Sometimes, devs may believe design is less important than functionality.
But these fields go hand in hand!
Even if you do not intend to explore design, knowing its basics is vital as a dev.
It allows for optimizing relations with designers while enhancing a better knowledge of final users.
This article will review basic design concepts applied to development.
We’ll cover the significance of design for developers, and we'll move on to its principles and patterns.
Let's overcome the hypothetical dispute and discuss its worth!
As a developer, we’re confident you know the difference between these two areas.
Yet, it seems to be a running question, so we thought it was an excellent place to start.
Let's unfold the differences between design and development.
In broad terms, design involves creating an app or site's look and feel.
Moreover, it addresses solutions for users' or clients' needs.
Application development entails programming, testing, and implementing the application design.
Development also adds functions to an app or site and creates interactive features.
To do so, it applies programming languages and tools.
We’ll start our journey into Design 101 for Developers.
First, we'll review some basic Product Design principles that you should follow.
Here, the most important thing to consider is usability.
It does not matter how stunning the visuals may be.
The product will likely fail if it's challenging to use or understand.
In this scenario, consistency comes in! Design must be consistent enough for users to understand it intuitively.
For instance, this step includes fonts, colors, and sizes. Further, there is alignment, spacing, effects, styles, and elements.
A typical example is the blue underlined text for clickable links.
Hierarchy helps users focus on essential information.
You can use order to draw users to where you want them to go and draw their interest.
In general, type, size, and style are enough to establish it, but you can also use, for instance, color.
White space makes the reading experience more enjoyable for users.
When we say “white space,” we mean any space without images or writing.
This facet encompasses margins, line spacing, and the length above or below paragraphs.
Besides improving readability, it's also helpful for drawing users to specific areas.
Proper alignment of text and different elements is quite essential.
While body text is often left-aligned, headings and subheadings are usually centered.
Yet, you should avoid center alignment for big chunks of text, making reading a bit trickier.
Using columns can simplify matters about the elements on your website or app.
Designers often use grid systems to structure a page or app transparently.
As a result, the design process gets simpler.
Also, it means that users can navigate through content with ease.
Understanding color theory is essential in the context of visual design.
But it’s also one of its most complex aspects.
Different shades of color can change visual impact and emotional effects.
Here are a couple of color tips to help you get started:
Warm, Cool, and Neutral Colors: Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow are vibrant and energizing. Cool colors—like green, blue, and purple—are calm and relaxing. Finally, neutral colors—white, black, gray, and beige—can alter the meaning of warm and cool colors.
Work with HSL Color Values. Many designers may be prone to work with hex values on colors. Yet, HSL colors make more sense in the correlation between similar shades of one color. As a result, it's easier for developers to manipulate colors via code.
There are a few things to consider in the context of typography.
For instance, fonts, sizing text and headers, line height, and shadows.
Let’s look at some pointers below:
Linguistic clarity is vital for good content.
Because of this, you should go for a language familiar to most readers.
Yet, you also need to consider that attention spans tend to be short.
So, it's best to avoid long texts. Let's see some tips:
Design Patterns are standard reusable architecture or design solutions for recurring problems.
nstead of being in code format, these describe how to tackle specific issues.
Also, patterns can speed up the development process.
There are three main categories of design patterns that developers should know.
These are creational, structural, and behavioral.
This article wouldn’t be complete without reviewing design tools and resources. Take a look at the most popular ones below.
Design and development are separate disciplines, but many professionals have mastered both.
As we’ve mentioned, having some knowledge of this field as a developer will be helpful.
Here are the top reasons why you should learn design as a developer:
Instead of thinking about Design vs. Development, handling both areas is beneficial.
This match applies to both designers and developers.
With basic design knowledge, devs can foster better teamwork and smooth processes.
Moreover, it can be vital to creating superior results.
We hope our article gave you an overview of Design 101 for developers.
Also, we trust it gets you driven to learn more about this field!
Sometimes, devs may believe design is less important than functionality.
But these fields go hand in hand!
Even if you do not intend to explore design, knowing its basics is vital as a dev.
It allows for optimizing relations with designers while enhancing a better knowledge of final users.
This article will review basic design concepts applied to development.
We’ll cover the significance of design for developers, and we'll move on to its principles and patterns.
Let's overcome the hypothetical dispute and discuss its worth!
As a developer, we’re confident you know the difference between these two areas.
Yet, it seems to be a running question, so we thought it was an excellent place to start.
Let's unfold the differences between design and development.
In broad terms, design involves creating an app or site's look and feel.
Moreover, it addresses solutions for users' or clients' needs.
Application development entails programming, testing, and implementing the application design.
Development also adds functions to an app or site and creates interactive features.
To do so, it applies programming languages and tools.
We’ll start our journey into Design 101 for Developers.
First, we'll review some basic Product Design principles that you should follow.
Here, the most important thing to consider is usability.
It does not matter how stunning the visuals may be.
The product will likely fail if it's challenging to use or understand.
In this scenario, consistency comes in! Design must be consistent enough for users to understand it intuitively.
For instance, this step includes fonts, colors, and sizes. Further, there is alignment, spacing, effects, styles, and elements.
A typical example is the blue underlined text for clickable links.
Hierarchy helps users focus on essential information.
You can use order to draw users to where you want them to go and draw their interest.
In general, type, size, and style are enough to establish it, but you can also use, for instance, color.
White space makes the reading experience more enjoyable for users.
When we say “white space,” we mean any space without images or writing.
This facet encompasses margins, line spacing, and the length above or below paragraphs.
Besides improving readability, it's also helpful for drawing users to specific areas.
Proper alignment of text and different elements is quite essential.
While body text is often left-aligned, headings and subheadings are usually centered.
Yet, you should avoid center alignment for big chunks of text, making reading a bit trickier.
Using columns can simplify matters about the elements on your website or app.
Designers often use grid systems to structure a page or app transparently.
As a result, the design process gets simpler.
Also, it means that users can navigate through content with ease.
Understanding color theory is essential in the context of visual design.
But it’s also one of its most complex aspects.
Different shades of color can change visual impact and emotional effects.
Here are a couple of color tips to help you get started:
Warm, Cool, and Neutral Colors: Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow are vibrant and energizing. Cool colors—like green, blue, and purple—are calm and relaxing. Finally, neutral colors—white, black, gray, and beige—can alter the meaning of warm and cool colors.
Work with HSL Color Values. Many designers may be prone to work with hex values on colors. Yet, HSL colors make more sense in the correlation between similar shades of one color. As a result, it's easier for developers to manipulate colors via code.
There are a few things to consider in the context of typography.
For instance, fonts, sizing text and headers, line height, and shadows.
Let’s look at some pointers below:
Linguistic clarity is vital for good content.
Because of this, you should go for a language familiar to most readers.
Yet, you also need to consider that attention spans tend to be short.
So, it's best to avoid long texts. Let's see some tips:
Design Patterns are standard reusable architecture or design solutions for recurring problems.
nstead of being in code format, these describe how to tackle specific issues.
Also, patterns can speed up the development process.
There are three main categories of design patterns that developers should know.
These are creational, structural, and behavioral.
This article wouldn’t be complete without reviewing design tools and resources. Take a look at the most popular ones below.
Design and development are separate disciplines, but many professionals have mastered both.
As we’ve mentioned, having some knowledge of this field as a developer will be helpful.
Here are the top reasons why you should learn design as a developer:
Instead of thinking about Design vs. Development, handling both areas is beneficial.
This match applies to both designers and developers.
With basic design knowledge, devs can foster better teamwork and smooth processes.
Moreover, it can be vital to creating superior results.
We hope our article gave you an overview of Design 101 for developers.
Also, we trust it gets you driven to learn more about this field!
