If you're building a product as a solo dev or part of a small team, you've probably struggled with design.
You open Figma. You pick a font. Then a...
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Good post.
However I would have loved to see some Screenshots of the single stages of your journey. That would have spiced it up.
Insane how much time I used to waste messing with colors before even knowing if my layout worked-you think most devs even realize they're stuck on the decoration step?
I think we all fall for it.
I thought the MVP needs to be flashy to impress the would-be sponsor...
Some of my projects never got finished.
tbh i always mess this up and start picking colors before even knowing what i want the app to do - you ever find yourself accidentally over-designing stuff before it's even usable
Working in grayscale first totally changed how fast I ship new features. Love this mindset shift.
That's the reason for like old win apps in Gui were literally gray form boxes by default and then Devs used to add buttons and functionality, see the old 90s era Web 1.0 sites also look gray by default. So yeah this going back to basics of GUI design really helps.
Pretty much what I wish someone told me ages ago, love this so much
This really resonate with me. I love designing and when it gets to make the website functional, I get stuck with an overdesigned web that doesn't do anything. Thanks for sharing this!
Good points. The book "Refactoring UI" by the creators of Tailwind has these same points. Great reference tool.
I start with DB design 1st, that dictates the pages and the layout, then I go from there.
If I'm wrong I deeply apologize but it looks like you used Radix / Shadcn. So talking about design when your app looks like any other app made with default Shadcn components... I don't know, there's nothing original nor nice there. Just a nth boring lookalike website.
Creativity is limitless, I don't understand why you guys keep using those, they kill creativity and create websites that all look the same. You're too lazy to style something right? Too lazy to create components that are accessible? Then please don't talk about design.
And congrats for creating Trello, it looks nice nonetheless.
Hey, no offense taken. I’m actually not using Shadcn in this project.
The blog post isn’t about promoting a specific design system or framework. It’s about the approach: starting with functionality and clarity first, then layering on visual design once the experience works. Whether you're using a UI kit, writing everything from scratch, or just sketching on paper, that mindset still applies.
As for frameworks and component libraries, they exist to help people move faster and adopt shared accessibility and UX standards. There's nothing wrong with using them. It's what you do with them that counts.
That said, if you’ve built something you feel does this better or differently, I’d genuinely love to see it.
I think that was his point.
We are not designers, we are devs. Truly speaking we really dnt know how to choose fonts. Hence it takes forever to find a suitable font...
He can now call you and pay you to design a unique web App. On something that is already functional - not on Figma.