Design has alwaya been a hard skill for me to grasp. All my time on the internet has given me the ability to spot good design but recreating it myself has always been a challenge. My design skills can't keep up with my eye for design. Like programming, design is all about research and practicing on that research. It's something you need to hone to get better at every day. I always thought that people would excuse my poor design but research suggests people trust websites with better design and forgive performance issues.
In my opinion, even a small amount of design skills gives a big boost to a website. Since I'm looking to redesign and retool my developer portfolio I'll be trying to level up my design skills with these resources.
- Refactoring UI. I haven't finished this book yet but so far I've learned a lot of the small things that might go unnoticed but have a big impact on a good design.
- Generate your color palette
- Get website design inspiration from dribbble
- Learn design with Hack Design
One thing I've been doing to practice my design skills is going onto sites like Dribble and trying to rebuild other peoples' designs. The more I build, the more common themes I see and it's helping me make decisions when I design my own projects.