I hate to be that guy, but this isn't "Design Secrets For Engineers", it's "Design Secrets For <i>Software</i> Engineers." (or developers/UIX/etc).<p>"Keep visual hierarchy in check" and "Use designer fonts" isn't very useful advice in designing an instrumented hammer...<p>"Engineering," especially in the colloquial usage of the word, covers a lot areas that have things in common, but there are lots of things those areas don't have in common. Software engineering /= all of engineering anymore than mechanical engineering represents all of engineering.
What <i>secrets</i>? It feels like I'm reading the exact same design tips (alignment, fonts, colors) at least once per month on some blog linked from HN.
First sentence:<p><i>If you are a designer like me, you must be asked on a regular basis to “make it look pretty.”</i><p>I thought this article was for engineers?
I like it, and most of the advice is pretty good.<p>However, I have one concern- for the past few years, it seems all engineers and designers have been feeding off of each other's ideas, and this has resulted in websites that look nearly identical in color schemes, typeface, and wording.<p>This makes each successive product less and less distinguishable and boring. I think breaking free from design norms (as long as rules of simplicity are followed) is a good thing. It is what will make users think "wow, this is something I haven't seen before" and thus probably more likely to use it and tell others about it as well. Of course this assumes clever design sense which I believe is something people possess naturally and can't really be taught.
I never thought of using KeyNote to design a UI. I always thought designers use Photoshop or InDesign for that purpose.<p>Is KeyNote used just for the ease of use, or is there some other requirement that the Adobe products don't measure up to?
Good general advice. One remark though: while it is generally better to use designer typefaces, it's important to remember a lot of them weren't designed for the screen, but paper. As such, Garamond, for example (it's mentioned in the post), which is probably one of the best typefaces made, often doesn't work well on the web.
Very good advice, although this is more of a reminder for designer-wanna-bees, like myself, as opposed to a guide for software engineers. Chances are, really good software engineers are really terrible designers, and they won't understand what you are talking about or why, no matter how hard you try. But try!