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Design

Design, where to start?

I'm a front end developer of six years, I come from a creative background but every time I go to design my personal site I freeze, I just can't do it.

Is there a path in team tree house that guides us from brief to full design? If not, what are some of your processes to design, do you sketch?

2 Answers

I have an art background as well and I'm in the early stages of planning out my first personal website. Here's what I have found to be helpful:

1) Define what you want the site to be. Is it for professional purposes and to find work? Or is it a fun way to share personal projects and ideas? Pinning this down provides some direction for imagery, fonts, etc.

2) Take an image or object that appeals to you and make that your color palette. It can be a photo, art print or ad. I'm using a swatch of fabric. Making color choices can be overwhelming and it's easy to get carried away.

3) Check out some sites you enjoy and jot down what you like about them. Is it the imagery or the information? Is it the clean, minimal look or all of the well thought out details?

4) Sketch! It doesn't have to be fancy! You're just playing with different layouts. My first draft was a bunch of squares with labels like "name" and "artwork".

Good luck!

Since you know front-end development you can browse this track Wed design and follow the courses you don't understand. For example since you are interested in design you can begin with Aesthetic and Design Foundations and then move on to photoshop or some other course or even just do the track. Now about sketching, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to do illustrations having the ability to sketch can be a big plus but it might not be needed for someone who just wants to edit images with photoshop for example.