can a non designer become a real good designer?

I come from a programming perspective and have a hard time design a pretty looking website.

Any idea how I can convert myself into a designer? not intend to go through 3 years diploma course, k?

toby

 

Graphic designing isn't really all that hard. The hard part, is knowing your program very well. Are you using photoshop? If so, good-tutorials.com REALLY helped me out when I was just starting out. I hope to see you in here filling requests soon!

 

Toby, yes you can become one. Seriously, you don't even need format education if you're just going to do web stuff

I learn everything from scratch (self taught) since I was 15. It takes a lot of practice

One introduction to graphics design course would help though!

 

Negative, you have to have a genuine interest for it, because a genuine interest helps you study design more effectively and be more creative when you do it yourself. There's just too many crappy unserious webdesigners who should never have installed that cracked copy of photoshop.

Maybe you have the interest though. I would say with interest comes skill.

 

yes offcourse he/she can

 

Anyone can design, but as pointed out.. you must be interested in it to do well. I am a graphic designer and I been designing for 6+ years. I self-taught myself and never took any classes. Though, like I said, you must be interested and motivated.

 

thanks gusy for comments, appreciate that , well, i guess talent will help as well right?

When i was young, I rarely do graphic and my art class sucks! i guess talent play a very important role.

 

Well I dont think most designers just have "natural" talent. You have to work at it to get good and develop talent.

 

Tell you what. You help me with programming, and I'll help you with gfx. I'm not new at programming, just new at using php/C++ and really need to learn them.

 

you will be a copy pest designer not more than that!!! go ahead best of luck..

 

@me4you
ARE YOU OK?!?!

what you thought that a designer is designer from when he/she born ? lol!

anyone can be a "great" designer ,practice will make you perfect!
and some tutorials
http://www.good-tutorials.com
http://www.pixel2life.com
Just don't copy them,try to understand them.

DarkX

 

It can be done - I've got thirty years of programming under my belt, and converting to design isn't that hard, you just need to learn one thing.

Don't waste your time ****ing around in photoshop or some other paint program working on your layout.

IN FACT, working in the 'content separate from presentation' mold will come more naturally to you than it does people coming from a graphical background as they quite often cannot separate the two.

If you're a programmer, you should be familiar with the idea of minimal code - the least number of opcodes/instructions to get the job done is usually the easiest to fix, least prone to breakage and fastest executing cross-platform. (think ASM code targeting all 32 bit x86's without specific branch optimization for P3, P4, etc)

The same applies to HTML - mark up the 'content' with the minimum semantic HTML to describe what the content is in the order you want it to appear on the page. Do not think about layout, just get the content on the page in a sensible manner... THEN go in and make some CSS to position that content and set up the overall layout - and only THEN dive into putting presentational graphics onto your elements... because then you already know exactly what sizes you need for rounded corners, flat headers, etc, etc. The stuff most 'designers' who work in a paint program waste time compositing then using as a single image, a programmer can composite in the page meaning smaller images, easier revisions, dynamic width and height of containers, and a host of other things your more graphical types do, then can't figure out why their pages are broken in ____ browser or ____ OS or _____ system metric. (lots of fill in the blank there)

That's how I do all my design proposals - Because for me wasting time on a .psd is exactly that, time wasted. I can generate my layout quicker in the code than I can in photoshop... and when I'm done with my 'proposed' layout - I'm already set to deploy. (though I usually 'cheat' by sending the client a screencap instead of letting them at my live code before they've signed on the dotted line)

If you are a programmer, you are going to grasp the various concepts, particularly of CSS faster than most 'designers', and I think you could be a better designer BECAUSE you understand the underlying methodologies of programming. (You will also like me call 'bullshit' on a LOT of the claims made by designers and browser makers on things you and I know should be one or two lines of code that they haven't been able to put in place for a decade or more)

Probably also means you are going to make really pretty code, since as a programmer you've hopefully already mastered PROPER use of the tab key, and realize that with tight code stripping tabs is a waste of time. (case in point, most of the time I can recode most other peoples sites that go nuts stripping all leading tabs and cramming stuff on one line, and in the process not only add formatting, but make a SMALLER file just because of my using less tags)

 

I'm glad that you decided to take me up on my offer for help. Oh and BTW, 50 post mark~ =DDD

 

You the learn the software yourself. But you will also need an eye for aesthetics and colors. These can be trained through experiences.

 

Yeah, zuluboy has a point. You will need to get a good nack with the hexidecimal color system.

 

Or math... little thing called 'luminance'

Of course, the problem is most of your paint programs calculate intensity not luminance (even when they call it such)... The formula for which is:

L=0.3*red + 0.59*green + 0.11*blue

This formula can be found in the "Microsoft Program Usability Guide" (an old book circa Win 3.1), Addison/Wesley's "Programmers Guide to the EGA/VGA" and O'Reilly Books "Usability Standards in Web Design", and is based on the human eyes sensitivity to luminance. (What's called 'lightness' or 'luminance' in photoshop is calculated using the eyes sensitivity to reflected color, not emissive). IBM even chose to hardcode this conversion into their MGA/VGA adaptors when used with monochrome displays.

A good rule of thumb for usability is that you should have 50% contrast as a minimum which on a scale of one byte per color that's 128

For example, ever notice that pure red (#F00) text on a pure blue background (#00F) is illegible? On a scale of 0..255 red has a luminance of 76.5, pure blue has a luminance of 28.05, a difference of less than 50, a far cry from our 128 minimum. To make the red easily legible by this math we in fact would have to brighten it all the way to #FF7272

It's also why black text on dark grey (#888) is a /FAIL/ - L0 atop L107.95 falls short of 128.

A wierd side effect of that formula is also that it's nigh impossible to follow it and make a page the colorblind cannot read

Sometimes it just comes down to the math and the physics of the human eye.

Oh, and he said he's a programmer - hexadecimal color understanding shouldn't be THAT big a leap for him since he already understands hex. (or at least should)

 

Dude WTH, deathshadow? I've never heard of that, but I'm a great GFX designer. No use confusing the poor guy, lol.

 

To a programmer, that's not confusing - thats math and formulas that you can use to make up for 'oh, it looks good'... and a lot of times what 'looks good' is also 'impossible to read'.

 

Lol okay. And programmer doesn't mean you can understand everything somebody throws at you...