What are the latest design trends? And how do I learn them?

Hi

I finished my portfolio, and I think it is pretty decent for a first try (you be the judge :slight_smile:)

What would you change on this layout?

I think my sense of aesthetic needs some fine tuning or fresh inspiration

It seems everything now is very spacious, light colors, lots of white, etc.
I do want my page to have my personal style, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn more about design.

What are good books, blogs, Youtube channels, where I can learn about UX?

TIA!

Yeah, the aesthetics are my weakness too. I plan to do some work on that coming up.

I think googling things like “best web designs” would be good. And try “most popular web designs”. Try to see what is “hep” right now. Try and isolate the different elements and get inside the design.

As far as UX, I found “Don’t Make Me Think” by Krug to be a great and easy read that made me think about how the user uses a web page. It’s a lot of stuff that you will think “Oh yeah, that’s obvious” but it’s also the kind of stuff you don’t think about until someone points it out.

I’m sure a google search will turn up lots of blogs and videos on the subject too.

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Its very good for a first try! Your code looks great…only things really is to make sure you give your images alt tags and you’re missing a contact section.

For design ideas, Dribble.com is a visual playground of inspiration where designers of all types show off their latest work. It will give you a good idea of trends in design.

Regardless of whats trending, there are basic principles of design to keep in mind that will help make your designs aesthetically pleasing no matter what someones style is… Heres a blog post I found that explains the elements of design: https://99designs.com/blog/tips/principles-of-design/

While I often scour the web just to see whats out there, dont limit yourself to design as it relates to the web…ideas can come from anywhere really, and being able to see something pleasing to your eye and then translate that into a website design while incorporating current trends and keeping design principles in mind helps make your personal work more unique.

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ugh… fonts, lady, fonts.
learn to use google fonts.

why do I see comic sans and no proper font set at all???

also - rounded corners - but not so rounded

and THIN borders, not thick ones!

borders shadows are in and all in all it depends on what you want it to look like. just avoid huge stuff, unless it fits.
it’s better to have empty space and position stuff nicely,than to overflow it.

there is a saying - best design is as little design as possible.
u might agree or not,but I’ve seen it to be true.
best design is practically unnoticeable. but when u do something wrong,then it’s noticeable. :smile:

like using comic sans, or too big borders, or image that didn’t fit to cover background,
when another one did.

Your first try is an excellent effort. The above comments are good, but definitely add/keep your own style.

The very first design book I (was forced to) read was The Non-Designer’s Design Book. A short book that will give you a solid grounding in the basics.

From there, definitely spend some time on Dribbble and other design websites. Favourite and save things that appeal to you. Also, spend a lot of time just sketching. It helps.

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Woah be kind… you make a lot of great points, but starting off with ugh and talking with such disdain, you really cant expect someone who made their first website to know everything and reprimand them for it. Have some understanding that shes already aware that design is her weak spot …thats why she asked for advice.

My very first website was a cammo green background with lime green text and everything in comic sans…and some glittery animated gifts, cause glittery animated gifts are life!!! I would die of embarrassment if anyone saw my very first website, but thats only because Ive learned a lot over the years and have come a long way since then. But nothing will ever take away from how proud I was of myself at that moment in time, because it was only the beginning.

The only time I groan and take on the tone that you have here is if its someone who says they are a professional and should know better or doesnt even try to work on their weaknesses. But someone new and trying to learn? and who asks for advice because they want to do better? I love it, because I see nothing but potential. :blush:

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Mine had a canvas-textured background and an (almost) impossible to code image-map as a navigation. And then a whole host of Flash-based sites. I cringe when I go through old files. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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It might sound obvious now, but it seems the same principles of good photography, one of my other passions, apply here too. I need to stay focused, but after I get a good handle in web design, I can’t wait to learn graphic design and videography. So many passions so little time! for now, I am doing some design research.

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Find websites you think look cool and attempt to recreate parts of them you like. Open up Chrome or Firefox dev tools and look at the code and see how it works and how it’s structured. You can learn a lot like this.

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I’d advise you to visit themeforest.net and look at themes built with latest ui/ux trends.

Hi!

Here are some tips for the future projects:

  1. In padding and margins you can use % values instead of px- it will give your site more responsiveness
  2. Same goes for width etc. :wink:
  3. Don’t know if you would like to include that in your website, but in my opinion navbar should scroll down when you are scrolling down, otherwise it’s almost useless.
  4. With images, especially if you have only a few of them, it’s good to stick with display: inline otherwise they look a little messy and some could say they are artificially making the site look longer/ bigger.
  5. If you need to apply text as a description to your images, consider using bootstrap’s thumbnails which can contain img and text in a single frame.

But those are only mine opinions :wink:

PS. I know that not everyone considered this in their first projects, but if you want a simple answer in case of responsiveness of your pages, just resize your browser to a smartphone size and everything will come out :wink:

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Those are good ones @Folrunge, Thank you!

The only thing is that I want to stay bootstrap free for a while until I master pure CSS . If Boostraps can do pretty thumbnails, I should be able to do it with pure CSS…

I just got a couple of design books mentioned in the responses, then I plan to revisit my portfolio in a couple weeks :slight_smile:
Thank you!