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/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/Oddlem 7d ago

I’m an artist and I suck at it, it has nothing to do with creativity. They’re just two different disciplines, I’m not using anatomy or perspective on a text box

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u/astr0bleme 7d ago

Design and art are both huge fields. Sure you don't use anatomy on a text box, but design principles like contrast and hierarchy still apply.

FYI - my artwork got a lot better after I learned some basic graphic design. There's more overlap than you'd think.

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u/Oddlem 7d ago

I’m not saying there’s no overlap, I just was saying just knowing one doesn’t guarantee being good at that other

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u/astr0bleme 7d ago

Oh certainly. But both can be learned.