Learn the basics of design in
just 6 days

This email course has been amazing, so far. I’ve been doing color overlay on images all wrong and they always look horrible. Thank you for doing this course.

— Jason Charnes

Have you ever written an application and wished it just looked a little better? Or have you been able to acknowledge good design on other websites but can’t quite translate that to your own designs?

If so, you’re not alone.

Design is often seen as a bit ‘up in the air’, sometimes arty and often pretentious.

Design for the web is surprisingly logical and most importantly, measurable.

In this crash course I will teach you the basics of design presented in a no-fluff kind of way. You will learn what separates good design from the bad (and how simple it is to turn one into the other) plus how to avoid the most common pitfalls in design.

Learning design doesn’t have to be hard

As a developer, you have a lot to keep up with. There is a lot of innovation in software development, and every day there’s some brand new shiny tool that could take you 6 months to learn in depth.

You’re constantly barraged with all this ‘new, new, new’. And maybe you feel like you have to learn all of it to stay relevant.

Design isn’t like web development. Sure, new trends come out now and again. We go from skeuomorphic to flat to skeumorflat (yea, made that one up) but the thing about design is the underlying principles do not change.

Not only that, design isn’t that hard to learn. You can get to an above-average standard just by learning a few core principles (and a bunch of hacks to go along with it).

In this free email course I’m going to teach you how you can learn design in as little time as possible. I’ll show you tactics you can apply to your work right away so whatever you’re building, it can look ‘designed’.

You’ve made such an impression on me that at this point I know I’ll read anything that comes from you.

— Gwen Ames

I thought your email course was truly outstanding, Laura. If you had followed that series up with a “sign up for my paid course” notice I would have jumped without hesitation.

Reasons: I’ve been a full-time web developer for almost 8 years, but always said “I can’t design.” Six months ago I went from being an employee where someone else took care of the design to being self-employed, and I now need to do the majority of the designing.

I loved that you started off with “design is easy” and then stepped through why. I’ve always been pretty good with fonts, but you confirmed that I’m on the right track with that lesson. And your color and graphic lessons have taught me things I’m already putting to use.

What it comes down to is that you’ve made everything so accessible, approachable, and FRIENDLY. You’ve made such an impression on me that at this point I know I’ll read anything that comes from you.”