Hi folks,

 

New to the forum so I thought I'd say hello and start with a question.

 

I've been developing and marketing Wordpress sites for over 4 years and have become fairly confident in these aspects. I feel I'm really lacking with design though and at best I can emulate another site.

 

While I'm competent in CS4, I don't know the first thing about design. Can anyone recommend where I begin with design? I'm a total beginner so the basics of layout and color schemes seems like a good place to begin!

 

All the best.

 

John

I'm on the exact same wavelength as yourself!

 

Would be great to get some help with this!

I have recently got hold of a book by Jason Beaird called "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design".

 

I've been told it's a good book to cover Web Design although I haven't read it yet.

Books like that for showing you what can be done with CSS.

 

If you're interesting more in the theory of design or the process there are a few good books out there.

 

A Smile in the Mind is a good book on design.

 

I think the best advise for a budding designer is, see everything.

Books like that for showing you what can be done with CSS.

 

If you're interesting more in the theory of design or the process there are a few good books out there.

 

A Smile in the Mind is a good book on design.

 

I think the best advise for a budding designer is, see everything.

 

I just had a quick look through it and didn't see any CSS.

 

It's all about imagery, layout, colour combinations etc.

The principles of beautiful web design is a good book, but it wont' teach you much about design. You really need to get your hands dirty with some design theory. Learn about typography, layout, colour as basic fundamentals.

 

Some sites I find useful are bamagazine.com, drawar.com, webtypography.net - there are probably more but it's 1am and my brain is getting ready for unconsciousness. If I can think of more, I'll post them up.

 

It's not such an easy thing to find good resources for online as most web design tutorials are just photoshop tuts. They won't teach you design.

 

Reading up on grids will also equip you with some ideas about how to make a decent layout.

 

Good luck

On a more immediate note, put away the computer and get a sketch pad out. Make some wireframes and muck around with that a little bit. Learn the design process.

 

Often it's a process of "grinding" stuff. What you don't see with a lot of attractive designs are the Mk1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc. versions that were thrown in the scrap beforehand. I think it's a mistake to assume that the top designers just come out with a top design straight off the bat. It can be demoralising to think like that. Assume that they have a couple of attempts that they throw away.

 

Also it's a good point what notbanksy says - these tutorials give you the technical know how for implementation but don't teach you "about" design. One of the most immediate things you can do is look at other people's designs and try and train your eye to work out why they are good, and why other designs are bad. Your eye and brain need a bit of experience.

Edited August 18, 201114 yr by Gibson

I just had a quick look through it and didn't see any CSS.

 

It's all about imagery, layout, colour combinations etc.

 

Yeah, I was thinking about another book I have which is like this one but is more focused on how to put it on the screen with CSS.

I can't recommend enough learning design separately to web design. Web design uses the same principles, the same techniques, the same ideas - so learning design itself in its own right is a sure way to give you a solid grounding.

 

The reality is HTML and CSS are easy, they're not what's important here because they're the easy bit. The hard bit is being good at design, which does not come from being good with HTML and CSS.

 

Learn some Gestalt Principles: http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm

 

Learn Total Design: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Total-Design-Integrated-Successful-Engineering/dp/0201416395

 

Learn how to produce a specification: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=198320

 

Basically, yeah, learn design from the ground up.

The best way to learn design has nothing to do with actually designing anything... at first.

 

Need to get your mind busy with the varying degrees of theory and reasoning. Colour theory is the easiest to start with (in my mind) because most people already have a fair idea why they don't like certain colour combinations. So studying this first will put you in the right mindset to move on to the other disciplines such as balance, weight, typography etc etc.