Berta and I were talking a bit when she got home from work today about how it would be neat to team up with a designer and spew out great new web sites. I mentioned to her how with many of the designers I’ve worked with, you get about 5 designs in, and then the designs start to look the same, or there’s a style between them that’s very similar, then making the sites look very similar themselves.
To me, that was a clue to switch designers every few projects, just to keep things fresh. To her, it was a clue that a developer could clutch a design theme and run with it and get away with doing design too, an insight I hadn’t had before. And this all got me thinking about how many times I’ve urged web designer friends to produce some kind of post or video or course that explains the basics of design to developers. But nobody has stepped up.
So it’s a new idea, and writing about anything instead of doing it is the kiss of death to any good idea, but I’ve been thinking about publishing a self-taught design blog, from the perspective of a developer, learning as I go. I would expect not to proclaim any expertise at it as I learn, but I’d have certain goals so that by the end I’d hope to 1) have a rudimentary process for producing my own web designs and 2) be able to give adequate instruction to other developers to get to the same point.
Have you ever seen the movie Julie and Julia? Julie is a blogger who, through some changes in her life, comes to learn to cook (that’s not exactly right, but good enough for my purposes here) by preparing so many of Julia Childs’ recipes every week, with the intent of completing the whole cookbook within a year. And she blogs about her experience with it all? Well, that’s the kind of thing I’d like to commit to: Some n number of posts every week for a year until I meet my goal.
I would likely not do it here, but on RedAlt, which seems a better venue for the topic. I could have guest authors, or interviews with people who do design for a living and ask them for specific insight. This could finally get my designer friends to get off their butts and help me produce this thing that I feel really needs to be published. And discussion in the comments could be very worthwhile, both with people who are designers with advice for doing the work and with developers who want to learn along with me.
Depending how it goes, it could even become profitable somehow. Sure, there’s no guarantee, and that’s not really the point. The profit is in the learning. But a little extra cash to make up for the time and hosting would be nice.
Is this crazy? Worthwhile? Would you read it?
