Should I Learn Graphics Programming

Should a Programmer Acquire to Design?

Aims to produce the world's best UX design tool with the assistance of co-founders. The author has been interested in 3D graphics and web pattern since he was 12 years quondam. He studied reckoner science with a Minor in Multimedia Studies at the University. He has been designing 3D pattern as a hobby for over 25 years and is currently working with his fellow co-founder to create the globe's best UX tool. He's also a programmer, merely he's also interested in pattern for as long as he tin can remember.

Edit: as many have pointed out, I really should have qualified the word design as visual pattern.

We so often hear the opposite question of whether designers should acquire to code, merely what nearly the flip side?

Should programmers learn to design?

In short. Aye, but perchance not for the reasons you might think.

Outset some background. I'one thousand a programmer, I'grand currently working with my young man co-founders with the goal of producing the world'due south best UX pattern tool.

In addition to programming, I've as well been interested in design for equally long as I tin can retrieve. I've been designing 3D graphics as a hobby for over 25 years (my beginning sense of taste of 3D Graphics was POV Ray). When other kids were playing football game on the weekend, I was hunkered down in my bedroom with a pirated version of Imagine3D on my trusty Amiga600.

When I was 12 (1992) I was obsessed with the idea of becoming a 3D graphics designer. My interests eventually led me to study Information science with a Modest in Multimedia Studies which involved Web, Graphic, Video and Audio Design along with studies in Database Systems and Programming. By 1997 standards, it was an exciting University programme, the starting time of its kind to formally offer studies in spider web development. Because that the very first web folio ever published to the World Broad Web was authored a mere 6 years earlier, these were truly the early years of the web.

Reality Sets In

University brought my dreams of becoming a visual designer crashing to ground. In high school I was the but one of my peers to exist interested in 3D Modelling, texturing and graphic design. This meant that, among my peers, I was the best at these things by default.

You can imagine my shock when I met, for the first time in my life, people with actual talent in these fields.

I can yet picture, every bit clear as twenty-four hour period, exactly where I was when one of my classmates showed me the 3D design work he had produced for an assignment. Information technology was effectually 1999 or 2000, and by this time graphic and 3D design had been an obsession for me for shut to a decade. When I saw his work, the realisation hit fast and strong, I was only ever going to be a hobbyist graphic designer.

The same held truthful for impress design, and the same held truthful for web design. In each of these Academy courses, despite my sincerest efforts, my results were middling at best.

Web Blueprint, Y2K Style

I idea it would be fun to dig through backups to observe some of the earliest sites I published online. Most of my piece of work hasn't survived the countless tech upgrades I've gone through over the years, but I was happy to come across that one site survived, source code and all!

Here's a website I designed in 2000. Despite my best efforts, the design was average, even by 2000 standards.

Wow, look at that logo, you can tell I had just discovered PhotoShop's Layer Styles!

Back then not everyone had an internet connection, so there was an accompanying CD-Rom (recall those?) that came with this project which has since been lost to time.

Another Design, 2001

I've long since lost the source files to this design, thankfully it's been preserved via the Wayback Automobile.

Believe information technology or not kids, I actually got paid reasonably well for this work in 2001

Information technology's interesting to annotation that the designs are optimised for a screen resolution of 1024x768. Risky business since many visitors would be on machines that supported only 800x600. I was a true pioneer!

I really enjoyed pattern, but I was a realist. My classmates produced far better piece of work for what seemed to be a fraction of the time and effort I was devoting.

It was time to face reality and focus my efforts where my skills lay, which concluded up existence programming for the web.

FFWD xx+ odd Years

More than 20 years after my fascination with pattern and graphics started I found myself equally the solo designer and developer of (what I think :)) is a actually cool UX blueprint tool.

In the intervening years I continued to produce both 3D graphics and web designs as a hobby. I proceed to enjoy design and I'd like to think that my design skills take improved throughout these years, but I never kidded myself.

Regardless of how hard I would work, how many hours I would spend poring over Dribbble designs and collecting folders and folders worth of design inspiration, only like in my University days, my design piece of work continues to be middling at all-time.

The Pattern of UX-App

As with my 3D and spider web work from almost 2 decades ago, I nowadays to y'all the pinnacle of my web blueprint piece of work. This really is the absolute best that I can exercise. It represents endless hours spent tweaking and sweating over the visuals of the application I am working so hard to produce.

On the left is the habitation page, and on the right you lot tin run across the sandbox/editor.

Even I tin can tell, the design is really non that good.

Then, why bother?

If twenty+ years of my efforts to go a meliorate designer take led to mediocrity, why am I advising that programmers would benefit from learning design?

Because, all too often, programmers dismiss, either the value, or difficulty of design piece of work. Like it or not, design is key to a product'due south success. This includes

Visual blueprint
UI/UX design and
Branding

Unless it impacts performance, users are oblivious to the quality of a product's code. Lots of the worlds well-nigh popular applications are riddled with "bad lawmaking".

Design on the other manus, can't be faked. Information technology'southward right there in in forepart of your users. It's the first matter that your users will estimate your product past and you don't have to be an expert to spot shoddy design. In essence, different programmers, designers don't get a free pass from users, which makes their work that much more disquisitional.

Learn about Design!

So my determination is, if you lot are a programmer you should accept a get at learning to pattern considering

It's loads of fun, even if you're not very good at it
You will become better at information technology the more y'all try
It helps y'all recognise and appreciate the work of talented designers

BTW: information technology's worth noting that UX-App isn't a solo effort whatever more.

There are three of us now.

Shai (Israel) — Product Director Extraordinaire
Tommi (London) — World class designer
Myself

Tommi, our extremely talented designer has improved our design beyond recognition.

Here's UX-App version 2.0. I'thou sure that you lot'll hold that Tommi's design far outshines my own. If I hadn't tried blueprint myself there's just no mode that I could appreciate the complexity and difficulty inherent in great pattern.

I know how hard it is to produce bang-up design, and for this reason I don't take Tommi's talents for granted.

In add-on to Tommi'south outstanding visual pattern, our superbly talented head of product Shai has worked tirelessly polishing the UX and UI workflows into a far more than pleasing and polished state. Well done Shai and Tommi!

UX-App version 2 has taken 6 gruelling months and thousands of hours of hard work to complete. I hope that you lot'll take a risk to check it out!

Eli, Shai, Tommi
The UX-App Team
https://www.ux-app.com