[headbiznatch]

"The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams was a big help to me when I needed to take a leap in my ability to pretty things up. The tenets in there seem to be rediscovered and reworded often (not sure if this book is the first, honestly) but I think the main idea is to have some kind of strategy for how to be purposeful with your design choices. From the book: Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, Contrast. I think that ordering is less funny as an acronym but more useful as a guide with respect to what you focus on first (Proximity - grouping ideas is a natural place to start, Contrast - which comes last because it's the trickiest).

[hashzeros]

My first though was this book as well. Everything in the article has been taught and talked about for well over 20 years (probably longer). I'm surprised that there is so much less backlash on HN when it comes to "rediscovering" design principles compared to engineering principles. Probably just has to do with where expertises lie. With that being said, I'm all for spreading good design principles to the masses.