Refactoring UI 🇺🇸 [pdf]

Make your ideas look awesome,without relying on a designer.

Learn how to design beautiful user interfaces by yourself using specific tactics explained from a developer’s point-of-view.

Design with tactics, not talent.

Here’s a concrete design tactic I bet you see applied every day but haven’t explicitly noticed:

Use fewer borders.

Borders are a great way to distinguish two elements from one another, but using too many of them can make your design feel busy and cluttered.

Instead, try adding a box shadow, using contrasting background colors, or simply adding more space between elements:

It doesn’t take any talent to make changes like this — once you know the tactic you just need to notice the problem and apply the solution.

Most design courses are missing the mark.

They focus so much on high level principles like color theory and typography which, while important, never helped me make instant improvements like the actionable, specific tactics I was picking up from Steve.

Working together, we knew we could create something better.