Design Fundamentals

Finally master the fundamentals of design in less than 6 weeks

A no-fluff course for developers to learn design principles

0 LESSONS

30 video lessons with downloads and case studies

NO-FLUFF

Super actionable with a ‘no-fluff guarantee’

AT YOUR OWN PACE

Access the course forever with free updates

As a developer, you’re likely involved in design decisions on a daily basis. Maybe you’re being asked to add a new feature to your company's web app, or you’ve had an idea for a side project that you want to look half-decent. Many tasks you work on involve some level of design skills.

And so design becomes that thing that you can’t seem to get away from. It’s always there: something you wish you could do but don’t know how to start.

I’ve been there. I appreciated good design but could never seem to replicate it, despite having invested over 5 years into design college and university. Every course I took was insightful and technically ‘made sense’, yet when I was left to design something on my own, I hit a brick wall.

Now, after almost a decade of self-taught designing, I finally feel like I can call myself a designer. And the way I taught myself was a far cry from what I learned in design school. That’s why I’ve created this course. I’m going to give you the shortcuts I wish I had when learning design and leave you with a solid foundation in everything from colour to typography to imagery on the web.

This course will help you get to a stage where you can not only be confident in your abilities (and trust me, you have plenty of ability to learn design) but it’ll also teach you all the tricks I’ve learned in the last 8+ years of professional design work.

What will I learn?

The goal of this course is to give you a solid design foundation to start building upon. It’s not going to teach you everything under the sun about design but it’ll teach you the most important things you can do to improve your designs today — no matter how “artistic” you are (or, more likely, aren’t!). Some highlights include:

EASY TO FOLLOW PROCESS

My workflow I use for almost every project from finding inspiration to colour and typography

THINK LIKE A DESIGNER

How you can train your eye to spot what’s wrong in a design and, most importantly, fix it

REAL CASE STUDIES

Over-the-shoulder case studies showing how I’ve designed different websites from scratch

VISUALS MADE EASY

Image and illustration treatment that anyone can do – even if you can’t draw a wonky line

6 Modules, 30 videos

You can binge watch all these videos in one go, or come back and reference them at any time throughout whatever project you’re working on.

Planning

MODULE 1

• Getting your content ready for a design project
• Different design styles and which one to use
• Gathering (useful) inspiration

Layout

MODULE 2

• Sketching layouts
• Filling in your content
• Spacing and alignment (and why they’re the two most important principles!)
• Common layout mistakes and how to avoid them (3 lessons)

Typography

MODULE 3

• Choosing body text fonts
• Choosing fonts for headlines
• Making your type look good
• Typographic details

Colour

MODULE 4

• Choosing a base colour
• Finding your accent
• Using grey effectively
• When your colours look ‘off’

Imagery

MODULE 5

• Sourcing photography
• Photo editing for web design
• Cutting out images
• Using icons in web design
• Sourcing illustrations
• Using illustrations
• Displaying screenshots

Polish

MODULE 6

• How to identify and fix problem areas
• Responsive design tips and tricks
• Consistency in design

Have you ever wanted to see first hand how a designer works?

Sometimes the easiest way to learn is just to watch someone work. You’ll pick up tricks that you never thought to look for before! Within the course, you’ll find a number of case studies where you can see how I created each of the following websites from scratch (including all mistakes and mishaps).

CONTINOUSLY UPDATED

As I take on more projects, these case studies will be updated with new, exciting projects.

WITH FULL COMMENTARY

In each video, I’ll be articulating why specific choices were made and highlighting important bits.“Design is something that I didn’t think could be taught… until I came across your course. You’re very talented as a designer but being able to teach such an abstract skill has blown my mind.”

THIS COURSE IS FOR YOU IF:

• You want to master the fundamentals of design without spending years in design school (and don’t necessarily want to think of yourself as a designer)
• You want to build, launch, and sell your own products and not have them look ugly
• You have clients asking for you to add some design polish to the projects you built for them
• You want to learn from “over-the-shoulder” walkthroughs of how designers really design
• You want to stop feeling embarrassed when you give someone a link to your portfolio

THIS COURSE IS NOT FOR YOU IF:

• You’re not willing to commit to putting into practice what the course teaches (you won’t learn just by watching the videos!)
• You have the time to teach yourself design through trial and error (it is possible, but it’ll take longer)
• You don’t have the motivation to start learning design just yet
• You want to learn abstract design principles about movement, balance, rhythm …
• You favour standing out and trends as opposed to designing for usability and conversions

Stop letting your lack of ‘design voodoo’ hold you back from creating kick-ass products.

• Access to 30 in-depth videos
• Lifetime access to the class
• Unlimited updates
• Worksheets and cheatsheets
• 6 week accountability
• Live critiques on your designs