AaronChampagne
AaronChampagne on Hacker News
Fuck that. Good design IS modular design. If your designer isn't following best practices like modular design then they are NOT good designers. Learning to work in non-destructive modular ways was one of the most important lessons for me when I transitioned from art to design.
As a designer I like your counterpoint. If I could work with developers like you're describing I'd be interested. I'm nervous about offering help to a project though, because I'm getting the impression that developers are expected to navigate the community solo and I don't know if I can learn the ropes of the community while making a good design for a project.
I've been thinking that maybe a buddy-system might be appropriate for attracting designers.
I've just heard about 37 signals this past month or two and am thinking about putting out a portfolio for them. Would they actually care about OS projects as a designer?
|Most times, when I team up with some designer they'd want to make pretty icons...
The designer should know enough to you visual symbols that have real-world equivalents to convey the meaning of the button visually. Envelopes for mail. phones for contact button. Thumbs up to like, thumbs down to dislike.
This is my first time learning about the open source project (never been on hacker news before). Can anyone provide a link to what you would call a typical open source project in need of a designer. I'm terrified of working with you guys but am starting to feel like maybe I should get over that and lend a hand.
Actually, this git thing does sound cool. You mean to tell me there's an easy way of tracing different versions of a design?
Having someone to direct the efforts of other designers would definitely help. Style guides would also help.
This would kill it for me. I've spent my whole adult life learning to use graphite and charcoal, oil paint and clay. Having my entire effort refused because I don't know what a GIT is just doesn't work for me.
Having communication barriers like this absolutely would stop me from participating. I have no problem with being asked to redesign a logo over and again. I would love to feel like I belonged to a community and that I mattered. But having a developer jack my work and screw it up because it was easier than asking me to do it would completely scare me away from open source projects.
I am trained as a designer but I actually work as a lookout observer for Alberta Forestry. I spend 6 months a year alone in the woods. Designing and illustrating fills some of that time :)
I can vouch for Reddit's community being a result of it's "poor design". Most people are turned off by giant walls of text. Reddit is actively trying to build a community out of people who are going to take the time out of their day to sort through a wall of text.
In this way, Reddit's 'poor design' serves a function of repelling undesirable people. If you want to repel people then go for a non-design. If you want to attract as many people as possible, or attract people who are turned on by something other than a wall of text, then hire a designer.
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/designprinciples/a/alignment....Here's an article for the interested. Often times, designers will use a grid, like http://960.gs/ offers, to help make layouts with good alignment.
Left, right centre alignment refers to the relationship of text and text frame. You can still have alignment relationships betweens photo and text frame, photo and animation, text frame & text frame, etc.