I hate design. Please help me.
I used to like design. It was fun iterating over the look of a graphic or website and emulating great works of others that I found online. But as life got busier, it became less fun. Kind of like shopping for clothes. Now I've lost confidence in my ability to create websites and graphics that look good and lost any edge that I had in this area. I can get away with this because I'm a software developer first and foremost, but I'm tired of developing ugly sites, apps, and charts.
So, I would like to reignite the spark, but I don't have the time to go down lengthy paths such as long Coursera specializations or 12 week Udemy courses. Photoshop and Illustrator look like overkill for someone that doesn't do design every week, and something like D3.js has far too steep a learning curve just to create beautiful data visualizations once in a while. Any recommendations on an efficient path to make design fun and rewarding again? What tools do you find most useful with small learning curves? What educational guides, courses, or books are irreplaceable for the part-time designer whose primary job is in software/data? I'm looking for the 80/20 rule applied to design and hoping someone has some insights to share.
I've given up on Photoshop. A lot of designers I respect use Sketch, but I've never tried it. I do all my design with straight HTML and CSS.
I sit down and put something together, then tinker with it over and over until it looks good. The constant iteration can get tedious, so I try to spread it out over a couple days/weeks if I can while I work on some programming tasks.
By far the most fun part is using Dribbble for inspiration. I could browse that site for hours just looking at the amazing stuff that "real" designers are creating. Never ceases to inspire me to take another look at my own design attempts.
Hope this helps!
Dribbble looks great -- just what I needed to be inspired. Thanks for sharing!
Rather than go for a long course, I would recommend going for smaller design briefs. A couple that I can think of are:
http://www.dailyui.co/
https://briefbox.me/
There are sites like Dribbble and Behance for inspiration.
Take a look at sites like those, or take a look at brands that you like and try to re-design what you see.
Break your affinity for design down into smaller chunks so it doesn't become "learning design" and rather becomes "learning how to design with typography" or "learning to design effective buttons", etc.
I checked these out and really like BriefBox.me. I'm blown away at the design skills of the folks on there. Maybe a little will rub off on me!
Another one that I use is the Muzli chrome extension. Every time you open a new tab, you get the latest design news. Very good for inspiration but also seeing what the latest trends and topics are.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/muzli-2-stay-inspired/glcipcfhmopcgidicgdociohdoicpdfc?hl=en
I'll check it out. Thanks!
No problem!
Why not just outsource it?
https://creativemarket.com/
There are plenty of designers with their portfolio ready to work for the projects of others at a very reasonable price
This is a great option. I have certainly used designers in the past and will again in the future. What's neat about this site you sent is that it provides high quality design pieces that I could use in projects w/o having to do the heavy lifting from scratch.
Check out http://vossier.com/ – they give you practice design briefs and feedback to keep you accountable. Haven't tried it personally but sounds cool for people wanting to learn and improve!
Cool. I just signed up for their mailing list. Thanks!