Crash Course: Design for Startups

I've seen several of these on HN in the past few months, and this one is definitely my favorite.

This post is well-written and covers a huge range of topics. I found the information detailed enough to point me in the right direction without going over my head. I also appreciate the tips on which design resources the author found valuable. Good stuff!

Mark Boulton's posts really are some of the best typography eye-openers. Especially his "Five Steps" posts[1][2] were what got me into design and made me "get" it. And it didn't take a lot of time to read through them. I recommend that people skip his book and read these two pieces instead.

Bear in mind that the grid guide is more of an intro piece; you probably won't be able to create grid-based websites after reading it (I know I wasn't).

Another good resource is Typography for Lawyers[3]. I'm actually very surprised (and disappointed!) that Paul didn't mention it. It's recently undergone a redesign, which has rendered all its former links broken, and it seems a little harder to navigate and browse for fun, but you must flip through the digital pages. It's probably the best typography resource for newcomers along with Boulton's 5-step guides.

I also just combed through my bookmarks to see if Boulton had anything else, and a great presentation popped up[4]. It, too, is great to get you into the typographic mindset.

These are really the best way to get someone into typography, and they are quick to read; no resounding THUMP from dumping seemingly insurmountable literature on your desk.

Of course, once you've got the bug, it'll never leave you, and a lot of the world will look a lot worse and be more painful for it. Educate yourself at your own risk.

[1]: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-st...

[2]: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-st...

[3]: http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?page_id=1876

[4]: http://webtypography.net/sxsw2007

NB! At some point, Boulton has changed his site, which has rendered the links to the other parts invalid. To remedy this, replace the underscores (_) in the links with dashes (-).

i don't know, i'm a little conflicted here because really, really, i know this is gonna sound stupid but the best way to get good is to make a lot of shit and then, after you don't feel weird about what you made, you show it to people who have taste (or that you value) and get critique.

I think you should design the way that you ______. Do you code? Apply that mindset to your design. Do you just hammer something out or do you try to improve it? Do you look for inspiration from other projects on github? Do you look for inspiration in orthogonal things like architecture or nature or industrial design or _____. Apply that to your design. Apply the same standards from something you're passionate about to your budding design work, it'll show. The more you make this your process the more your design will be your design.

as with all other things, there's a whole lot of cargo cult design where you toss in a grid and you dutifully build up some crazy type hierarchy or you use appropriate fonts or just plop down a müller-brockman layout or a tschichold page proportion or three sizes, two weights of helvetica neue, etc. You can convince yourself this is "correct," but sometimes you're just going through the motions. I've made a ton of absolute crap but sometimes i make something and i'm like "oh wow, that's an actually appropriate use for a grid, man what a total cock up that other project was."

It's very easy to make and parrot the current zeitgeist (just look at forrst), but it's hard to go out on a limb and try to make something that comes from you. It's even harder to make it something that other people will see and say "oh neat, i like that even though it's a little weird," and that's what practice does to you, but it doesn't come overnight, it takes effort, like anything worth doing, like programming or cooking or sports or _____.

The things that make you great in design are the things that make you great in any other field: passion, curiosity, exploration, failure, practice, communication and critique. all in great quantity. this is the moral you see on hn a lot, so it's like preaching to the choir, but go outside your comfort zone and try to make what's in your brain; it's a humbling and rewarding path.

i don't want to knock the post, it's fine, but also keep in mind that not everything needs to look like a startup website. I'm tired of friendly blue all the time, i want to see new designs, i want to see people going on a limb. I guess what i'm saying is: this is design for conversion sake, not for design's sake, and those are two totally different pots of gold.

Using LittleSnapper (or equivalent tool) to take and archive screenshots of well-done page designs is a really good way to enhance brainstorming.

After months or years of doing this, you build up an asset that has real value to you and other designers.

You should consider posting your screenshot library - I'm sure quite a few designers would be interested in it (or at least links to the pages, to avoid any copyright issues). New webapp idea?

If I can take an opposite view, I think this article on design is far from useful. It is stuffed with unproven generalizations (like, why the hell should plain edges be "boring"? why should we "adjust opacity"?). Better read Jacob Nielsen on this.

Wow, this is the damn best design blog post I've seen. Down to earth explanations, plenty of examples & resources, can't ask for more, thank you so much for taking the time to write & share this!

Something I find helpful is to start coding the basic outline in a browser, then take a screenshot and cut up the design in Photoshop.

It's then really quick to experiment with different layouts and adjustments.

I've been wanting someone to write a post like this for the longest time. Thanks very much, Paul.

That's a ton of information, and the more I read it, the more confused I feel.

I run a website called http://deeproute.com

It's a football general manager website with fake players. It's a full game. Take just the front page. There are all sorts of theoretical things to do, but I just want people to join.

Should I chop it up, and put jquery picture viewers all over the place with any half way relevant picture towards the game?

Maybe buy some stock photos of attractive, diverse people looking excited, which surely would be about any topic other than this game.

I don't know. I get lost in all the options, and a huge post like this doesn't help.

I know the hacker's absolute weapon for testing quality of web design. Just make a screenshot of your site. And try to write a program that can recognize on this picture all the important stuff (headings, paragraphs, links, phones, keywords...) and determine the UI elements and other stuff (headers, footers, menus, buttons, ADs, etc). If writing such program would be easy deal, then your design is good enough.

If that's your stencil in that pic, any idea of where I can get a hold of one, would be great for my notebook mockups

What an excellent post. If nothing else, and you're a coder who wants to spend the bare minimum amount of time improving your designs, I highly recommend grabbing "The non-designer's designer book" mentioned in the text.

You need to bring back your logo! I thought it was well designed and memorable. It wasn't until I scrolled down and saw it in a previous design that I realized that this new design was your site.

sorry if this is completely OT, but as seen on footnote 4, holy shit, they are making mib 3 ? thats awesome!

I would add Logo Design Love to your excellent reading list!

Thank you for putting this together. I am going to use your checklist this weekend to fine-tune my latest creation, cardealerquotes.org. Maawaaahhaha :)