---
title: 'Recap: Design for Developers'
teaser: Some results from our design for developers event.
tags: news,design,web,upcase
author: Chad Mazzola
published_on: 2010-12-10
---
We ran our first Design for Developers workshop this week. Kyle and I had a
great time teaching it and were really pleased with the quality of the work the
students were able to produce by the end of the workshop.
The main project the students worked on was a page for a fictional furniture
company. We gave them a [completely unstyled page] and asked them to slowly
transform it using grid systems, refined typography, and effective color
schemes. The students sketched out their ideas on paper, then worked directly in
HTML and CSS to implement their ideas. At the end of the last night,
we had a group presentation of all the pages, where the students talked through
their approach and we offered our critique.
We asked a few students to let us share their work with you.
This page was designed by [Javan Makhmali] (click for full-size image):
[][dev-des-1]
And this page was designed by [Chuck Vose] (click for full-size image):
[][dev-des-2]
At the end of the workshop, students walked away with a solid grasp of some
fundamental principles of design along with practice building a well-structured,
good looking web page.
If you're a developer who wants to improve your design skills, consider taking
our next [Design for Developers workshop], which we've scheduled for Feb 21-23.
[Chuck Vose]: http://www.chuckvose.com/
[completely unstyled page]: http://images.thoughtbot.com/ui/dev-design-plain.png
[Design for Developers workshop]: http://workshops.thoughtbot.com/sections/4
[dev-des-1]: http://images.thoughtbot.com/ui/dev-design-1.png
[dev-des-2]: http://images.thoughtbot.com/ui/dev-design-2.png
[Javan Makhmali]: http://javan.us/