Techniques are good as they make it possible to implement a design well, but a collection of good techniques do not add up to a great design.
First, I was a UX designer with no UI skills. I love designing UX, but I wasn’t doing it for long before I realized there were a bunch of good reasons to learn how to make an interface look nice
He says flat out it's not about UI design, it's about how to make a mockup attractive, because that has value too.
I thought the articles were great! Exactly what they claimed to be, written in an easy to read no nonsense style, with useful advice. I subscribed to his newsletter ;)
However, if you stray outside of the "function and form = great design" crowd: the kind that makes things that are actually usable and considered well-designed in their use by a random sampling of people with a well defined intended use case, and venture off into scary territory like post-modernism, metamodernism, and so on, you might find that "great design" has no definition at all; not even a single leg to stand on. And you can bring those elements of what you learn there, back into popular design, just to shift it a bit.
Those facets of design and art are all about breaking your expectations and understandings of what a thing is, of what it means to see it, interact with it, even think about it, and instead it forces you to see that you are looking through one window of aesthetics, when there are really billions of windows.
Technique is good for mainstream, a how-to, a guide, an introduction, something to google when you want to start incorporating various elements of design that are thought of as 'fundamental' by contemporary culture. Design and aesthetics (let alone defining greatness of either) are something much more philosophical; and arguably debatable.
While the 'greatness' of aesthetics are debatable, I'd argue for design it's not. Aesthetics are based on taste, culture, technology, background and approach, whereas design is about solving problems. Everything that goes into a design must have a purpose – aesthetic choices are important, but they should be in alignment with the brief.
There are rules and concepts which one must understand and know when to follow or subvert: form, size, colour, contrast, proximity, structure, action, relationship etc. This visual grammar forms the building blocks of design. Scary territory like postmodernism or constructivism or whatever just use these concepts in different combinations to express their ideas.
> Scary territory like postmodernism or constructivism or whatever just use these concepts in different combinations to express their ideas.
Not true. You begin with a foundation in order to assume that concepts like form, size, color, contrast, proximity, structure, action, relationship actually exist. You have your foundation, and you see post modernism through it. Post modernism is then an combinatorial expression of what already exists, to you.
What if nothing exists to begin with, or it is undefinable, or it is only definable in relation to a definable undefinable? The transience and dependency of terms on one another is what I am trying to express.
> There are rules and concepts which one must understand and know when to follow or subvert
One must not do anything. The most absurd, ridiculous, and controversial creations are what shape wave after wave of art, to then be analyzed and sifted through, to identify and separate something that was not separate to begin with, to define good and bad. But the definitions of good and bad are dependent on the context. The terms exist in relation to that which has already been defined.
The rule of design is not "follow the rules or do the opposite". There is more to do than use the rules to measure the value and define the potential of design, if you choose to do those things at all.
However, in general, in broad culture today and historically, I would say you are correct. But things change subtly, until everything is completely different.
The standard example would be an architect building the usual everything-is-a-rectangle modernist house and 'ironically' putting a classical portico two feet in front of it.
That kind of thing was done to death in the 80s and 90s, and it's not so much of a thing any more.
>The most absurd, ridiculous, and controversial creations are what shape wave after wave of art
You could probably argue that the entire web is one massive work of art.
It's certainly been absurd, ridiculous and controversial enough to qualify. (I mean that as a fan, not a critic.)
I agree with you on the internet.
The title is clear: this article is about creating a "Gorgeous UI." It's a good to visual aesthetics. It's not about "what makes a UI good or bad."