The author simply reorganized the principles, and that's dishonest. http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...
Should give you some basic ideas. For the logo or other important stuff, maybe hire someone to do it.
I think what's really difficult is developing an internal feedback loop so that you can critique your own work, and thus improve it. I simply don't have the sense that some poeple do, for instance, that one design is 'good' and another isn't.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321534042/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=de...;
(And, yes, I have an affiliate link there. That's why I got a high karma score here, so I could start raking in the millions with affiliate links to books...)
What you're observing is probably the lack of a strong line on the left side. The right edge of the Y Combinator logo ought to form a guide line down the page, with the voting arrows' right edge X pixels to the left and the text X pixels to the right of that, and this line should also propagate through the text entry box and the reply button and so on. Instead, there's the logo, the link, the textbox and reply button (which do at least line up with each other), and the first layer of comments, each of which has its own individual vertical line. (I think. Comments and the title text are close but I'm not sure it's quite right, and there's so much interference in between it doesn't matter.) I Am Not A Designer but I know enough to know that's wrong.
Also, the bottom of the Y in the logo should form a horizontal line that the rest of the text in the title bar lines up with, whether or not that happens for you appears to depend on the zoom level of your browser. (For me right now the "Add Comment" is visibly above the Y, but when I zoomed in to look closer it actually dropped below that line. By the way, designing on the web is hard. Also my website sucks and I know it. It's on the list.) Something should probably also be done with the horizontal line the voting arrows line up on.
Cleaning that stuff up would be a start. It probably wouldn't be enough, and then I'd be stuck, because I only get the really basic mechanical stuff. Everything I've phrased as fact in this comment should be taken to be opinion, it would just be very tiresome for me to type and you to read the same caveat over and over.
To answer your questions:
Why are you interested in learning more about design?
Because I want to spend my career making people feel the way I felt when I first used an iPod. I picked the iPod here because it seems to be the stock example that gets trotted out whenever someone needs to reference good design, but you can replace it with whatever well designed product you like. We've all had those experiences in our lives where we use something new, and it makes something that was previously difficult easy. That's the kind of stuff I want to spend my time creating, and a sound knowledge of design is a means to that end.
What have you found confusing about design?
When and how to break the rules. I'm a fan of Robin Williams' Non-designers Design Book (http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...), but as a consequence my projects can look a little sterile because I follow the rules exactly as she lays them out.
In contrast, if you go and look at something made by Jason Santa Maria (an outstanding web designer at the top of his game) (http://jasonsantamaria.com/portfolio/) you'll see he breaks a lot of the rules, and it doesn't matter. In fact, it often times makes the work better.
Perhaps you can't codify or reverse engineer that. Jason has design talent. Me, not so much.
What is one blog post/book/movie, etc. that has helped you better understand something about design?
I'm fond of The Contemporist (http://www.contemporist.com/) for its great photography of great architecture. It's a great place to draw inspiration. My favourite post so far: http://www.contemporist.com/2010/05/20/chicken-point-cabin-b...
What software tools do you find useful when designing?
For HTML/CSS/PHP I tend to use Espresso (http://macrabbit.com/espresso/). I never mock up web pages in Photoshop. I go straight to code.
For desktop software, I'm a big fan of Microsoft Visual Studio's IDE.
http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...
After you finish that, you'll be able to put together great wireframes and layouts.
For the color part I'm reading a book on color theory. The very first thing I learnt in this book was that there is a reason that beginners cant work with color - because they cant "see" true color. This takes a while - google for "Color constancy"
These are the very basic steps that I wish someone had pointed me to ... everyhting else builds up from here.
http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...
EDIT: It's a great book. It's not a "Hello World," but it will help you get to the point of being able to make one. It covers a lot of fundamental design concepts that I, as a developer, didn't know but am now glad I did.
Landing page:
make the logo bigger upper left. make the logo subtitle a phrase that is formatted as a direct answer to the question "Why are you here?" make the logo aligned with the body text to make the left axis of alignment on your page stronger. Consider changing the background gradient to something radial rather than linear and more stylized. Maybe a darker luminosity to emphasize that the notebook page is the foreground. Do not use centered alignment in your content page. Always use left or right alignment unless you have a really good reason for making it centered. There isnt much repeated style between elements Uh... I'm going to stop mentioning design stuff and just say you should either hire a designer before a programmer\hacker or get this book for some really easy to act on practical advice: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...
App: On notes under an idea I like how it hides unnecessary interface features unless you mouseover..... I think you need to incorporate this design methodology in more places with cruft on the site. I am allergic to cruft, squint until your eyes go blurry and see how many different "chunks" make up the page and try to limit it to 5-7. Tags is plural but only seems to accept one thing. You need to show "state" better. For example you know how some sites use breadcrumbs? Like it will say "Metamemetic's Ideas > A First Idea > Notes" or something and they are all links to navigate back and forth, and they are all the same style in the same location and instantly convey where I am in the site. You don't have to use breadcrumbs just make it super obvious for the user to tell where they are and what they are doing at all times with no clutter around whatever the "state" indicator is. and don't have multiple "state" indicators, just one all informative one.
overall it's a good idea though with a good code foundation! Props for getting something out there
I would try and leverage the fact that you are creating tree data structures with ideas and notes to do some interesting things in the future, but just improve the UI and UX first.
[I don't know if I would use the site personally because I use Git to version control my local repository of random ideas, but there could be a good target market. Not sure who your target market is... you should pick one and post on whatever forums they are currently sharing ideas on and see what features they would need\want to use your site. Or if your site ends up functioning better as a personal planner\to do list than a collaborative editor, maybe market it as increasing ones organization and productivity]
http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Web-Design-Joel-Sklar/dp/06...
Other than that, I'd ignore dublinclontarf and learn to design directly in your edit + your browser. That's where the magic happens. As far as I see it, there is absolutely no reason to use Photoshop or Gimp up front for that much stuff if you are a html/firebug/css ninja.
a. The look: the graphic design of the page.
b. The interaction: Usability and UX
c. Designing and coding with good software design principles.
d. Some thing else?
I can point you to some good books for b. or c., however a. is the holy grail. I have never found a good book on web design from a graphic design perspective. That said Ill share with you what I would consider the closest I have found.
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a. (Web site Graphic Design)
* The non Designer's design book - http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...
* Visual Language for Designers - http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Language-Designers-Principles-U...
* Tuft's Envisioning Information - http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte...
* I have found some good online articles http://delicious.com/csmeder/ux
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b. (Usability and UX)
* Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks - http://www.lukew.com/resources/web_form_design.asp
* The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites - http://www.amazon.com/Design-Sites-Patterns-Creating-Winning...
* And again Tuft's Envisioning Information - http://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte...
* Information Design Workbook http://www.amazon.com/Information-Design-Workbook-approaches...
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c. (software design and coding)
* Bulletproof Web Design - http://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Web-Design-flexibility-pro...
* Handcrafted CSS - http://www.amazon.com/Handcrafted-CSS-More-Bulletproof-Desig...
* jQuery in Action - http://www.amazon.com/jQuery-Action-Second-Bear-Bibeault/dp/...
The one on general design principles is here: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...
There are also volumes specifically for web, powerpoint, etc.
1. Read "Non Designer's Design Book" (amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...).
2. Subscribed to a lot of web-design blogs (try Six Revisions, NetTuts etc.).
3. Learned to work well with Photoshop. I especially loved Lynda.com's Photoshop courses.
4. Designed, designed, designed. As with everything else, actually doing is the most important thing.
It covers the basics of design, color theory and typography. It's a great start.
http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Robin-Willia...