Not a designer? Here’s how to make your web apps look awesome | Hacker News Reader

Not a designer? Here’s how to make your web apps look awesome

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150 pointsmootothemax46 comments

> Not a designer? Here’s how to make your web apps look awesome -

Hire a designer :)

I am saying this only half-jokingly. There's always a trade-off. Pre-made themes are great, but

(a) they are shared and have a mass-production stigma attached to them

(b) they are designed first and spec'd second, which is the opposite of the normal process whereby the design follows from what it is that needs to be achieved with it.

The title should really be "great looking designs on a budget" rather than focusing on the lack of the designer skills. Because if there are funds available, then contracting out the design and getting exactly what you want beats the hell out of purchasing a theme.

Agreed. Or partner with one. Design is so critical to a successful application that it should be an initial consideration, not an afterthought. As with any other venture, if you have a great idea you should be able to attract either the talent or the money to procure the talent.

I am in the very early stages of bootstrapping a business[1], I have no problems using Photoshop or Illustrator from a technical stand point but my design skills are rather lacking (see link). My plan is to take an awesome premium theme that has the PSDs and use it as a framework from which to build a design if not original with be distinguishable as my own.

I wish I could afford the time of one of my designer friends, I know some kick ass designers but even at mate rates my current budget isn't enough. That said I am planning on bribing a couple of them with booze and a home cooked meal to get some advice.

[1] http://www.relishment.com

Hiring a designer, or reading a bunch of design books (as stating in another comment on this link), can be a significant investment.

When reading these blog pieces, it never hurts to look at the perspective of the author (this is especially true for blogs like 37signals). In this case, the author had just written two articles on building a webapp that could produce a couple hundred dollars a month in revenue. He had also written about how he was having difficulty generating sales (meaning that little money was coming in). At that point, does it make more sense to throw additional money at the site to get a better design that might be a B+ design, or does it make more sense to spend a relatively low amount of money and get a B- design?

You can go to D for B- for $20 bucks, or go from D to B+ for several hundred (we'll assume D to A+ is several thousand+). I think it's a perfectly acceptable choice to close most of the gap fro $20 than to spend the couple hundred. If sales improve, you can always reinvest the profits.

What are other good sites for this kind of thing besides Themeforest? This looks like a good way to go to get a nice looking website up fast and inexpensively.

I mentioned TemplateMonster in another comment as being useless, honestly I've struggled to find another site that's as consistently high-quality. Does anyone know of any others?

WooThemes is a pretty good one: http://www.woothemes.com/

According to their blog [1] a lot of their templates use 960.gs, which might make them more friendly to use than ThemeForest.

[1] http://www.woothemes.com/2008/12/why-we-love-960gs/

According to their blog [1] a lot of their templates use 960.gs, which might make them more friendly to use than ThemeForest.

Just to play devil's advocate, plenty of themes use 960 on ThemeForest. I think all of them have used jQuery, but I've definitely bought a couple using 960 :)

960gs is a fancy template for math. Lots of sites use the 960gs style, without actually including the template.

This is the approach I took with Disrupt.fm

I almost convinced myself to spend around $7-800 on a design from 99designs before I found an awesome admin theme on themeforest for $20

Just because you purchase a theme from themeforest does not mean that your site will look like 500 other sites that have the same theme. I bought an admin template so that I could use the styles....not the structure and layout.You should purchase a theme knowing that it's going to be customized to fit your needs, not to just drop it in and be done...plus, chances are most of the admin templates are used on the backend for a bunch of websites that the public won't see.

I was really hoping for something explaining how to simply make designs that will work well for any topic, and instead read about how to use a paid for theme.

Disappointing.

how to simply make designs that will work well for any topic

If you can figure out a way to do that, I think you'll become a very rich man :)

Agreed, I was really hoping for some amazing minimalist techniques for adding that professional flare to any design.

There's no magic that makes design professional. If you want a professional design, pay for a pro template or pay for a pro designer.

I had the opposite reaction. There's so thing as a design that will work well for any topic and picking a pre-made design and tweaking it looks like a much more reasonable (and affordable) solution that I hadn't seriously considered before.

Hi everyone,

I wrote this post after being asked by a few people to tell them exactly what you get once you've downloaded the theme that you've paid for.

If you have any questions, please do ask away :)

Thanks for the writeup. I discovered Themeforest recently, but are any there other good options for buying non-WP themes?

I've looked at TemplateMonster, who should in theory have lots of themes, but have found their site such a nightmare to navigate that I just gave up. ThemeForest doesn't have the most themes, but by and large they're consistently good.

I've taken a similar approach for a few sites. I'm terrible when given a blank page to start from so a theme provides a good base. If the theme isn't already coded using a CSS framework, I'll usually port the design to Blueprint CSS as it makes maintenance and hacking the theme much easier.

At the risk of being seriously down-voted in a Hacker dominated community, please read the following:

Not a designer? Here’s how to make your web apps look awesome

A) Please hire a designer. You might hire someone who is not very costly and fits your budget but I cannot over emphasize the value someone who does this day in day out brings to the table.

B) If you were a designer and wanted to build something, what would you do? Use one of the million ready made coding junks like "Digg Template" or "Twitter template"? No you know very well that innovation does not work that ways. You would pick up a book and learn to program or find someone who knows it and will help you.

Just because "everybody" thinks they can design or make things "look" good, it does not mean it is design. Read a few books like the following to get started:

1)The Design Of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, Don Norman (basics of design)

2)Visual Grammar by Christian Leborg (basics of visual design)

3)Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann (typography)

4)Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability by Steve Krug (basics of UX)

5)Understanding Comics by Scott Mccloud (basics of storytelling- useful in web interfaces too)

6)The Visual Display Of Quantitative Informations by Edward R. Tufte (useful in information design and dashboards)

If you have read them and want to learn more, please feel free to contact via my HN Profile.

> B) If you were a designer and wanted to build something, what would you do?

Install wordpress and download a few plugins. It won't be the next facebook, but most sites aren't.

Similarly, if all you need is good enough design that won't scare people away a theme is probably adequate. You can always hire someone later.

There's room here for a dedicated site to focus on all the little design widgets that a developer needs too: Login boxes, modal dialogs, growl style notifications, mouseover effects etc. There's a lot of individual jQuery plugins available (and jQueryUI is too spartan), but for someone who is primarily a backend developer, it can be hard to put together something with a consistent look.

it can be hard to put together something with a consistent look

Totally, and that's why I go with a whole site theme and leave it there, definitely don't have the talent to go mixing and matching :)

I agree with you though, although I don't know if it would be something designers would use... but I really like the idea of going to a site, picking through different elements and combining them into something amazing. Any designers like to give us their opinion? :)

Take a look at Dojo Toolkit, it has a pretty full set of widgets with consistent look and feel, and even accessibility built in.

Although the lack of decent Dojo documentation should put you off. Unfortunately I don't get to make that choice and mostly have to guess / Firebug my way to a solution. Also, Dojo excels at reproducing a desktop-type app which might not be what you're after.

Awesome. Being a dev and having no eye for design, awesome place to start.

For some reason, people don't dig the plain white page with tons of controls.

For some reason, people don't dig the plain white page with tons of controls.

Heh, totally - I remember playing with RadControls years ago, and always being severely disappointed that placing the controls on the page didn't magically transform it into a masterpiece :)

This is a helpful article, but the theme of the site it's on is really tacky with its faux wood paneling which sort of takes away from its message about awesomeness.

What are the risks of this? there was an article(1) a while back which went through the google hits of "free wordpress themes" which had either base64 obfuscated js code directly in the theme code. What are the chances of code allowing other attack vectors?

(1) - http://wpmu.org/why-you-should-never-search-for-free-wordpre...

I remember the last time someone posted about ThemeForest, there were questions of whether you needed the extended license for a SaaS app that charged money or if the regular license was fine.

The license prices (~$100 vs ~$1000) could make a big difference; was there ever an "official" answer on this? The terms on the ThemeForest site aren't super clear.

was there ever an "official" answer on this?

Before I wrote the blog post, I contacted the author of the theme I use on TweetingMachine (for the tool itself), and he congratulated me on its use. Given the price difference of what he could be missing out on, that's good enough for me.

I am a little confused-- why does the theme come with PHP files? Isn't it just a front-end?

Makes life easier, as the various design elements have already been split up for you :)

Right, but I don't want to use PHP. I don't understand why it wouldn't be just a straight-forward CSS/HTML/JS front-end. Is there some code generated on the server that I'm not getting?

You can use whatever you like on your backend. This /is/ just a straight-forward CSS/HTML/JS frontend, however the theme's author has helpfully (un- in your case) provided the theme's basic structure a set of PHP files such that you can use it as a template without breaking it apart yourself.

Ah, got it. Thanks!

FWIW, they don't look "awesome" to me. They look usable and relatively clutter free though, which is better than many sites. Someone with a sense of typography could probably fix the layout and colors with minimal effort.

http://99designs.com

Disclaimer: I work at 99. :-)

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