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Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Design Foundations For Developers

Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Wes Bos

Js, Technology, Css, Html5, Tech News, Webdevelopment, News, Javascript, Html

4.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2019

⏱️ 62 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk about design foundations for developers — tips to follow that will make your designs better!

Sanity - Sponsor

Sanity.io is a real-time headless CMS with a fully customizable Content Studio built in React. Get a Sanity powered site up and running in minutes at sanity.io/create. Get an awesome supercharged free developer plan on sanity.io/syntax.

Freshbooks - Sponsor

Get a 30 day free trial of Freshbooks at freshbooks.com/syntax and put SYNTAX in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Show Notes

6:35 - Our backgrounds in design

12:41 - Foundations

  • Consistency makes a big difference
  • Use “training wheel” tools until you are confident
  • Always work within a system
  • Less is more - subtle is better

19:39 - Color

  • Color theory
  • Complementary colors and shades
  • Stick to color pallet generators until you are good enough

28:51 - Spacing

  • More spacing than you think you need
  • Vertical rhythm
  • Letter spacing: -1px
  • Consistent margin and padding

34:47 - Typography

  • Sans vs serifs
  • Finding fonts
  • Use proven combinations until you know your way around

41:49 - Interaction

  • Design for all states (e.g. standard, visited, active, hover, etc.)
  • Animations should be quick
  • Interactions should make sense

45:04 - Concerns beyond visuals

  • Accessibility via color contrast
  • Thin fonts and light grey are awful
  • Think about the poor Windows users

48:47 - Inspiration + Resources

Links

××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

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Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there.

0:06.0

Strap yourself in and get ready.

0:08.0

Here is Scott Tolinsky and Wes Boss.

0:10.4

Welcome to Syntax, this is the podcast with the tastiest web design treats.

0:15.0

Today we're talking about what are the design foundations that you as a web developer need to know in order to make something look good. I think there's like probably

0:24.9

a handful of rules. You can probably listen to this podcast and if you apply those, your

0:28.9

design skills will get much better. Today we are sponsored by two awesome companies. First one is

0:33.8

sanity which is a structured content CMS and the second one is Fresh Books which is

0:39.4

a cloud accounting software. So with me as always is Mr. Scott Tolinsky. How you doing today Scott?

0:45.6

They doing good. We have grandma and grand pine town visiting so it's a lot of fun.

0:50.6

The kids are having a blast and everything's just a little bit easier for us.

0:55.0

It's not just us to hanging out with the kids.

0:58.0

So having a good week.

1:00.0

How about you? That's good.

1:01.0

Good. I'm doing pretty good as well.

1:02.0

I just sent off an email to my email list about my upcoming JavaScript course just detailing a little bit here and there and I hadn't sent an email and probably six or seven months. I don't tend to send email a lot which

1:14.6

goes against the grain of what a lot of people say to do but what I do is I just

1:19.8

put a huge unsubscribed button at the top of the email and like, hey, if you don't want to be here,

1:24.4

hit the unsubscribed button. And I was just like marveling at how the unsubscribed rates are not at all

1:30.3

higher when you do that versus when you hide it in a gray link in the

1:33.9

footer. Sure, yeah. And it's pretty good. Like I really, first of all I think that

1:39.3

probably speaks to people that are subscribed, but also like I don't know why all people don't do that right

...

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