Crafting
Well-Designed Sites

learn to build things that don’t suck

It’s often hard to identify what components contribute to a site feeling “well-designed.” Indeed it’s been said that “Good design is invisible. It’s only when something is poorly designed that we notice.” In this talk, we’ll dissect two elements of good design: typography and grid.

Participants in this workshop will complete typographic sketches and mockups to get a feel for how to think critically about design on the web.

How to Attend

Bring a pencil; paper will be provided. Also bring a laptop with your favorite design software installed, like Sketch, InDesign, or Illustrator. If you don’t have something like this already installed, you can use the links above to find free trials. Alternatively, attend the workshop with a friend who has this software already installed. The Mac cluster computers will be available as well.

Resources

During the Event

Extend your Knowledge

  • Practical Typography
    • An amazing, concise book on typography
  • Zell Liew on Grids
  • Typewolf
    • Best reference on typefaces and pairings on the Internet
  • If you can, take an HCI class!
    • 05-391 Interaction Design Overview
    • 05-392 Designing Human-Centered Systems

Previous Resources

This workshop has been run twice before. Here are the resources we used last time.

From the Workshop

Web Resources