Design for Non-Designers: Part 1

The one piece of advice to instantly improve your design skills.

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Even if you’re not a designer, I’d bet that at some point in your career you’ll need to do something visual, whether it’s making a landing page for your project, designing a form, creating your personal website, or making slides.

So, part one — what’s the one main thing to remember when designing?

Reduce clutter.

That’s it. Focus on just this one thing. If you want your design to feel more beautiful, reduce visual clutter.

Our ugly widget that we’re going to apply design concepts to.

I made these little widget to help illustrate these clutter-busting tips. As we go through the concepts below, we’ll apply them to the widget and see how it starts to look more cohesive and visually appealing.

Let’s get started!

Reduce clutter by adding a grid to line things up.