I have what feels like a stupid question: Most of the weekend projects I see here on HN look surprisingly polished, this one included. Any quick projects I make just don't have that polished look and feel. Is it just a matter of have enough design experience that you can just make it happen, are you using templates or a library of some sort? Any advice on how to get my projects to look nicer faster would be greatly appreciated!
Template from ThemeForest are what I use to add some polish; plenty of people will criticise for using themes, but in my opinion, and coming from someone with zero design skills, they get you in a better place right from the start :)
So, most of my sites are written using Kohana and a couple of themes from ThemeForest - one for the sales side, and one for the admin area itself.
Edit: and really, that's nowhere near to being a stupid question - I only found out about options like TF when a friend told me a few months ago :)
Oh man, you have no idea how helpful this is. I'm working on a web app myself, and design is my biggest hangup... I've thought about hiring someone, but not sure I can justify the expense. For some reason I didn't consider seeking out premium themes like this.
Looks like there's a lot of great stuff on ThemeForest... only problem now is the paradox of choice. Too many good themes to choose from.
Thanks for pointing that out. In this case though, I think you get what you pay for. Most of those don't look nearly as good as the Themeforest stuff.
There's another site along these lines that used to be pretty good -- Open Source Web Design (http://www.oswd.org/). Unfortunately they stopped updating it several years ago.
Most of those don't look nearly as good as the Themeforest stuff.
See, this is the crux of the matter for me: would I rather mess around with a truly free template to get it looking decent, or pay someone the huge amount of $20 to have it instantly. Obviously, by and large, the latter wins.
I didn't. I looked through the available modules and whilst they looked decent for a long-term project, for my needs of knocking something short-sighted out pretty quickly, I found writing my own code a bit less demanding.
$30 is a great deal if the license covers a single commercial app (I assume you need to buy it each time you use it in an app?) but when do you need to pay for the "Extended License" which is $1500?
From my cursory reading of the licensing, the key difference is that the Extended License allows you to distribute the theme with your app (the regular license would be limited to a hosted app).
I dont think that was a "constructive criticism". He didnt give any examples as of what would be "good design". Your site looks pro in IE/FF/Chrome/Opera and Safari. Layout is clear and simple. Love it! Navigation is straightforward. Cool!
Thanks, and make no mistake - I really appreciate hearing comments from people like you :)
At the same time though, I realise that sometimes people don't have the time to phrase things in a nice way, but at the same time still have valid criticisms - and I'd rather hear the criticisms in the first place than hope they'd be written in a nice way - if that makes sense (it's late here, and I'm not sure which space my brain is in) :)
Frankly, I don't care if he has poor design skills. He had the humility and generosity to explain that he used a template to speed dev time, the site looks awesome and he kicks my ass because he finished the project, put it out and has figured out a strategy to quickly implement his ideas from storyboard to finished product. I don't know if you intended to sound like a snob or if this is your idea of "constructive criticism" but I think you could have worded it more generously.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that I've been equally cruel - albeit unintentionally - in the past, and whilst what the user wrote could have been written in a more favourable light, his points are still valid :)
some folks are probably lying. statistically speaking. anything to make themselves look better.
that said, sure, some are probably not. my sense has been that there are certain design tricks/styles that, once you learn them, you can apply them fairly fast if the scope and complexity are small enough.
