Where are people getting their designs from? Do they have a designer on the team? How are they "just knocking out" good designs so quickly? Or are they paying some photoshop wiz to do it for them?
1. They hired a designer to work with them. 2. They have become good at design themselves.
It’s kinda obvious when you think about it.
Probably the designs are sourced from their experiences. Just like you, many of them have seen beautiful sites. It's not impossible to find a few you like and mix/match design elements plus some of your own originality to produce your own variant.
But surely most creative programmers are never happy to draw a line under the coding, to concentrate on the graphics. What's your experience? Sounds like you know...
Bootstrap, etc are simply tools used to implement interfaces. They are not magic bullets. Design, like programming, takes time. It's not about gradients or drop shadows, but those are tools used in design.
It's often an iterative and collaborative process. It is not, however, "Agile". You can't design the interaction for a piece without looking at the whole.
Find someone who cares about interface, interaction, and usability. Ideally they can do graphics, html, and css. Ideally they've done some user testing before or are just really good at getting users. If you find someone like that, be prepared to pay. The good ones are few and far between and all that I know are gainfully employed or have hourly rates exceeding $200USD/hr.
If you want to learn more about this, there's a library of stuff out there. But just reading a bunch of books won't suddenly make your UIs prettier. But if you implement what you learn, it may improve their functionality. And that's far more important.
Maybe I'm getting old, but it is just quite amazing that engineering / CS graduates have this sense seemingly "built-in".
There are some gorgeous designs on there but they seem heavily geared toward blogs and admin interfaces...? Maybe I'm not looking in the right section but I can't seem to find anything suitable for consumer style web apps.
It would be really helpful if someone could post specific templates that they've used on their projects
Do you see why this is inaccurate?
He's talking about imitating or drawing inspiration from other websites for the visual elements of a particular website. Everyone does this.
It is the exact same thing.
You can't look at, say, Facebook and determine the exact code structure and replicate that.
Point of fact: I started as a visual designer when I was a teenager. Then I learned PHP, then Ruby, then JavaScript, off which I made lots and lots of money and no little fame. Then I got really interested in the way software WORKED and turned into an interface designer. Who designs and develops her own shit. Now I make and sell products directly to people who use them, nobody will "hire" me for anything ever again.
What is my profession exactly, that I am preciously trying to protect?
And even good programmers do "copy" certain elements (programming style, idioms, design patterns) from good code they see. It's like reading code is such a great way to be a good programmer.
Disclaimer: I actually do agree with Amy's point that randomly stealing design elements without understanding is like copy-pasting code from Experts Exchange. But imitating and remixing is such a time-honored tradition among artists that I hate to see it painted with such a broad brush. There's good stealing and there's bad stealing, and it mostly has to do with how intelligently you do it.
Unless, of course, you as a developer describe your main skill as being "a text editor wiz."
Here's how you can tell:
"Oh, Bob! He's an Eclipse wiz!"
How much does that actually tell you about Bob's programming skill?
Edit to add: beautiful software is a design problem--encompassing both function and looks. If the functional design is good, but the person doesn't know Photoshop, it makes sense to hire a Photoshop wiz to help them with the looks. I think we're in agreement, though, that being good with the tool is not by itself evidence of good design.