Ok, so I work mainly on designing intranet applications in order to automate processes. Obviously the need for aesthetics isn't that great when you're working with business stuff, but I've been working on a publicly facing site on the side, and I realized that while my skills in creating the layout, css, java backend, etc are pretty good...I'm not that great at deciding what looks good and thinking up a pleasing design. I've always been of the opinion that this is something tough/impossible to learn, but I'm not sure. Are there any books or anywhere I could learn this, or is it best to always just realize my limits and outsource if needed? I'm not talking about GUI theory of making things accessible, and HCI fields, more along the simple artistic aspects of creating a web page/site.
I would agree with you that its a hard thing to learn... I think people just have a knack for it.
I usually find inspiration on the web and take from them a bit. I know bad idea, but I am not good at this either.
Check out A List Apart. A great resource for all things web design related. Focused more on theory and best practices than providing examples / tutorials.
Maybe you could go through one of the many "best looking sites of the web" listings and try to figure out what you like and why. Then try to recreate similar stuff on your own site.
If you're a learn by doing kind of guy, you could read The Zen of CSS design or More Eric Meyer on CSS.
Some people do not have the "artistic" on them and prefer to work on backend. If you want to try to be better with web design. I suggest you to simply verify the source code of website that may be good looking for your website and modify the source.
Here is a quick list of thing you may want to check tutorial:
- Photoshop to create your own button, image or box
- CSS to position graphic element
- Ergonomy to have the best for the user
I think the best way to tackle this is to try and find inspiration from other sites. Whenever I'm trying to come up with a new design, I find it helpful to just look at as many different designs as a I can, and then ideas will come to you. There are a lot of sites which focus mainly on the design part of web development, here are a few of my favourites:
CSS Zen Garden
Design Reviver
Web Designer Wall
Veerle's Blog
A List Apart
If you're unsure as to "what looks good", etc, then a good idea is to get input from various people as your build up the style. Friends and colleagues may have ideas on how to improve the design aspect. There's no reason why it can't be a collaborative process.
I have no recommendations re: books, but I'm in the same boat as you, and I find the following resources helpful:
http://www.bestwebgallery.com
http://www.colourlovers.com
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
http://www.csszengarden.com/
http://alistapart.com/
http://veerle.duoh.com/
I think your best source is the web itself. Hit Apple's site, Amazon's etc. the big guys spend a lot of money to make sure their sites are user friendly, and taking inspiration from their designs can sometimes help jump start your own work. There is a really great book by 37signals that goes into a lot of the dev/design philosophy that they use, and its worth poking around their apps, as they are all fairly well designed. there are also a lot of really great blogs and other sites such as A List Apart and Web Designer Wall just to name a few.
Along with some of the great "learn by inspiration" and "beg/borrow/steal" approaches, the following books are really helpful overall:
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Appr to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug User Interface Design for Programmers (Paperback) by Joel Spolsky
Even once you've got the notion of colors and graphics down, being aware that users muddle through sites, they don't read, and anything they might actually read has to be RIGHT THERE in your face, is crucial.
There's also good advice on cheap usability tests, etc.
I think that the best way is to look around (jason santa maria, simplebits, veer, 2advanced.com), but paying very close attention; try to think WHY their designs are so great; pay attention to the typography and the spacing between things (if you look at 37signals stuff, it's almost all on how the different types come togheter); do a print-screen, paste it in photoshop and zoom into each element; separate the header/menu/content/footer sections and see how they look "by themselves" on the document; see the buttons, the gradients, the colors.
Check out colourlovers.com, see what kind of matchings you like and dislike, but THINK about them, think WHY you like some things and don't like others; try to understand why someone else would like something that you don't (a LOT in design is understanding how other people are going to look at what you're designing).
Then, try to do something; a blog, or a store of some sorts; try to apply some of the elements that you observed. Have in mind that your first 100 or so designs are going to suck and there's nothing you can do about it except getting some feedback and doing it over again. Design It's a LOT of retouching, even when you're a pro (wich I'm not, btw).
To quote the shoe company, "just do it"... over and over...
best of luck!
Joel Spolsky has a recommended reading list for programmers that includes books on usability and design.
One I'll single out, because I've read it and liked it, is The Non-Designer's Design Book. It's a very useful, quick read. There's also one by the same author specifically about Web design.
I'm surprised people haven't mentioned Sitepoint yet. They're my first stop for web design anything. They also run 99designs which is always a good source of graphic design inspiration.
Note that I do not work for them, just a big fan :)
Two more suggestions:
- http://designinginterfaces.com/ (this one I like a lot, it provides an overview of ui concepts, and explains when and why you should use them)
- http://www.uidesigns.com/
I'd say to start by learning what's usable and makes using your websites easier, then prettify that. No amount of bling will save your site from sucking if the information you offer is not well presented. That's the point of Don't Make Me Think, and other books about usability.
You say that you already know how to create a layout, but that's not the same as knowing how to make an easy-to-use layout.
Keep it as simple as can be (but no more). Make it flow.
Once we get to the details, watch more about the font used, the letter-spacing, the distance between blocks, the contrast of the colors, the font size. For gods' sake, don't use size < 10 unless everyone in your company is young and their screen res is 1024x768 or less.
It's not hard to learn if you're willing to practice ad nauseum.
Just to further support previous comments, "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug is by far the first design book you should read.
The next one I'd recommend is by Seth Godin. He has a lot of really great marketing books (if you can get past the smug). I would highly recommend The Big Red Fez
It's one of those books, like "Don't Make Me Think", that break web design down into a pragmatic point of view first before addressing the "prettiness" of a website. After all, regardless of how pretty the message is it's useless if the user doesn't get it.
At the point that you are concerned about how your website looks to the user, it's all about graphic design: layout, composition, colors, typography, texture, imagery, etc. I had the same concern and came across many of the suggestions already offered. While many of them are very good, there is one book which I think stands out.
Sitepoint is a great resource, as mentioned above, and one of their most popular books "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design", by Jason Beaird, is an excellent introduction to these topics. Throughout the book, the design of a ficticious website is used to present the various design issues that take you from initial conversations with the client to the site's implementation.
Good luck!
I think creating a great looking website is a very difficult to simply learn ... you need to do it over and over and over again .. and like everything else you will learn from your mistakes .. and spend endless hours studying whats others do - the bad and the good -- some people are just born with the skill to make stuff look great .. its like music or writing .. the rest of use can only aspire to be that good....
my approach has been to learn all i can about organizing and assembling content and then find ways to apply themes that i can get my hands on and modify - that sorta thing .. use what's already out there .. Drupal is very powerful in this regard .. there are tons of themes and huge numbers of resources and it supporters are a very enthusiastic crowd ..