Good Design isn't About Photoshop Tutorials

With so many Photoshop tutorials floating around everyone thinks they're designers. There's nothing wrong with tutorials or Photoshop but Photoshop isn't the foundation of good design. Good design is about visual balance, a font hierarchy, color weight, alignment and proximity, these pillars are how you, the designer, guide the viewer's eyes around the page to the places you want them to be.

Below is a simple design, but very effective. The spacing is clear and the alignments are perfect.

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Simple alignments make a difference.

See the consistent spacing?

3 Comments

alex harris - alexdesigns said on December 09, 2008

Great Point Allan!

“Good design” comes in many forms. In my world of ecommerce, executing designs to solve a problem are what makes a “good design”. Photoshop is just the tool to help complete the solution.

Davide Di Cillo said on December 09, 2008

I completely agree. Using photoshop (or Illustrator or whatever) doesn’t make you a designer as much as cooking dinner at home doesn’t make you a chef… go tell the clients.

And i don’t even want to go on the topic “logo design”…

Ted said on December 09, 2008

Hmm, that second screenshot looks more like Skitch than Photoshop ;-)