Good Design, however, should serve the purpose of the object as much as anything else does.

The job of the designer is to think of everything

Have you ever used something, either a physical object or a book or a website and suddenly realized that not only does it work perfectly, but that it’s incredibly beautiful in it’s own right? It’s hard to describe, but when something is just really well made it becomes a sort of visual poetry, with every single part acting as expected to the point of being pleasantly surprising. The thing is, you probably don’t notice this too often (unless you already have the design mindset) because good design is also invisible. People only really notice things when they don’t work. The job of the designer is to think about as many of the details as possible, which brings me to my next point:

Design is in the details

I’ve never met a designer worth their salt that won’t get stressed out over a single pixel from time to time (some more often than others). The best designers I’ve ever met are borderline obsessive. The reason is that, while 1px might not seem like much, when there are lots of tiny mistakes in something they start to add up and affect the overall feel of a design. This doesn’t mean that you have to be anal-retentive all the time–sometimes the best work comes when you just let go of control a little bit–but don’t forget the details.

Homework

Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com) has a ton of great articles for designers just starting out. Take some time to read about color theory and grids.

Spend some time browsing Little Big Details, a blog of the details in UI design that make a big difference.

Meet Your Type is a beautifully designed PDF about typography. If you’re still interested after reading that, move on to I Love Typography, a blog about type. They have a really great article about web typography.

Finally, take an hour to browse designfridge.co.uk, and explore any sites that jump out at you. Make a note of what you like and what you don’t and why some things work and others don’t. Pay attention to the details.

Some questions to ask about a design:

Why does the color palette of the site work? What characteristic do the colors have in common?

Can you identify a grid?

How would you describe the site’s personality?

Are the elements on the page “boxed in” or open? Why?

This is a lot of reading material, but it’s definitely all worth it. Besides, the more design you look at the more you’ll have to draw inspiration from! Having an understanding of color, grids and type is a great foundation to build upon. Next week we’ll begin talking about the web learning a bit of HTML and CSS.