Design tips for Developers

  • Article

I found a set of really nice, short videos by Arturo Toledo on the Silverlight blog that I thought were worth sharing.

He goes through some of the design principles using the Microsoft Expression tools and talks about what you should think about when designing a web page, logo or whatever it is you are designing.

Principles of design:

Balance  - how you can achieve a sense of balance, and avoid the feeling of being pulled too much to any part of the design.
Rhythm – using repeating visual patterns to create appealing visual effects.
Symmetry and asymmetry – how to achieve balance both in symmetrical and asymmetrical designs.
Emphasis – using different factors like form, color, shape etc. to make some elements stand out
Unity – how to make the viewer feel like everything in design belongs there
Points, Lines and Form – using points, lines and forms as markers for other visual elements
Colors – how to choose a color palette where the colors jive well together

Hands-on videos:

Experimenting with User Interface Colors with Expression Design
Creating Mosaic and Tiled Patterns using Expression Design
Learning to create Icons using Expression Design  
Creating a Sample Icon using Expression Design

I’m hoping there is more to come because so far these have been very interesting for someone like me who has always been intrigued by design but has no sense of what works and what doesn’t.

Tess

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 07, 2009
    This is quite useful, thanks for that.

  • Anonymous
    July 12, 2009
    Great videos. Thanks for sharing this information with us.

  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2009
    I think, but could be wrong, that these are part of a bigger two hour training video included in the Microsoft Expression Studio 2 package.

  • Anonymous
    July 22, 2009
    I apologize if this is the wrong place for questions. I am a sr software engineer at a fortune 500 company in the USA and I want you to know I have fixed more .net production application problems using techniques I learned on this site than anywhere on or off the net. Many thanks for all my questions you have already answered before I asked them. Here is my general .net windbg debug question. How do I break in at the transition to managed code from unmanaged code? I know I can sxe ld:mscorlib to break when the runtime dll is loaded. I can also sxe CLR to break on managed exceptions. I can set breakpoints on managed code if I know the function I want to break on as well but what about if I have an app that may or may not use managed code in it? I was wondering if there is a general mscorwks function or other method to break in when the code is transitioning to managed code from unmanaged. I have a number of apps now that are unmanaged vb6 or c++ apps that make calls to managed dlls.

  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2009
    Yes I liked Arturo's video explanation of abstract design concepts. You might also enjoy my ASP.NET blog on graphics principles for coders: http://weblogs.asp.net/austinavrashow/ I use real examples to illustrate design principles. Feel free to mention my blog if you enjoy it and learn interesting things.

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2011
    Unfortunately the links don't work anymore.