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Henrique Vieira
5,003 PointsHow much should I worry about design when learning web development?
I'm working my way through the front-end track (loving it so far), just finished CSS Basics. So I decided to recreate the website built during the course on my own, just by looking at the final product. HTML was pretty easy. CSS is no problem as far as getting things to work, but there's a lot to improve in regards to optimizing my work (I tend to repeat myself a lot). The one thing that's really giving me headaches is the design itself. What I mean by that is: figuring out the font size, spacing, line height etc. Should I worry about this at all or can I just cheat and get the values from the project files, and focus on getting the core concepts down?
3 Answers
Robert Schaap
19,836 PointsIf you're going to be a front-end developer, you'll probably mostly be focusing on how to implement designs made by someone, especially at the start of your career. Still, a bit of knowledge about design principles doesn't hurt and there are some good courses here as part of the web design track as well.
Ultimately it's how far you want to take it, I take a full stack approach as well, but when I don't really feel like coding I like reading about typography and layout stuff, because I feel it helps me understand and implement stuff better. Also the company I work for doesn't really have a designer or anything, so the front-end people need to make some decisions on UI/UX, which I really like.
Shay Paustovsky
969 PointsHi Henrique,
It depends....
What is your end goal (i.e. what are you trying to achieve?) - finding a job as backend/frontend/fullstack, freelacning, or other.
Since you are only beginning I wouldn't really take it seriously, I myself did a mistake and began learning Design but that's me. In the end it's your choice, if you feel comfortable with design and it's something that interests you than GO FOR IT
Shay
Henrique Vieira
5,003 PointsMy short term goal is to get a front end job. After however long it takes to get really good at that, I don't know. It does interest me, but I feel it's too much to learn right now, on top of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Shay Paustovsky
969 PointsI recommend that you don't worry about it too much right now, because usually companies have their own in-house UI/UX designer and as a frontend dev you will only have to translate it into design.
As I've read on many forums design could/couldn't be one of your skills but understanding design and what's going in the designer's head and better translate it into code.
Best of Luck Henrique
Shay