Why Is The Emphasis Purely On Coding?

I think a lot of this is down to the emphasis on internet technology, which the likes of CSS, Ruby, JS and PHP encompass this but not necessarily Adobe and Photoshop. The main pull for learning treehouse is learning to understand and learn to control technology using code.

But don't let this put you off. Many of the things you see done in Illustrator and Photoshop can be achieved with expert knowledge of CSS and JavaScript. That's why I think there's still a place for drafting in Photoshop. Then from Photoshop I can almost visualise the CSS I'll need to replicate that design in the browser.

Hi Jonathan,

thanks for replying mate.

Maybe I need to improve my CSS more than anything! Maybe I'm neglecting how powerful CSS can be.

I'll try learn more CSS along with photoshop!

Thanks

I'll speak to this a bit.

I come from a more designer background. I have a Bachelor of Art degree in Industrial Design. When I graduated I couldn't write a line of code, I picked that up post-grad because I wanted a new challenge.

In some ways learning how to code hindered my design process because I started designing in boxes, or things I know I could do easy in code.

Going back to the design skillset. There are some great blogs out there. There are two very important lessons I can suggest. Learn to take inspiration from other designers (READ: Not steal their design, but simply take inspiration). The second is to prototype fast and often.

The tools, like Photoshop and Illustrator aren't that important. Instead, learn things like color theory, space and weight balance, and how to draw a persons eye around your work as you want it to be. As geeky as it sounds, learning some Art History will help. You'll see the different phases of art over the centuries, what worked and what didn't. I'd also suggest starting to draw or paint. Color balance, weight, rhythm, spacial layout can be learned a lot by picking up paint brush. Start cheap, and be abstract if you want. It never has to be picture perfect. Heck, look at someone like Jackson Pollock. When you learn these principals of design, you should be able to look at his work and explain why they were successful when viewed. My favorite artist is still Salvador Dali to this day. Look at his work too.

The second part to this is to prototype fast, without a filter. I had a professor that use to make us prototype something like 100 toothbrush handles and would give is 48 hours to do so. Something so mundane as a toothbrush, and we had to come up with 100 unique designs for it. Two things happened. At this stage we were looking for quantity, not quality, so we couldn't afford to throw out any ideas we thought were terrible, and trust me, a lot of ideas were terrible. The other was ideas started feeding other ideas, and those ideas started feeding more, and the snowball of designing rolled over and over until you had one amazing idea left standing, basically because you exhausted hundreds of ideas before it.

It's not a pretty process. But the end result when done right is sure pretty. Most successful designs are really just on a pedestal of crappy and ridiculous designs that came before it. And any designer worth their salt will always critic your work, but never criticize your designs during the process.

Now some resources I love

• http://www.core77.com/
• http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/
• http://tympanus.net/codrops/
• http://tutsplus.com/

Good luck and have fun with it!

Thanks Kevin I never thought about it like that!

I suppose I've just completely neglected that aspect because I don't associate creating websites with the areas you've just talked about.

I'm going to check out the resources you've provided :)

Thanks again.