Ask HN: How to learn web design in general

[andrew-v]

I’m a backend engineer with several years of experience. Although I don’t usually work with the frontend, I know HTML, I know CSS, I know JS. I know how to lookup some Tailwind docs, I am able to write a React app, I’m aware of CSS grids, flexboxes, etc. Sometimes I can even center a div without looking it up in search browsers.

But whenever I’m trying to design a page or a piece of a frontend app, my mind is a blank page. I don’t have a clue on how to organise space for the data, how to position the text and images, how should the static page look like on mobile, what colors to use and which font families to choose from.

What would you recommend for learning web design itself? Particular books, courses, projects? Looking at other websites and analysing them on paper? I would gladly put some hours into this if I knew it’s going to pay off. Were you in such position yourselves? What worked for you?

[dakshjaitly]

I usually go and look at similar style of pages that im trying to make, get some inspiration. From what i understand by your post, you can execute the vision, so to get ideas, id say just go to sites like dribbble and such, lookup the type of thing youre trying to make. If you want to be really creative, you can do the same thing but go even deeper, instead of pages, look at specifc art styles and concepts. In the end designing is mostly about intuition, but this can help you get direction.