How to design better?
A collection of ideas on the design process and creating great designs
How to design better?
These founders recognize that company design goes beyond playbooks, case studies, or podcasts. Consider how modern startups approach product development: A technically proficient team might build perfect features, but design-literate founders create experiences that make users feel something when using the product. Notion succeeded not through... See more
terrain.com • Design Literacy
Design as infrastructure? or Design the infrastructure
But at the time, I questioned this approach. Why study semiotics when I could be building a portfolio site? Why pull all-nighters just to endure brutal critiques—tossing the work away and starting over? But the process—thinking, making, critique—proved transformative. The school wasn’t teaching design as ornamentation or styling. Instead, it was an... See more
terrain.com • Design Literacy
Choosing the palette from ILM’s cinematic work is a stroke of genius.
This isn’t limited to film, or art. Design is also editing; The editing is not limited merely to the object itself, but also the processes involved, the pipelines and workflows to build that object, the supply chain to make sure the object , the presentation, how to sell?
We call it a belief system because it's more than a collection of values. It's how we see the world and what is missing.
- Make stuff you use every day —it makes for a better life.
- Make it better —do less if you need to.
- Nothing is finished —everything can be rethought.
- Think small —make one small part of the world as it should be.
- Slow down —put in
Building a Belief System | !Boring Software
Lessons:
1. Imitate
Copywork is a great way to build the design muscles.
2. Remix
Start tweaking and fuse you'r imagination into it.
3. Invent
The “adjacent possible” is drawing connections from seeminlgy unrelated concepts/things and placing them together.
Dan gives the best breakdown of any designers process, that actually reveals the little nuances the nitty gritty parts of the process .
Though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed for centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought to life.
A Richer Canvas - Mark Boulton
source: Die neue Typographie by Jan Tschichold
Communication via docs/instructions for file usage.
I should add this into the process.
Get good at asking the right questions. Elon said, the answer is usually the easy part. The hard part is asking the right questions. Questions are the only tool we have to inquire about this reality. It is our pickaxe to inspect the world we live in. It also happens to be the backbone of our cognition, we literally think in questions. Getting good... See more