November 13th, 2019 ×
Design Foundations For Developers
Wes Bos Host
Scott Tolinski Host
In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk about design foundations for developers — tips to follow that will make your designs better!
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Show Notes
6:35 - Our backgrounds in design
12:41 - Foundations
- Consistency makes a big difference
- Use "training wheel" tools until you are confident
- Always work within a system
- Less is more - subtle is better
19:39 - Color
- Color theory
- Complementary colors and shades
- Stick to color pallet generators until you are good enough
28:51 - Spacing
- More spacing than you think you need
- Vertical rhythm
- Letter spacing: -1px
- Consistent margin and padding
34:47 - Typography
- Sans vs serifs
- Finding fonts
- Use proven combinations until you know your way around
41:49 - Interaction
- Design for all states (e.g. standard, visited, active, hover, etc.)
- Animations should be quick
- Interactions should make sense
45:04 - Concerns beyond visuals
- Accessibility via color contrast
- Thin fonts and light grey are awful
- Think about the poor Windows users
48:47 - Inspiration + Resources
- Take inspiration from the best — you'll find your own voice after enough work
- Go easy on trends - blobby characters with purple hair
- Take a trip around the world wide web
- Stripe
- Dribbble
- Site Inspire
- codrops
- Refactoring UI
Links
- Designer Starter Pack - Andrea Crofts
- LastPass
- Colour Lovers
- Syntax 142: Travis Neilson on Skills Gap, Design, Focus and Working at Google
- Bloomberg
- Dropbox
- FontPair
- FontJoy
- Figma - Google Font Pairings
- Type Scale
- Creative Market
- Radnika Next
- Stripe
- Dribbble
- Syntax 72: Accessibility
- Firefox
- Site Inspire
- codrops
- Refactoring UI
- Adam Wathan
- Steve Schoger
××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××
Shameless Plugs
- Scott: FullStack React with NextJS - Sign up for the year and save 25%!
- Wes: Beginner Javascript
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