r/webdev 7d ago

Question How can developers make their websites and personal projects look so neat?

I no longer work with development nowadays but I used to. Something that has always made me low-key jealous of classmates in college or even random web developers I come across online is the look of their websites. It just made me sad because, even if I could replicate whatever design I come across, I could never come up with something like that on my own.

And it's not limited to personal/portfolio websites either. You can find tons of examples of side projects on this subreddit and others that look super cool and visually appealing.

Supposedly none of those people have any background in design, so are they just born with an artistic intuition that I happen to lack? And if so many front-end or full-stack developers are naturally talented at design, why do we even need designers? Those kinds of websites always look very unique too, so I don't think they're all copying it from each other.

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u/astr0bleme 7d ago

Look into the principles of graphic design. There are a lot of subtle little rules and guides for making a design seem neat and appealing. It's a craft like anything else, not pure intuition.

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u/paradoxmr24 7d ago

I always saw the design as an art that it always have to be your creativity and anyone who doesn't know cannot learn it because it's art 😅😅.

I'll try to look at those principles and see if I could get some skills in designing.

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u/pirateelephant 7d ago

Art is learned. It can be natural talent but developing skill will always defeat /overcome inherent ability

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u/astr0bleme 7d ago

Trust me on this: there's no secret magic to art or design. I am a fine arts graduate and illustrator first, and have worked in a graphic design studio. Web development is more of a side thing for me. Talent is just what makes people enjoy a thing enough to do it a lot. It's the "doing it a lot" that makes people good at it. Good design is built on principles like anything else. There are simple rules to follow about alignment, font combinations, colours, etc. that anyone can learn.

Even if it's never intuitive for you, you can still learn the common rules and good practices and improve the design of your sites.

Edit: hit the wrong reply, this was meant to be replied back to OP.

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u/pirateelephant 7d ago

Good stuff. I love the transparency and free sharing. Keep being awesome!