Reddit mentions: The best industrial & product design books

We found 487 Reddit comments discussing the best industrial & product design books. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 83 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

1. How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

    Features:
  • Used Book in Good Condition
How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination
Specs:
Height11.03 Inches
Length9.1 Inches
Number of items1
Weight2.5 Pounds
Width0.8 Inches
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2. The Design of Everyday Things

    Features:
  • Taschen
The Design of Everyday Things
Specs:
Height8.25 Inches
Length5.25 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateSeptember 2002
Weight0.6 Pounds
Width0.75 Inches
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3. The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

    Features:
  • Product Condition: No Defects
  • Good one for reading
  • Comes with Proper Binding
The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
Specs:
Height8.325 Inches
Length5.5 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateNovember 2013
Weight0.82011961464 Pounds
Width1 Inches
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4. Sketching (12th printing): Drawing Techniques for Product Designers

    Features:
  • Consortium Book Sales Dist
Sketching (12th printing): Drawing Techniques for Product Designers
Specs:
Height11.1 Inches
Length8.7 Inches
Number of items1
Weight3.08 Pounds
Width1.1 Inches
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5. Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals

    Features:
  • Thames & Hudson
Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals
Specs:
Height11.3999772 Inches
Length8.8999822 Inches
Number of items1
Weight5.7761112644 Pounds
Width1.8999962 Inches
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6. How to Render: the fundamentals of light, shadow and reflectivity

How to Render: the fundamentals of light, shadow and reflectivity
Specs:
Height11 Inches
Length9 Inches
Number of items1
Weight3.1 Pounds
Width1.25 Inches
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7. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Portfolio
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Specs:
ColorYellow
Height8.4 Inches
Length5.8 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateNovember 2014
Weight0.82 Pounds
Width1 Inches
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9. Sketching: The Basics

Consortium Book Sales Dist
Sketching: The Basics
Specs:
Height11.2 Inches
Length8.9 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateAugust 2011
Weight2.5132696226833 Pounds
Width0.85 Inches
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10. The Accidental Instructional Designer: Learning Design for the Digital Age

    Features:
  • Philips A19 LED light bulbs with Warm Glow Effect provide 800 lumens of soft white light, equivalent to 60 Watt incandescents; These bulbs fit standard medium base (E26) fixtures with the look and feel of a classic bulb; Not for use with Philips HUE products
  • Warm Glow dimming offers flicker free, silent dimming that works with more dimmer switches than any other LED on the market; The more you dim, the warmer the light from 2200 to 2700 kelvin just like traditional incandescent light bulbs
  • These best in class, Energy Star Certified Philips LEDs provide steady, natural lighting at 1/4 of the energy of incandescents, 1/2 the energy of halogens and with 10X and 4X the lifespan respectively; Philips LEDs are mercury free so they don't contribute to harmful hazardous waste
  • A19 soft white light bulbs are perfect anywhere you need a balance of clarity and warmth with the flexibility of dimming in an slightly smaller bulb; The E26 medium base fits standard fixtures on pendant, vanity, and bare lamps
  • This 4 pack of A19 LEDs is expected to deliver a lifetime of upto 15,000 hours and over 20 years based on standard usage of 3 hours per day, saving you the cost and hassle of frequent bulb replacement
  • Comfortable Light: Our products meet strict test criteria including flicker, strobe, glare and color rendition to ensure they meet EyeComfort requirements; Switch to Philips LED, light that’s designed for the comfort of your eyes
The Accidental Instructional Designer: Learning Design for the Digital Age
Specs:
Height8.96 Inches
Length6.04 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateJune 2014
Weight0.7 pounds
Width0.49 Inches
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11. Designing Interactions (The MIT Press)

Designing Interactions (The MIT Press)
Specs:
ColorSilver
Height9.31 Inches
Length8.19 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateOctober 2006
Weight3.5494424182 Pounds
Width1.44 Inches
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12. Drawing for Product Designers (Portfolio Skills: Product Design)

Laurence King
Drawing for Product Designers (Portfolio Skills: Product Design)
Specs:
Height11.25 Inches
Length8.75 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateSeptember 2012
Weight1.763698096 Pounds
Width0.75 Inches
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13. Apple Design

Used Book in Good Condition
Apple Design
Specs:
Height11.92911 Inches
Length10.03935 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateNovember 2011
Weight4.8 Pounds
Width1.1811 Inches
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15. Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market

Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market
Specs:
Height8.43 Inches
Length5.85 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateAugust 2015
Weight1.3 Pounds
Width0.99 Inches
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16. The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions

    Features:
  • W W Norton Company
The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions
Specs:
Height7.8 Inches
Length5.2 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateApril 2005
Weight1.13 Pounds
Width0.8 Inches
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17. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies)

Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies)
Specs:
Height9.1 Inches
Length7.4 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateApril 2007
Weight1.7306287567 Pounds
Width1 Inches
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18. The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

    Features:
  • Taschen
The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
Specs:
ColorWhite
Height8 Inches
Length5.375 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateJuly 2006
Weight0.6503636729 Pounds
Width0.5625 Inches
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19. How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

    Features:
  • Used Book in Good Condition
How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination
Specs:
Height11.1 Inches
Length9.1 Inches
Number of items1
Weight3.00049138582 Pounds
Width1.1 Inches
▼ Read Reddit mentions

🎓 Reddit experts on industrial & product design books

The comments and opinions expressed on this page are written exclusively by redditors. To provide you with the most relevant data, we sourced opinions from the most knowledgeable Reddit users based the total number of upvotes and downvotes received across comments on subreddits where industrial & product design books are discussed. For your reference and for the sake of transparency, here are the specialists whose opinions mattered the most in our ranking.
Total score: 51
Number of comments: 4
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 40
Number of comments: 9
Relevant subreddits: 1
Total score: 30
Number of comments: 5
Relevant subreddits: 1
Total score: 13
Number of comments: 6
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 12
Number of comments: 4
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 10
Number of comments: 5
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 9
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 8
Number of comments: 4
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 6
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 1
Total score: 3
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 1

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Top Reddit comments about Industrial & Product Design:

u/TwoToedTerror · 1 pointr/learnart

Glad I could be of help!

Watts Atelier is really amazing. It is beginner friendly - anatomy knowledge helps, but you wont be drawing the figure immediately. It will still be a good idea to learn anatomy while you continue through the program - I'll link you to some great anatomy resources.

To give you a rough breakdown of how the course works, you start by drawing simple shapes (spheres, cylinders, boxes, cones) focusing on form and value. Then you will start drawing other simple geometric forms applying the same principles. Then drawing fundamentals is finished with still life drawing. Next you move into portrait drawing fundamentals, then figure. If you are interested in painting, you can continue the course to portrait and figure painting, along with other specialized classes (landscape, drapery, composition, etc.)

On the issue of sizing, that is a problem that will solve itself naturally over time. It has to do with proportions and measuring, which is a skill that takes time and practice to get a handle on. Eventually you can visualize where everything goes and place it on the page in the right spot. But yeah, Watts Atelier will definitely help.

The difference between Watts and other free tutorials online is 1.) professionalism and structure: The course is taught by the founder of the atelier Jeff Watts, and it is structured like a true academic art class. Learning online gives you random bits of information which are helpful, but you can't contextualize them. The course is designed to take you from beginner to master. The tutorials online are fun, but don't have that structure.

2.) The teachers are world class artists. To give context, here is some of Jeff Watts work. You may not want to be a painter, but you can be confident that you are learning from a master. You can also google his drawings, they will blow you away. Also, the guy Stan Prokopenko who I recommended - and is often mentioned in this sub - was trained at the Watts Atelier by Jeff Watts.

You probably get the picture, its a great program. My experience with it has been an absolute joy. I wish I could go back in time two years when I started pursuing a career in art and taken these classes immediately. It would have saved me so much time and effort wasted trying to figure out how to grow as an artist on my own. What I do is pay for a month and watch all the videos and print out the handouts for the module (currently on portrait II), and then spend however long I need to get a good handle on it before I spend the 100$ for the next month. Also, if you have the cash to blow, you can spend extra money to get 1 on 1 coaching with teachers at the atelier.

I will note that it can get boring drawing spheres and still life all the time, so make sure you schedule time to draw stuff you love. Once you get into portrait and figure things get way more fun, but just be ready for that in the early stages.

Anyway, glad I could help at all! Feel free to PM me at any time, I have tons of resources I've hoarded over the years that can be helpful. Here are some links that might be helpful:

Here is a video of Jeff Watts drawing and answering questions, it will give you an idea of what his teaching style is like and who he is. Also the drawing is really good.

New Masters Academy is another great tool that has been huge for me. The anatomy and figure drawing courses are amazing. They aren't as structured as Watts, but can be very useful for when you have specific areas you want help for.

This book is superb for figure drawing. Also, this book is the equally amazing book on perspective. Also, a lot of books don't talk about drawing the clothed figure (which is pretty dumb considering most of the time, commercial art has to do with clothed people), which is why I also love this book. You are probably familiar with Bridgman's book, but if you don't have it - get it.

A lot of professional artists in many different industries (concept art, comics, film, animation, 3D, etc.) make gumroad tutorials for a decent price, here is a massive list of tons of these great tutorials.

If you want some inspiration while you work, I love listening to Creative Trek and Chris Oatley's Artcast. They both are mostly interviews with other professional artists and contain all sorts of wisdom and inspiration to help you out.

I have more, but I'll leave it there. I hope the best for you man! Keep up the hard work! Feel free to PM me for whatever reason.

u/ilikeUXandicannotlie · 15 pointsr/userexperience

Here are some things I (and I know others) have struggled with. I think the web is exploding with resources and information, so I don’t necessarily think we need to explain what a prototype is. There’s better places elsewhere to learn things about UX, but I think we could provide some good resources for not just people new to UX but everyone else too. I’m coming at this from what I wished I would have access to when I was trying to get into the field. I know that /u/uirockstar has some good walls of text that probably should be included as well. Feel free to suggest any changes to what I have here.




I really want to begin a career in UX/UI. What do I do?


Well, first it’s important to know that UX and UI are not synonymous. While many job postings combine them, UI is a subset of UX, just as research and information architecture are. UI is still important and if you can do both, you do increase your value. While many see UX as a research field at its core, the UX/UI title implies that it’s only about creating pretty things.

The first step is learning more about the field, which brings us to…



What kind of education do I need?


If you are still in school, there are more places recently that are offering courses in human-computer interaction. You can even try to create your own internships. There are very few UX specific schools, though they are starting to pop up, like Center Centre and General Assembly.



Yeah, yeah, that’s great. But I already graduated, so where do I start?


Any focus on people or technology can act as a solid foundation for learning UX. Because there has never been a set entrance path into the field, UX roles are filled with people from many different backgrounds. The most common degrees for those in the field though are design, psychology, communications, English, and computer science. link

There are a number of people in the field who are self-taught. There are tons of books, blogs, and designers (here are some helpful resources) which provide enough UX stuff to keep us all busy. When I first started reading about it, I quickly got overwhelmed because there was so much information available and most of it was intended for those who already had a pretty good grasp on things. The Hipper Element’s crash courses in UX and user psychology are great places to get a fairly quick overview.

There are books like The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug that make for great first books.

UX Mastery has a great eBook for getting started, appropriately titled Getting Started in UX. Kevin Nichols’ UX for Dummies is both very readable, yet detailed. You can even buy the eBook if you don’t want people on the bus to think you’re a “dummy.”

Lastly, Fred Beecher has a very extensive Amazon list of recommended UX books, depending on what area you are looking to learn more about.



Great. I’ve read a whole bunch of stuff and have a pretty good idea how UX works. Now how do I get someone to hire me so I can gain experience?


Hey, easy there. While, yes, there are lots of UX jobs out there, very few are entry level and not many employers will hire someone who has only read about it and not actually done it. You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. I know. Frustrating, right?

You have to prove that you can do it. One way to do this is site redesigns.

Go find a website that lacks in it’s user experience and figure out how to fix it. Maybe it’s a small business down the street from you or maybe it’s a feature on eBay you think could be better. Redesigning sites is a good way to practice a process and make mistakes on your own time. If you can involve the owner from that small business down the street, that’s even better because then you can get a sense of the customers (users) that you will be designing for.

Once you have done this, you have (some) experience! Start a portfolio and add to it!



But I have a resume. Why do I need a portfolio?


Resumes are great. But resumes won’t get you a job starting out. It’s a million times more effective to show potential employers what you have done, rather than showing them a resume showcasing that you are a team player and proficient in Microsoft Office. But you should still have a resume that outlines your UX skills.



But I’ve never worked in UX! What should I put on my resume?


You don’t need to put all of your old jobs on your resume if they are unrelated to the field. Most places still want to see some work history so they know you haven’t been living in a cave for the last four years, but they don’t care about how you sold vacuum cleaners or trained circus horses. Maybe you can relate some crossover UX skills to your previous work.

Back to portfolios. They are a lot like elementary math class in that you want to show your work. Potential employers are much more interested in how you made a design decision rather than the final result. If your portfolio just has a bunch of fancy wireframes, that doesn’t tell them how you took specific personas into account and you are simply showing them something that looks pretty. And just because it looks pretty doesn’t always mean it makes sense.



Okay. I have a portfolio with a few unsolicited site redesigns in it.


Congratulations! But I have some bad news. Are you sitting down?

No one wants to hire you yet. You haven’t worked on any “actual” projects that showed how your UX skillz helped a business. I know I suggested you do site redesigns to get practice and you should because that is work you can take to a nonprofit or another small business and say, “here are some trial runs that I’ve done that prove I know what I’m doing and now I can help you for free in exchange for adding it to my portfolio.”

They’ll probably be skeptical and say, “hmmm… I don’t think my website needs this newfangled user experience you speak of and—wait did you say free?”

You both get something out of it and you’re doing it pro bono, which relieves you the pressure of making one tiny mistake. (There is a great site called Catchafire that matches non-profits all over the country with people looking to donate their time and skills.)

Once you have a portfolio displaying your work and some experience, start applying! But there is one more aspect that goes into getting hired and that is the people who will hire you.




Ugh, but isn’t networking just using people for my own professional gain?


I had this same mindset and it probably delayed my entrance into the field. I wanted to rely only on the quality of my work and trusted the rest would follow. I avoided networking and meeting people in the field because I didn’t want it to seem like I was only mooching for a job.

But the fact is people are altruistic in nature and like helping others. Many people also enjoy talking about themselves, and those are the two main principles of an informational interview. You’ll also find that people are excited to help others get started since they remember how difficult it was (see: this blog post).

It wasn’t until I started getting those informational interviews and talking with people at UXPA and MeetUp groups that I learned another side of UX, but also got more familiar with more hiring managers or those that knew them. Whenever possible, people will hire those they know and like. Until you get out and start shaking hands and kissing babies, you will be just another faceless name in a stack of resumes.

Meeting with recruiters/staffing agencies is also a good route as they make money by finding you a job, so they have a vested interest in giving you constructive criticism.




I've heard that you have to live in a big city to get a job in UX.


Move. Just kidding. But while it’s true that larger cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle are full of opportunities, there are plenty of other places around the country that have jobs. Here are the top 20. If you live in a tiny city, expect a tougher time finding a position.



Okay, I got an interview. How do I not mess this up?


Some great advice is to go all UX on your preparation and treat the interviewer like a user.

.......to be continued.



Blogs:

u/kaidomac · 1 pointr/IWantToLearn

part 2/2

Some resources:

There was a book that really changed my approach to creativity called "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle. He basically breaks down the science of how talent is made. Yes, you do need the aptitude to become talented at something (which is really just a combination of having the ability to do it & being interested in it enough to actually work on it), but most people can do most things & get pretty decently good at them. There's an audiobook version of the book available on Amazon, if you're interested in it:

https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Unlocking-Secret-Anything-dp-1598878735/dp/1598878735/

I'd highly recommend that book (or audiobook, I have both & revisit it annually!), especially if you want to combine that pragmatic adult approach with fostering creativity...they can actually work hand in hand! Talent is really about breaking things down into little pieces & making consistent progress on it over time, even when it gets boring & hard, which is where the pragmatic approach has to kick in, because the creative part of yourself hates that crap & will want to quit, lol. Check out this amazing video on the concept of "grit" as a predictor of success & as the engine that drives progress & creativity:

https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en

Also, you don't need to spend ten thousand hours to get good at something...you need like, 20 hours - for real! Check this video out for more on that concept:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtJy69cEOtQ

I enjoy exploring my creativity in a variety of ways:

  • I like to cook & bake, and enjoy trying new recipes & creating new recipes
  • I like to watch new movies & TV shows
  • I like to listen to new music (Apple Music is currently touting 50 million songs, also check out /r/bestofsoundcloud)
  • I like to try new video games (Steam has a huge & amazing library)
  • I like to create art (airbrushing, drawing, photoshop, etc.)
  • I like to write (both fiction & non-fiction)

    It's incredibly easy to be nothing more than a content consumer these days, and that's a deathtrap for creative people, because we go into ga-ga mode instead of actually creating real output ourselves. Websites & apps are literally setup as addiction machines (I mean literally). So it's important to decide within what fields you'd like to be creative in...whether it's Martial arts, or a sport, or gymnastics, or fashion design, or residential architecture or landscaping or anything really...and then decide what you want to make, learn the mechanics of how to do it, and start creating!

    I like to set things up within routines, as my blocks of time are generally fixed during the day due to job commitments, family commitments, and so on. My time for practicing the guitar, trying new recipes, etc., is limited each day, because I gotta go to bed at some point & wake up for the next day lol, so I have had to really get specific about what I want to accomplish & when. I have a huge list of recipes to try & generally try at least one or two new ones each week, which means that every year, I've gotten exposed to 50 new recipes that I've personally made with my own two hands..vs. years prior of simply pinning stuff on Pinterest & never actually bothering to pick a date to make something, go shopping for the ingredients, and then trying it out!

    Creativity? Pssh, creativity is easy. Getting serious about picking something (or multiple things) to work on & then getting to work is the real ticket to creativity. Everyone out there is creative in some way, but you have to setup your daily routine to foster that creativity by carving out blocks of time to work on stuff & picking out stuff to work on! And then creating some kindling for that fire, whether it's a big list of recipes or 30 squares of sketches or whatever it may be. Define your creative process, which at first can & absolutely should include copycatting everything out there (be sure to listen to the Bronte sisters section in the Talent Code book about this!!). And remember, everything is a remix!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc
u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/learntodraw

Hey man, thanks a lot! It's been a few months and I've gotten pretty good fast which scares me because I'm afraid of hitting my first plateau. But to answer your question, I think it deserves a thorough explanation of my experience through the lens of a complete novice artist, so forgive this massive wall of text.

Most if not all of my drawings were flat and 2D and instead of drawing what I saw or imagined, I'd sort of just put marks down on the paper or tablet and course correct until I found something I thought looked good. So I just started practicing anything that could help and boiled it down to this process.

Drawing better figures (drawing anything, really) starts with four components: creativity, mechanical skill, analysis and community. And this isn't just about drawing theory, but also managing your headspace so that you can make it a habit to draw everyday, because nothing substitutes practice.

Creativity is 100% necessary to improving at art, and you need to draw for fun, regardless of your level of practice. Because if it stops being fun, you stop doing it. I've gone days, if not weeks without drawing anything because nothing was coming out how I wanted it to. So I'd stick to practicing fundamentals for weeks only to become frustrated at the marginal improvement I was making, but also bored of drawing because it became a chore. I think the hardest realization at least for me as a beginner is accepting that my art will never get "good enough." You have to swing for the fences with what you know, identify your mistakes afterward, and divide that up into key problem areas to focus on for when you step away from the creative process to practice fundamentals. This all being said, I think the exercise I find most useful for creativity is opening my vault of unfinished story scripts and doing character designs for them. If you for whatever reason don't have any unfinished stories collecting dust on your Google Drive, do what your default state is when you're doing creative work. You really gotta explore your mind and do what feels good. For me, there's nothing quite like the feeling of bringing a character from your own imagination to life. Don't be afraid to make mistakes for this process. That's the point.

Mechanical skill is line confidence. Mine still isn't the best, and I definitely chicken scratch lines loosely before finding the correct one. If you can see in the sketch, I used an orange layer for my messy sketch, and use a few light strokes in black on a second layer for the outline. Eventually those get smudged to create realistic skin tones, but that's a subject on its own. To practice more confident lines, I use drawabox. It's a free series of line exercises you should do. They're time consuming to do at first, but if you do it enough, you should be comfortable enough to use any of the exercises as a 15 minute warm-up every time you pick up a pencil. There’s also an active subreddit and YT community where you can post your exercises and receive criticism. More on community later. Drawing confident lines, in theory, should dramatically cut down the time it takes to sketch something. These exercises also incorporate drawing simple geometric shapes in 3D space. This is important because every visual object you could ever produce is composed of simple or complex shapes. When I get home from work I'll post a video of the timelapse for this drawing, and you can see all the mistakes I made because I couldn't confidently create lines.

Analysis is the act of seeing and interpreting, and in art I feel like it's neglected in the same way listening is in communication. Art is a means of communicating something, and if you're always producing and never observe, it stops holding meaning. It's kind of like when that hipster band sells out and people stop identifying with their music. In order to make genuine pieces of art in my opinion, you have to be constantly observing, or you'll produce the same stuff over and over again, or produce something that isn't you. So to practice analysis, the best exercise by a mile IMHO is drawing from life or photo reference. In art schools, they focus on building rich visual libraries, meaning the number things you can imagine at any angle and can draw from imagination. So say you're practicing architecture for a week. The instructor will have students draw buildings and interior spaces from a particular time period, whilst mixing in exercises that involve drawing from imagination in the style of what was observed. Then they move on to another time period. So if you want to improve your faces, draw all female/male/child/elderly faces doing different facial expressions at different angles both from reference and imagination, then switch when you get bored or exhausted. Then if you get bored of faces do hands, or another part of the body, or animals, or flowers, or buildings! After you finish drawing, compare them to your reference photo, analyze your mistakes, and try again until you're confident enough to draw something completely from imagination. Pretty soon you'll have a robust library of visual elements that you can combine to create complex and believable compositions.

Community is another overlooked subject in this field. I used to be a solitary artist. I mentioned earlier that I always believed I would just get "good enough" one day and only then will I show off my work. That was the single most damaging belief I held. There will always be someone better than you, but they should be a source of inspiration, not envy. Because if you get involved in local art galleries, you'll meet the artists and learn they're genuinely nice people. I do security work at this newer young company and they put commissioned art pieces in their buildings, so over the weekend I got to watch a few of them work. They had friends come from their community and help them scale and paint. They convinced me to start an Instagram for my work, because the fundamental purpose of social media is to give artists you meet irl something to look at after meeting you. The problem with the artiste hermit is that you'll never be confident to show people without worrying about the quality of your art. As they say, "an artist's work is never finished", so you'll always feel a bit of doubt when showing people your work, but that's natural and you learn to manage it better. Additionally, it just helps to be around other artists because we view the world differently. I asked one of the commission artists I met, "Is it a bad time to be an artist?" He replied, "It's always a bad time to be an artist." We shared a hearty laugh, and it was at that moment I realized community is also an important tool for life enrichment. Nothing is worse than being stranded in a sea of people who can't comprehend why you would want to be an artist in the 21st century.

I don't think any of these four components are more important than the other. The more you understand each one individually, the more you see how they all affect each other. If you draw a lot of cylinders in 3D space, foreshortening an arm will just make sense more because you've drawn a similar shape at that angle several times. If you go out to a gallery and observe art, you might see something that evokes a feeling that you'll need to recreate. If your lines get really confident, you'll spend less time fixing mistakes and more time putting more ideas on paper/canvas/tablet. They work in tandem, and I wouldn't give each component a structured dedication of time everyday, but I would switch off whenever the process gets stale or boring.

I hope I answered your questions and more. Sorry I went off on such a long post, but I would have liked a road map when I first started. Happy drawing, don't forget to have fun and take breaks.

Other resources:

YouTube is helpful, but most of them aren't for beginners despite being labeled as such. Shapes in 3D space will always be the most beneficial exercise for understanding space and perspective so do that more often than looking up "how to draw (a specific thing) tutorial)" on YT. There's this app called Magic Poser, and many others that let you put objects into 3D space and adjust for angles and lighting. Just play around with the light, observe how it behaves, trace it, draw it from imagination, add shapes, and so on.

Books are also a great resource and I'd start with Scott Roberson and Thomas Bertling's How To Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments From Your Imagination. It's a great jumping off point, because there are book recommendations at the start of most chapters for specific topics. Books are also extremely useful because there are detailed, hi-resolution photos for you to observe. It also makes you look sophisticated when you have a library.

Oh, another classic book is the Loomis guide on head and hands. It gives you a detailed guide on drawing any type of head and face, but it is a dry read. Great resource, but very dry and a little dated.

Lastly, never pay for anything unless it's absolutely necessary for self-study. If you have books you haven't read about perspective or anatomy yet, don't buy a $300 course from an online school. If you have paper and a pencil, don't go buy a tablet. I did, and though I don't necessarily regret it, I didn't need to get a tablet to get started.

u/ArkitekKX5 · 1 pointr/Art

Well drawing for me started out as a coping mechanism when I was a kid and still is for me today (especially these days). I had a lot of problems with depression and anxiety as a child coupled with a fairly ignorant father that didn't recognize these things as mental problems. I was forced to try to find a way to deal with hordes of feelings and emotions that as a mere child I was incapable of understanding and drawing helped me do that. Around the time I was about 13 or so some close friends of mine started drawing and where WAAAAY better than I was, so that pushed me to start working on things like technique and different styles. I really liked Dragonball Z at that age so I started drawing pictures I printed out from the internet regularly and started drawing in an anime style and eventually began coming up with my own characters, my friends were really good at drawing in anime styles so they taught me a lot about it.

When high school rolled around (I'll say sophomore year or so) I took basic art 1&2 but I never really did too much because the course material was SO rigid that it didn't interest me. Ms. Huelett (the art teacher) felt like I had a lot of talent and took me under her wing in a big way. She knew A LOT about art and helped me learn and meld multiple styles together in order for me to create my own. She taught me a lot about anatomy and how to draw people/characters in different poses, how to properly shadow characters and apply light sources to my pieces, creating expressions and applying drama through a characters poses, she poured as much knowledge into me as she could and I couldn't be more grateful for all she taught me.

I know it isn't much (you've also been given some great advice already I see, which is fantastic) but I'll give you a few links to some books that really helped me learn more about various styles and techniques (I still have most of these books and refer to them fairly often, even now)

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954561&sr=8-9&keywords=how+to+draw

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Urban-Sketching-Location/dp/1592537251/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954800&sr=8-19&keywords=how+to+draw+graffiti

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Art-Doodle-Book-Outside/dp/1856696820/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954800&sr=8-28&keywords=how+to+draw+graffiti

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Head-Figure-Perigee-Jack/dp/0399507914/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954902&sr=8-28&keywords=how+to+draw+books

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Manga-Mark-Crilley-drawing-ebook/dp/B006WUD10S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954990&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+draw+manga

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Manga-Bodies-Anatomy/dp/4766112385/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954990&sr=8-6&keywords=how+to+draw+manga

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Cutting-Edge-Anatomy-Reference-ebook/dp/B00G8ELT2K/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1404955084&sr=8-10&keywords=how+to+draw+comics

http://www.amazon.com/Draw-Comic-Book-Action-Garbett/dp/1440308136/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1404955084&sr=8-14&keywords=how+to+draw+comics

I think that's most of the books I've got, at the very least it'll give you some ideas to practice with and all of those books together isn't too bad of a price and it's a good way to get experience in the things you want to learn (I think) if you're not able to afford the classes you were suggested.

Good god this post is long as hell and I apologize for that, I'm just trying to be as helpful as I possibly can with what I know (call it a flaw)

I'll leave you with a few pieces of advice that help me out regularly and that I feel have gotten me to the level I'm at now (though I think I'm just ok at best truthfully)

  1. Sketch whatever idea you have in your mind for something as fast as you can and just let your ideas flow through you. Don't give yourself time to say this part sucks I have to redo it, just go for it and you'll be surprised at what can come out of it.

  2. Try to take inspiration from artists you admire but don't try to copy their style. What worked for me was incorporating my inspiration with various artists and merging them with my own ideas which eventually lead to me developing my own style(s)

  3. Do your best to not look at your art as inferior to another persons artwork. Absolutely, have those people you look up to want to be like artistically and draw inspiration from, but do your best not to doubt yourself. It's YOUR artwork and YOUR ideas, the only person's opinions that matter are your own. If you're truly happy with what you've created and feel you've done the best you can then I promise SOMEONE out there WILL like your work as well, at least in my opinion.

    Sorry again for the book, I just hope I was at least a little bit helpful with the advice I was able to give and didn't come off as arrogant sounding or anything

    Best of luck and I can't wait to see what you do in the future :)

u/Am_draw · 5 pointsr/learnart

Your friend is sort of right about the pen. It can help do away with the "chicken scratch" method of drawing by forcing you to be more confident with your lines but you should stick with pencil for now.


I'm mostly self-taught as well (although I learned a bit from Watts Atelier until it got to be too expensive) and the sheer amount of information out there can be really overwhelming. I mean, there's so many things to learn: perspective, line weight, figure drawing, portraiture, landscape, etc.


What definitely helped me is realizing that I'm never going to stop improving as an artist. That means that I'm going to have my entire life to hone my skills. Even if you have to unlearn a lot of bad habits, you've still got plenty of time to practice slowly, deliberately and mindfully.


If you understand that you've got your whole life to get better, it's easier to formulate a strategy to get better. You've got to think about this in the long term. That means taking a month to work solely on anatomy, another month to work only on perspective, another month to work on tone and values, while always revisiting the skills that you've already cultivated.


For example, I've laid out my artistic goals 3 months in advance. That means that for the next 3 months, I'm only focusing on anatomy and gesture/figure drawing. My daily schedule this week looks like this:


warmup

1, 2, 5 and 10 minute gesture/figure drawings

study/copy hands from Bridgeman's Constructive Anatomy book

draw 50 hands

spend about 10-15 minutes drawing hands from memory and comparing them to the references I was using earlier

work on something fun


If I have extra time, I'll work on some more anatomy studies but it depends on how busy I am with work/life. After this week is up, I'll move on to arms, then the core, then legs, head, etc, following the same setup I've made. Maybe the next 3 months, I'll move on to perspective drawing but I haven't thought that far ahead yet.


If you're confused about where to start, just pick something that you're the weakest at and start drawing that. It's a grind and you're going to be producing hundreds, if not thousands of drawings but that's the way to get better.


Like I said, if you start thinking in the long term, it gets less overwhelming. I'm gonna link some resources that really helped me out.


Books

Perspective Made Easy

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Fun With a Pencil Actually, anything by Loomis.

How to Draw Kind of a technical book but goes into really great detail about perspective


Youtube Channels

Watts Atelier Highly recommended. Watch his figure drawing videos. Also, if you can spare the cash, join his online school. It's fantastic and very structured course in drawing. Definitely look into this if you have trouble deciding what to learn next.

Proko This guy has great intro videos for figure drawing. I think he learned at Watts Atelier as well.

New Masters Academy They have a ton of great videos about everything. Definitely look into Glen Vilppu's figure drawing series. He's the god of figure drawing.

Alphonso Dunn Really great pen and ink tutorials


Sorry if I overwhelmed you (ironic, considering your original post) but I just wanted to share some stuff that's really helped me develop a schedule and get better. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help you a fellow art student out.


TLDR: You have plenty of time in your life to get better, so make a schedule and stick to it.

u/CSMastermind · 4 pointsr/learnprogramming

I've posted this before but I'll repost it here:

Now in terms of the question that you ask in the title - this is what I recommend:

Job Interview Prep


  1. Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
  2. Programming Interviews Exposed: Coding Your Way Through the Interview
  3. Introduction to Algorithms
  4. The Algorithm Design Manual
  5. Effective Java
  6. Concurrent Programming in Java™: Design Principles and Pattern
  7. Modern Operating Systems
  8. Programming Pearls
  9. Discrete Mathematics for Computer Scientists

    Junior Software Engineer Reading List


    Read This First


  10. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

    Fundementals


  11. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
  12. Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
  13. Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach
  14. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
  15. Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
  16. Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing
  17. Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application

    Understanding Professional Software Environments


  18. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game
  19. Software Project Survival Guide
  20. The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
  21. Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams
  22. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules
  23. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

    Mentality


  24. Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
  25. Against Method
  26. The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

    History


  27. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
  28. Computing Calamities: Lessons Learned from Products, Projects, and Companies That Failed
  29. The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management

    Mid Level Software Engineer Reading List


    Read This First


  30. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth

    Fundementals


  31. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
  32. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
  33. Solid Code
  34. Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code
  35. Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative
  36. Writing Solid Code

    Software Design


  37. Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide
  38. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
  39. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
  40. Domain-Driven Design Distilled
  41. Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
  42. Design Patterns in C# - Even though this is specific to C# the pattern can be used in any OO language.
  43. Refactoring to Patterns

    Software Engineering Skill Sets


  44. Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems
  45. Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Models, Frameworks, and Tools
  46. NoEstimates: How To Measure Project Progress Without Estimating
  47. Object-Oriented Software Construction
  48. The Art of Software Testing
  49. Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software
  50. Working Effectively with Legacy Code
  51. Test Driven Development: By Example

    Databases


  52. Database System Concepts
  53. Database Management Systems
  54. Foundation for Object / Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto
  55. Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design
  56. Data Access Patterns: Database Interactions in Object-Oriented Applications

    User Experience


  57. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
  58. The Design of Everyday Things
  59. Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
  60. User Interface Design for Programmers
  61. GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos

    Mentality


  62. The Productive Programmer
  63. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
  64. Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
  65. Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

    History


  66. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software
  67. New Turning Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science
  68. Hacker's Delight
  69. The Alchemist
  70. Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages
  71. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood

    Specialist Skills


    In spite of the fact that many of these won't apply to your specific job I still recommend reading them for the insight, they'll give you into programming language and technology design.

  72. Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC
  73. Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets
  74. Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming
  75. The C++ Programming Language
  76. Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
  77. More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
  78. More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#
  79. CLR via C#
  80. Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java
  81. Thinking in Java
  82. JUnit in Action
  83. Functional Programming in Scala
  84. The Art of Prolog: Advanced Programming Techniques
  85. The Craft of Prolog
  86. Programming Perl: Unmatched Power for Text Processing and Scripting
  87. Dive into Python 3
  88. why's (poignant) guide to Ruby
u/DiggyDog · 9 pointsr/gamedev

Hey there, I'm a game designer working in AAA and I agree with /u/SuaveZombie that you'll probably be better off with a degree in CS. BUT... don't give up on wanting to be a designer!

 

You should realize that it's not giving up on your dream at all, in fact, it's great advice for how to reach that dream. A designer with an engineering background is going to have a lot more tools at their disposal than one who doesn't.

 

Design is way more than just coming up with a bunch of cool, big ideas. You need to be able to figure out all the details, communicate them clearly to your teammates, and evaluate how well they're working so you can figure out how to make something people will enjoy. In fact, working on a big game often feels like working on a bunch of small games that all connect.

Take your big game idea and start breaking it down into all the pieces that it will need to be complete. For example, GTA has systems for driving and shooting (among many other things). Look at each of those things as its own, smaller game. Even these "small" parts of GTA are actually pretty huge, so try to come up with something as small as possible. Like, super small. Smaller than you think it needs to be. Seriously! You'll eventually be able to make big stuff, but it's not the place to start. Oh, and don't worry if your first game(s) suck. They probably will, and that's fine! The good stuff you make later will be built on the corpses of the small, crappy games you made while you were learning.

 

If you're truly interested in design, you can learn a lot about usability, player psychology, and communication methods without having to shell out $17k for a degree. Same goes for coding (there are tons of free online resources), though a degree will help you get in the door at companies you might be interested in and help provide the structure to keep you going.

 

Here's some books I recommend. Some are specific to games and some aren't, but are relevant for anything where you're designing for someone besides yourself.

 

Universal Principles of Design

The Design of Everyday Things

Rules of Play

The Art of Game Design This and the one below are great books to start with.

A Theory of Fun This is a great one to start with.

Game Feel

• Depending on the type of game you're making, some info on level design would be useful too, but I don't have a specific book to recommend (I've found pieces of many books and articles to be useful). Go play through the developer commentary on Half-Life 2 or Portal for a fun way to get started.

 

Sounds like you're having a tough time, so do your best to keep a positive attitude and keep pushing yourself toward your goals. There's nothing to stop you from learning to make games and starting to make them on your own if that's what you really want to do.

Good luck, work hard!

u/usethebrush · 3 pointsr/CommercialArt

Perspective is critically important, and in my eyes, the number one area of focus, if you had to pick. However, I would tie learning perspective with a re-evaluation of basic shapes and start thinking about structure and form. Drawing basic shapes in space allows you to construct and build anything you can imagine, realistically and even a cartoon. It's the first thing that people notice is wrong about an image including non-artists, even when they can't place their finger on why it's wrong. Everyone with functioning eyes have great vision. You could say that we are all black belts at seeing things, because it is one of our senses since our birth, and the one that we are always using. So when you're drawing and painting, you are a visual magician. You're using these fundamental tools to fool these people into believing that an image on paper is as deceiving as reality. It's all an illusion. You cannot avoid the importance of perspective. If you aren't practicing it, no cheap tricks will be able to deceive a person into believing what you created.

You learn as early as elementary school about the 2D shapes. The square, the circle and the triangle. You know about their 3D counterparts, the cube, as well as a sphere, cone and a cylinder. In geometry everything is perfectly symmetrical and easy to solve. But when you step out into reality, everything is thrown into disarray, all of these shapes are merged together mechanically and organically, and on top of that, your vision is deceiving you. Very advanced forms of mathematics were created to solve those problems accurately, but we are not interested in that. You'll also realize this when you come across proportion diagrams, and why it does nothing when you are drawing from the model. You will also need to understand what circles look like in perspective[ellipses.] Do you know how to draw an ellipse properly? Do you see what happens to these shapes in space? Learn to draw these basic shapes correctly in space, it requires knowledge of perspective. Would it help you to think of a basic game like Snake? Imagine what it would be like to play that game in 3D. Although we aren't playing a game, we are just observing reality and interpreting it in 2D, that's where perspective falls in. You can use perspective construction thankfully. You can simplify areas into basic shapes. You can measure and draw pipes and cubes, aligning them to their current vanishing points. Until you're finally building whatever you need for your own worlds.

The other fundamentals are critically important as well. But drawing in space with perspective is what you need for your drawings to look structurally correct. Yes, it can be a complex hurdle. It's both easy to understand and difficult to wrap our eyes and brain around. Thankfully there are dozens of great free resources available, and no threat of them going away, any time soon. If you have great reading comprehension, there is a free resource that pretty much covers every single thing you would ever ask about perspective. Otherwise many instructors have done a great job simplifying what you need to understand for your own work. Here are links to two great resources that have emerged more recently.

Mow some lawns, shovel snow, baby sit, beg for money, sell a game, buy these.

u/George_Shrinks · 3 pointsr/learnart

> For beginners learning to draw accurately, just focus on the Elements of Art.

I'd actually like to chime in here to give OP another option (not looking to argue about fundamentals haha. We all know how that goes).

Quick backstory:

I studied art for two years and went through pretty much the same training that you described above. I had a wonderful experience, but decided that it wasn't for me. I then decided to pursue Industrial Design, which meant I had to study the fundamentals all over again, only this time they were different.

Just like the elements of art, we still started out with the basics of line, shape and form, but with a much heavier emphasis on accurate perspective. In fact we were taught about the different kinds of perspective and how/why they work from the get go. The equivalent of "value" in Industrial Design was "rendering", only it was much more technical (how to construct shadows in perspective, how light decay and occlusion work, the Fresnel Effect etc.)

Of course this all just sounds like a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo, so let me make a small change to what you said above to summarize what I am trying to say.

>For beginners learning to draw beautifully, just focus on the Elements of Art.

and likewise

>For beginners learning to draw accurately, learn perspective.

I am personally in favor of learning the rules before you break them. Want to paint a pretty cottage? Paint a convincing one first using perspective. Again, this is not the only way to learn. It is just what I would recommend based on my experience. This is, of course /r/learnart and not /r/learntodrawperfectly, so please take all of this with a grain of salt.

"Well gee, thanks a lot Mr. useless design person."

Wait! Don't go, OP! I have some actual, useful advice!

  1. Avoid digital for as long as possible. Nothing beats the muscle memory you will gain from drawing with a real pen/pencil on real paper.
  2. Exercise those muscles every day! Here are some of my favorite exercises: 1- Straight, parallel lines. Keep your wrist as still as possible and draw from your elbow and shoulder. Grip the pen lightly and DON'T rotate the page. 2- Dots connected by lines. Draw lots of dots on the page and then draw nice, straight lines connecting them. You may rotate the page for this one. 3- Lines through a point. Draw a dot on the page and try to draw straight, intersecting lines through the center. Don't rotate the page. This one is tricky. 4- Circles! Just fill the page. Try to do these quickly. "Ghost" the shape of the circle over the page before putting your pen down, and then try to draw the whole thing in 2 or 3 quick gestures. 5- Ellipses! Draw some line segments on the page and then draw some ellipses with those lines acting as the minor axis. 6- Cubes in two point perspective. Draw your horizon line, and then just fill the page (I didn't fill the page here but you get the idea). Try to relax while doing all of these warmups. They might not be very exciting but eventually they can become sort of a calming, zen exercise. Your lines will look horrible at first, but you will get much much better if you just practice.
  3. Listen to everything /u/cajolerisms said above, and if you're up to the challenge, try approaching things from the technical route as well. Once you learn how perspective works you will literally see the world differently. It seems daunting now, but the more you practice, the more it will all make sense and your artwork will become more convincing as a result.
  4. As much as I hate telling people they need to spend money to learn how to improve their drawing/painting, I highly recommend this book. Scott Robertson does a great job of breaking down how perspective works and has some great tips on shortcuts for constructing accurate drawings. Plus, once you get the book, you get access to video lessons that break down all of the topics in the book.

    Remember that every time you put your pencil to paper you are creating something that has never existed. No one has ever seen the things that you will draw. You are a creator, and that is just about the coolest thing to be in the universe. Don't give up, and happy arting!
u/DuecesLooses · 4 pointsr/Design

Well I still go to school for Industrial Design, well I should say Transportation Design. I can tell you some of my ups and downs. I went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco and basically hated it. I didn't think the teacher were qualified enough and the school was run like a for profit. Then I left and took Art Center College of Design night classes and I fell in love with design all over again. I kind of regret not knowing of this program earlier. After taking a couple classes their I recently got accepted to their school and I'm going to start next semester. This school is insanely good, it's also insanely expensive but it's a top notch education. I would recommend if your into product design to start looking into your favorite products, see who designed them, find their biography and see what schools seems to come up again and again. Go to that schools website and see what type of things they require to enter their program. After the Academy I started doing research and the two schools that kept coming up was Art Center in Pasadena and CCS in Detriot, but these are better known for their transportation programs. I'm not entirely to sure on product design. You should buy some books on product design, I love this book and this book. A lot of schools don't like portfolios that show you can draw, they want to see that their is a purpose to your design. Why did you do it, what was the market, why is it better, is it innovative, try to put a lot of thought behind your ideas. Ofcourse you need a certain level of drawing ability but they are looking for people that have great ideas, then they torture you for 2 years making you an artist, then they torture you for 2 more years making you a industrial designer. It's insanely hard at school but I honestly love every moment of it. I mean you get to draw all day, then do clay or foam models, then do 3d models, then make working prototypes. It's crazy to go into this room see all these awesome renderings on the walls, so much creativity and artistic ability. It's honestly the best career you can chose, that's not even a joke, it was like ranked 9th on best career choice. My only real advice is do a ton of research before you commit to a school and never give up.

u/Mizzazz · 2 pointsr/katawashoujo

I don't really have the time to do a fully fledged critique right now, but the most prominent issue to me is your line work. It's very chicken-scratchy and not confident. The quality of line is what separates okay artists from great artists, and you will be able to sketch a LOT quicker once you get better at it.

This reddit has some great resources and lessons

It's by a guy who did lessons with a well known artist at CDA (Concept Design Academy), this guy is a freaking genius and I can only hope to even scratch the surface of his ability!

The owner of this sub also recommends this book - Which I'm sure you can get in a more illegitimate manner, but it's fantastic and a must-have for any budding artist.

I want to recommend this to /u/Anagram-Daine, too, if he's here at all.

As a final note, this video on line weights is great, too.

Line weight can really help establish forms in your work without needing to add value, and being able to think in 3D forms can help a lot. The idea behind this is that you simplify everything you see into primitive shapes, such as boxes, spheres, cylinders and cones. All of these shapes can be warped, distorted and bent to form anything you can possibly think of, so being able to know these shapes and how light would pass over them will give you the ability to draw ANYTHING, should you know what it looks like.

Have fun!

u/xCentumx · 4 pointsr/comicbookart

First, I want to say that you have a pretty nice finish on this drawing. Your line weights are good, your use of spot blacks could use a little work, but you've got the right idea. I like the fact that you're lines thin out as you go back in perspective, really sells the idea that there is some distance between cyclopse and that cactus in the background.

Also your anatomy is pretty good, though it seems to me more like copying from other comics rather than taking the time to actually learn the muscles/muscle groups.

That being said, there's a lot of construction issues in this piece. I could go through and list off all of them, but really what it comes down to is the understanding of perspective. This is integral to creating a piece that has objects in it that feel 3 dimensional.

Now when I say lack of understanding of perspective, I don't mean that you have no understanding. You seem like you could probably construct some cubes in space, or even a rudimentary street view with a horizon roughly in the middle of the page. But the way to push your work further towards what you see in a an issue of X-men.

To get you where you want to go, I would either suggest Scott Robertson's How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments from your Imagination. Or if you'd rather you can search the internet for some tutorials like this Ctrlpaint Tutorial

I wish I had more examples, but it's been a little while since I was looking for this stuff. But it's something that I've practiced almost every day for many years and I've still got plenty of room to learn.

You're definitely headed in the right direction. It looks like you enjoy the work, so hang onto that. I'm not saying to bore yourself to death with technical practice, but take a little bit of your drawing time that you've set aside and practice some perspective and you'll see a huge improvement in your work. And once you feel comfortable, start checking out Proko for stuff about how to translate those perspective skills into bettering your figures (people) that you draw.

Good luck and keep up the good work

♥ Ethan

u/7FigureMarketer · 3 pointsr/Entrepreneur

You should be more specific about what you're hoping to learn. There are thousands of resources out there in regards to entrepreneurship, marketing, website development & eCommerce. You could find pretty much anything you want if you phrase it correctly.

Example Searches

  • How to setup Facebook ads
  • How to start a business under $1,000
  • Growth hacking (tips and tricks on growing your business fast)
  • How to build a wordpress website + top wordpress plugins
  • How to create a landing page
  • Best community bulletin board software
  • How to build a Facebook group
  • How to create YouTube videos

    ​

    You can just keep going from there.

    The basics of what you'll need, assuming you know nothing (which I doubt) would be this.

  • How to build a website (wordpress, html, Wix, Squarespace, .etc)
  • How to build an audience (paid + organic, FB + Google + Instagram + Pinterest + YouTube + Reddit)

    Everything else you just figure out along the way based on how you want to monetize your audience and quite honestly, no book is going to help you figure that out.

    You'll learn a lot more just hanging out on Reddit and watching YouTube videos on the subject matter that's next on your checklist. Books are almost purely inspirational at this point and I think we can agree there are plenty of Podcasts that will help you find inspiration (and skill), such as The Top (Nathan Latka) or Mixergy

    If you study hustlers you'll get all the information and inspiration you could ever hope for. Read or watch anything from Noah Kagan (AppSumo). No one does it better than him. Ryan Holiday (not an affiliate link) is another favorite of mine. There are also some older Tim Ferriss articles that really talk about how you approach certain businesses.

    Like I said, man. It's all out there. You don't need to pay $1 for information, you just have to know what to look for and if you listen to a few podcasts or read a few beginner articles you'll figure out pretty quickly the steps you need to take next.

    ​

    Some Books I Like (no affiliate links)

  • The Obstacle Is The Way: Ryan Holiday
  • Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness of Crowds: Charles Mackay
  • Secrets Of A Master Closer: Mike Kaplan
  • Hooked: Nir Eyal
  • The Art Of Learning: Josh Waitzken
  • The 4 Hour Workweek: Tim Ferriss (Maybe the best entrepreneur book of all time)
  • Pitch Anything: Oren Klaff
  • The Gambler: William C. Rempel
  • and of course...How To Win Friends & Influence People: Dale Carnegie (everyone MUST read this book)
u/AxonPotential · 3 pointsr/cscareerquestions

I recently graduated with my B.S. in psychology and will be heading to graduate school this fall to study Human Factors, also known as engineering psychology or ergonomics. Basically it's the application of psychology to the design of systems (hardware as well as software) and the environments they're deployed in. UX certainly falls under this umbrella, as the professor who will be my adviser is doing research in that area.

To answer your question, it's a yes as well as a no in my opinion. A background in psychology would be tremendously helpful in the field you're thinking of entering - knowledge about human behavior and mental processes is a pretty good thing to have when your goal is to design and improve the user experience.

As others have said, however, the minor itself won't necessarily be of any use. Employers generally won't care, and neither will any graduate schools you apply to. In other words, it's the knowledge you gained from studying the minor that will be attractive on your resume (or curriculum vitae), so be ready to explain exactly what you learned from studying psychology and how it makes you a better candidate for the position. Remember that the minor, if you choose to take it, will be little more than a footnote on your transcript in the long run.

To wrap this up, I'd like to wish you luck on this career path. UX is a really interesting subject that many people aren't even aware of. If you haven't already, check out the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Their site has some great resources for anyone who wants to learn more about the field (I used it to find grad schools to apply to). Lastly, I recommend reading Donald A. Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. It's the book that got me interested in this field in the first place, and is a really fun read.

If you have any further questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them to the best of my ability. Otherwise, good luck once again!

u/IrisHopp · 1 pointr/learntodraw

All of these are linked to Amazon, if you have an account, you can make a wishlist to keep track of ‘em:


  • Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

    This one teaches you how to see shapes objectively, which will improve your drawing from photo or real life. I recommend getting it from the library because you’ll only need the book once. Drawing a lot of still lifes/self-portraits helps achieve the same goal even without the book, though the exercises are awesome and will speed up the process. You can ignore the author’s rambling about the brain, it’s been debunked by science~ I’ve republished the first exercise of the book on my blog here - trying to build a step-by-step guide for beginners, but I only have a few hours a week. :)

  • For anatomy and portraits, after “Fun with A Pencil”, you can also read “Drawing the Head and the Hands” and “Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth” by Loomis. See sidebar. They’re all about the same material, just more in depth.

  • Perspective Made Easy” by Ernest Norling.
    Do the exercises! They’re simple yet awesome. After you finish the book, apply perspective to stuff you draw from imagination. When I finished it, I didn’t use what I learned, but once I started applying perspective to every drawing I made, my skill skyrocketed. I believe perspective is the second most important drawing skill, but it can be tedious.

  • "Drawing Comics the Marvel Way"
    Teaches you a variety of solid fundamentals, like construction and composition. Useful for after you’ve got the basics down with Loomis and Perspective.


  • Hardcore: “How to Draw" and “How to Render” by Scott Robertson. His books are intensive. Most of my friends bought them but didn’t use them because they’re so technical. You have to be prepared and comfortable with sketching before tackling these. Even I haven’t finished the books cover to cover, yet I use his techniques for every single artwork that I make (I was taught them by FZD).


  • Here’s the most important: have FUN. You can start studying and struggling but remember why you are drawing and doodle for fun every now and then. Play some good music while sketching. If you have fun, you will keep doing it. No matter how fast or slow you learn, stick with it and you’ll be damn good someday.
u/sachio222 · 1 pointr/userexperience

hmm. Where to get started. Learn the gestalt principles of visual design. If you're designing interfaces - these little tips will help you associate, and differentiate well enough to be able to direct attention like a conductor.

Learn to do everything deliberately. If you don't have a reason for something, you're not designing, you're arting. Know the difference and when each is appropriate. For example - want a big splash screen with a fancy colorful image? Is it so you can attract the user to a particular part of the screen? Or is it because you have some extra space and feel like filling it with something. If it's the former, go for it. If it's the latter - you're just making an art project.

Learn about design methodologies, from a university if possible. Industrial design technique is very good for digital problem solving as well. Defining a problem, exploring solutions, and determining a valuable path are things that will help you in every project.

Understand why you are doing what you are doing. And who are you doing it for. Never go past page one without establishing those facts.

Stats will help you in that do everything intentionally part. If you can say 80 of people do this, 20 percent of people do that, you can from this say, that this gets center position, bright colors, dark shadow and lots of negative space. That thing that 20 percent of people do, gets bottom right, lowER contrast, and is there for people that expect it.

Good luck, conferences will help. Podcasts will help. Reading interviews from design teams at larger companies will help.

Asking reddit will help. What you should ask for is paid time off to study lol. Good luck.


edit:
Also get this book universal principles of design I think there's a pocket version. This teaches you what works and why and when to use it.


Get the design of every day things. This book teaches you what good design is. It asks the questions - what is design. When is design good. What is an affordance? How do we signal what things do what? How does all that work? Is a coffee cup good design? What about a scissors? How about google.com vs yahoo.com...

Check out don't make me think... or just think about the title for an hour and pretend you read the book.

a popular one now is hooked. Pavlov's dog experiments except with people, basically operant conditioning for designers.

And learn about grid systems and bootstrap for prototyping. Get a prototyping account. For something, proto.io, invision, framerjs.... Invest in omingraffle and sketch, get a creative cloud license if need be. You will need to show people things a lot. You will need to convince people of your ideas and your paths. You will need to constantly throw together quick and dirty visualizations of what you want to say. Invest in tools that make it simple.

Learn how to sell your ideas. You will be asked a ton of questions as people poke holes in your design. You need to figure out how to soothe their worries. They will your decisions, and you will have to show them that you have the answer. Learn how to present. Learn public speaking. Learn how to communicate with superiors. Learn how to talk with programmers. Learn how to give the programmers what they want from you. Learn how to negotiate, learn how to deliver on time. Learn how to handle stress.

Good luck.

u/offwithyourtv · 3 pointsr/userexperience

This probably isn't the most helpful answer, but any resources I might have used to learn the fundamentals myself are probably pretty outdated now. Honestly I'd just try to find highly rated books on Amazon that are reasonably priced. I haven't read this one for psych research methods, but looking through the table of contents, it covers a lot of what I'd expect (ethics, validity and reliability, study design and common methods) and according to the reviews it's clear, concise, and has good stats info in the appendix. I had a similar "handbook" style textbook in undergrad that I liked. For practicing stats, I'm personally more of a learn-by-doing kind of person, and there are some free courses out there like this one from Khan Academy that covers the basics fairly well.

But if you can, take courses in college as electives! Chances are you'll have a few to fill (or maybe audit some if you can't get credit), so go outside of HCDE's offerings to get some complementary skills in research or design. I usually find classrooms to be more engaging than trying to get through a textbook at home on my own, and especially for psych research methods, you'll probably have a project that gives you hands-on experience doing research with human subjects (most likely your peers). There are lots of free online courses out there as well if you aren't able to take them for credit.

You guys are making me miss school.

Getting specifically into UX self-study, in addition to a UX-specific research methods book (this is a newer version of one I read in school) I'd also go through the UX classics like Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design, Krug's Don't Make Me Think, and Casey's Set Phasers on Stun (this last one being more of a fun read than a practical one).

u/mr-nichtus · 2 pointsr/casualiama

Although it can be a drag, a lot of it does come down to practicing ad nauseam. I do readings absolutely all the time, perhaps especially for friends and family, and sometimes it's unpleasant stuff, but more often than not it's letting them know that things will be okay. And if I can break bad news more gently, that's definitely a good thing!

that said... I do have a couple little tips.

  • find a deck with memorable pictures that relate to the message.
  • every time you do a reading, try to remember what the cards mean before you look.

    While some of the cards (Major arcana I'm looking at you) can be pretty arbitrary, the right illustrations help enormously.

    A great inexpensive deck (though very odd) is the Steampunk Tarot. The pictures are very helpful and attractive. It's SFW, which is helpful when you're practicing with god knows who. And they are made a little smaller and thinner so it's easier to mix them up and handle them casually.

    final note: as much as I love a good novelty tarot deck, they're next to impossible to practice with or even use normally.
u/Soliloquies87 · 1 pointr/MattePainting

I'm late to the party, but I made a cheat sheet for my boss niece last week: here's all the ressources I can think of to kick butts at matte painting.

The sites where we pay per month

Gnomon Online School
Super school of vfx in California. They have on their site a lot of tutorials from 8 to 20 hours to learn to make your own camera projections. You can either pay (expensive but worth it) for a private class with a teacher via Skype. Or you pay (cheaper) for a bank of tutorials.

private lessons
https://www.gnomon.edu/courses/online


the bank of tutorials
https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials?tags[]=matte-painting


I recommend: All the tutorials of Dylan Cole (vol 1, 2,3), Camera Projection Techniques in Maya, Matte Painting Production techniques, etc.




Plural Sight (formerly Digital Tutors)


a site that has courses on a little everything. This site is very good when you want to learn new programs. Excellent serie on the 3D which becomes more and more present in the matte painting, and some tutorials


https://app.pluralsight.com/library/


related to 3D

Quick start to modeling in Maya (volume 1,2,3)
Professional Tips for Modeling Complex Shapes


related to matte painting

Photo manipulation and Clean Plating Fundamentals
Matte Painting Basic and the Static Camera Shot


Sites where we pay per tutorial (Gumroad, etc.)



The tutorials of Anthony Eftekhari

Good DMP tutorials that show you the latest techniques and how to do it step by step.


https://gumroad.com/anthonye

The tutorials of Eytan Zana

More concept art, but the main lines apply just as well to the DMP.

https://gumroad.com/eytanzana


Free sites and tutorials


Garrett Fry's blog

He also has a Facebook group that helps each other in DMP, it is THE technical reference for matte painting. His blog is full of technical stuff for camera projections (aka moving your matte painting). A treasure of information.
https://www.gfryart.com/blog



Other


TEXTURES! (Or can we find good textures to make DMP)


CGtexture

http://www.textures.com

Flickr (Matte Painting References)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjframe/sets/72157605581901392/

Flickr (Matte Painting Resources)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dman3d2000/sets/72157629164518650/

Photobash.org (paying a card)

https://www.photobash.org/

Pictures of Jacek Pilarski

https://gumroad.com/jacekpilarski

Books (yes yes, it's a thing)

Digital Matte Painter Handbook

it's old, the drawings are ugly, the photoshop stuff in it is pure candy though. Full of stuff in DMP that I have never seen elsewhere but that is the basis of the trade. Still actual today. The matte painting of the castle in is also an excellent starting point if you start from scratch.

https://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Matte-Painting-Handbook/dp/0470922427/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523975893&sr=1-1&keywords=Digital+Matte+Painting+Handbook

How to draw and How to Render

Scott Robertson, a big shot of concept art, shows the basics of traditional drawings, perspective, etc. An essential.

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=GWB27RDDYF5E0JG7TTY0

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Render-fundamentals-shadow-reflectivity/dp/1933492961/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=K9W1RK5K9KVWMPY14EAE

Imaginative Realism and Color and Light

James Gurney is an illustrator who specializes in realistic fantasy artwork with traditional mediums, excellent cues on light and color

https://www.amazon.ca/Imaginative-Realism-Paint-Doesnt-Exist/dp/0740785508?th=1&psc=1&source=googleshopping&locale=en-CA&tag=googcana-20&ref=pd_sl_2y2j9az9y9_e

https://www.amazon.ca/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YCNYYJCTNJ4405KD1S6B

Nuke 101

We can make the projection of matte painting in Nuke or Maya. An excellent book for Nuke.

https://www.amazon.ca/Nuke-101-Professional-Compositing-Effects/dp/0321984129/ref=pd_sim_14_8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FNST5YS1F7464SZY3QZV

u/davidNerdly · 4 pointsr/web_design

Just some I like:

Dev


  • [You Don't Know Javascript (series)(]https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS). Short and sweet mostly. Well written. Some are still pending publishing but there are a couple available now. I believe you can read them for free online, I just like paper books and wanted to show some support.

  • Elequent Javascript (second release coming in november). Current version here if you are impatient. I have not personally read it yet, waiting for the next revision. I recommend it due to the high regard it has in the web community.

  • Professional JavaScript for Web Developers. Sometimes called the bible of js. Big ole book. I have not read it through and through, but have enjoyed the parts I have perused.

    Design


    (I am weak in the design side, so take these recommendation with a grain of salt. I recommend them off of overall industry cred they receive and my own personal taste for them.)

  • The Elements of Typographic Style. Low level detail into the art and science behind typography.

  • Don't Make Me Think, Revisited. I read the original, not the new one that I linked. It is an easy read (morning commute on the train was perfect for it) and covers UX stuff in a very easy to understand way. My non-designer brain really appreciated it.

    below are books I have not read but our generally recommended to people asking this question

  • About Face.

  • The Design of Everyday Things.

  • The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.


    You can see a lot of these are theory based. My 0.02 is that books are good for theory, blogs are good for up to date ways of doing things and tutorial type stuff.

    Hope this helps!


    Battery is about to die so no formatting for you! I'll add note later if I remember.

    EDIT: another real quick.

    EDIT2: Eh, wound up on my computer. Added formatting and some context. Also added more links because I am procrastinating my actual work I have to do (picking icons for buttons is so hard, I never know what icon accurately represents whatever context I am trying to fill).
u/Lorathor6 · 1 pointr/DigitalPainting

Nice to see someone just hop into drawing :)
As /u/Lotusbunny mentioned, everyone learns differently. You need to find the right way that fits for you. If you really want to improve and don't hesitate to spend some money, search for some drawing and sketching books. There are tons out there. My approach was a bit more techy because I like Industrialdesign and Scifi, so I bought myself How to Draw from Scott Robertson and How to Render from Scott Robertson

Same goes for environment, anatomy, rendering, etc, there is a huge amount of books you can choose from. Also Imagine FX is a nice magazine with tutorials and cool stuff to read, see and learn. They also got a Youtube Channel Give it a try.

But of course you can entirely come back to Youtube videos. A quick search with 'How to draw X' and you're ready to go. Also twitch is really nice where you can see people drawing in realtime. BUT don't rely enterily on videos - you won't get better by watching hours of tutorials without actually drawing :)

For anatomy Posemaniacs is awesome! Tons of poses you can choose and study from. Grab you Wacom or pencil and keep drawing. The 30 seconds drawing option is very nice to improve your time limit output.


The keywords are practice and patience. Art and drawing is a skill you need to obtain, digitally or mechanically. It won't grow overnight so don't force yourself with every piece to get better and better. You will automatically with every minute you're drawing.

And the best thing to do is to improve your visual library. Look at pictures and try to adapt. You need to see and remember things before you can draw them without looking them up first. Always open up references you can rely on. I'd suggest you start to paint studys first. Open up Daily Dozen and redraw/study a picture you like. First start off with black & white and if you're confident, get into color. Also, a great way to improve your skill is to limit your time. Start with quick and small thumbnails with a 10 minute limit, then 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hour and open end. With this you are first forced to concentrate on the overall look and composition rather than details and with the 1 hour and above ones you can do more and more finished paintings.

One thing that scares many is a blank canvas. If you want to start, first get rid of the blank white space. Fill in a gradient, quickly paint some diffuse silhouettes or fill it with a colour but get rid of the plain canvas.


I don't know which software you're using (I assume Photoshop) but for the brushes and functions - just test them out. You don't need a ton of textured brushes but sometimes they're a nice addition. Search online for brushes and test them. Keep the ones you like and get the best results with.

Besides that - keep on and practice a lot :)


Btw, I did a small redo in Pixelart some time ago for someone :)

u/dkoreo · 1 pointr/conceptart

Honestly mate, seems like you need to broaden your minds creative library. The best way to do this is to do a lot of studies of things from life and combined them with the things you love. So if you want to design cool vehicles then you need to do studies from vehicles we have around us today. Best way to learn this is to use your perspective knowledge and draw those vehicles/buildings. Scott Robertson honestly breaks this process down the best. And if you don't already have it I suggest picking up How to Draw, by Scott Robertson. https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541794749&sr=8-1&keywords=scott+robertson He goes pretty in-depth on how to create vehicles and buildings with perspective.


Also check out Feng Zhu on YouTube. He talks about how to go about expanding your creative library. And being able to pull from it when concepting.

​

Hope this somewhat helps. Good luck with your art journey mate!

u/PIGEON_WITH_ANTLERS · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

/u/LeadGenDairy:
> GO TO SCHOOL

This is good advice. Before I did some career counseling to figure out what to do with my life, I didn't know industrial design was even a thing. (I figured you needed a degree in engineering to do that sort of thing, but learned that it's common for a company to employ engineers who figure out how to make the thing work as well as designers to determine how it should work and, moreover, how it should look.) Once I realized that ID was definitely what I wanted to do, I looked up programs in my city, and found a good one. It was at an art school. I decided to apply.

"Apply with a short statement and a portfolio of 10-15 images of your recent work."

Welp.

I had never even taken an art class. I had no recent work. I had no "work" at all. So I made some. It took a few months, and I had some late nights, but by the application deadline, I had 12 pieces, including a few pretty solid drawings and some screenprints that started out in Illustrator. Got in, and got my degree.

If you're looking to learn drawing skills good enough to get into school, get a good book - I recommend Sketching: drawing techniques for product designers and Rapid Viz - and practice the techniques therein. You can also find a lot of tutorials online for programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, SketchUp, and Rhino if you're interested in building those skills too (and can get your hands on the software).

If your background is in CS, you probably have a good bit of experience coming up with weird creative workarounds for tough problems. This kind of problem-solving comes in very handy in ID. I wish you the best of luck!

u/oxala75 · 2 pointsr/JobFair

first: congratulations! I love hearing about people who are at the beginning of their experience as instructional designers (Let's just say that there's a reason that Cammy Bean's book is titled The Accidental Instructional Designer).

second: before I get into this, I'll mention that i touched on some of this in an eLearn Magazine article a few years ago and in a Google Moderator session from last year.

that said, here's a little bit:

  • Build your PLN (personal learning network). Join local and international trade groups (ISPI, ASTD, eLearning Guild, etc.) if you can. Often times, your employer might already have a company membership, so ask. The point of doing that is not really for the webinars are such, but the contacts. That said, Twitter - especially #lrnchat - is a good way to get started, actually.
  • Engage the research. While i don't think that having a super-firm grasp on all historical adult learning theory is a necessity, it's important to have an understanding of past principles and practices as well as new advances. Actually, those advances shouldn't be restricted to things like MOOCs, the Experience API, or flipped classrooms. As the design of learning experiences become more integrated and multimodal, studies in nutrition, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and the learning sciences will perhaps be more useful than ever.
  • Learn to produce what you want to see on your own (at least enough to prototype)
  • Learn to storyboard. Actually, Kevin Thorn is a great resource in this area, as is Steve Flowers in this post.
  • Learn what makes people tick. This will be very helpful in front end analysis and in working with SMEs.
  • A tool is only as good as its master. So don't fall prey to the 'Captivate vs. Lectora vs. Articulate vs. Zebra Zapps vs. whatever' trap.
  • Get your fieldwork toolset together.
  • Read everything. fully three hours of my day is spent reading or listening to new media in my own area of expertise or that of my employer. Twitter is a great resource for this, provided that you've cultivate the right PLN. Read backchannel reporting from conferences if you can't attend in person.
  • Acquire business acumen. Think like a product manager, if that helps.

    More later...

    EDIT: accidentally a word.
u/booyahkasha · 3 pointsr/androiddev

Everything starts w/ making a good product

Marketing

  • Find a niche, go to where they go and target them with thoughtful cool posts like /u/koleraa and /u/ccrama said. Be real, responsive, and follow up
  • This works better for apps than games b/c you can engage ppl in problem solving your app, but I'm sure there are gamer communities
  • For a game you might need more of a "stunt", read Growth Hacker Marketing for ideas here

    Don't have a "leaky bucket"
    In normal words: make sure ppl who install your game have a good experience right away and come back. Set up analytics so you can track this. If you are failing, work on the game and don't market yet. You should watch all of these free Y Combinator online startup classes, but #6 is most relevant here.
    Design the game to be viral
    This is where you've got it easier than normal apps, games can be designed to share and engage other users. I recommend reading Hooked for ideas on how to build a habit forming app that ppl will want to share. NOTE: annoying tricks don't work and no one wants that.

    Crossing the Chasm is less relevant to a game but an insightful classic on the old "how do I develop a market for a technology product".

    All of these strategy require focused and consistent effort to have a chance. I'm in the same boat you are so hopefully we can make something happen :)

    BTW I'd be happy to share my notes on all these books if ppl are interested.
u/lugubriousmoron · 4 pointsr/instructionaldesign

I have recently gone through a ton of interviews for various ID positions and I will share my experience with you.

Some companies are going to be focused on your process for developing courses and curriculum from beginning to end. Being familiar with adult learning theories, ADDIE, Kirkpatrick Model, ect. will help you get into an entry level role if you can competently demonstrate your grasp of those subjects. You will also be asked to speak to your experience working with SMEs, project planning, how you see yourself functioning within a team, and how you pursue individual projects.

Other places are going to be more concerned with the technology itself. How many authoring tools can you use? Do you know HTML/CSS/Javascript? Are you good with Photoshop? Illustrator? After Effects? What experience do you having working with Learning Management Systems? What is your approach to data and analytics? Do you have experience using SCORM or XAPI? Can you show examples of work you've created across multiple modalities? You may even be asked to complete a short design assignment where you are given some branding material and asked to storyboard or outright create an entire course.

My opinion is that since you already have a degree in Psychology and professional experience as an event manager, you could easily parlay that knowledge and skill set into the theory and conceptual aspects of ID. There are plenty of great books you can read to supplement your degree like this and this. If you feel like you are lacking in the technology department then definitely go get experience using all the tools you can get your hands on. Employers wants to see real examples of real work, so the faster you can start building things the better. Not just courses but all the other things associated with ID like storyboards, job aids, and lesson plans.

Again just my opinion, but I believe ID is a field open to many types of professionals. It's just a matter of filling in the gaps where you may need it. I have a degree in English/Professional Writing and started off my career doing tech support. There have been positions where I've had the title of "Instructional Designer" and barely had a single course up in the LMS that was mine because I was focused on script writing, video production, and managing assessments. Just to give you a personal example of the different paths you can take.

If you have any more questions I'd be more than happy to help out in any way I can. Good luck!!!

u/Captain-Lightning · 3 pointsr/webdev

Are you asking how to become a better designer, or how to recognize good design?

They are different, but not separate things.

This might help, if you're after the former.

If it's the latter you're after, there's a wealth of books out there: this one among them. But really, learning to recognize good design is a long process of ingestion, regurgitation, trial and error, and experience.

Good design can mean many things. Does it look good? Is it usable? Is it actionable (Does it make you want to do something)? Does it convey a certain mood? Does it reinforce the brand? Does it speak to the target audience? Is it fast? Does it get across a certain message as fast as possible? Is it memorable?

You really have to ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish when it comes to design. What are your goals?

You might not look at something like Amazon and say, "That's great design!", but having your design as understated as possible and maximizing usability is as good design (for their purposes) as much as something like this is meant to be the opposite.

It all really comes back to: What are you trying to accomplish?

u/thestarschasethesun · 6 pointsr/tarot

"Modern" is a pretty broad category -- it would help to know more about what kind of art style you're looking for. For example, are you hoping for something that's more minimalist, or detailed? colorful, or monochrome? digitally drawn, or painted? focused on figures, or more inventive with imagery?

That said, here are some decks in a pretty wide variety of styles that come to mind when I think "modern art." I personally own the first six decks on this list and can vouch that I like them; the rest I don't own but I know other people like them.

u/TMiracle · 1 pointr/leagueoflegends

Mmmm... it's hard to say really, I'm self-taught so my way of learning is most likely very inefficient. The few tips I can give you though is:
at the very beginning, just make drawing a consistent habit, draw whatever, but dedicate some time and try to draw daily. Little but consistent steps are much more powerful than ''drawing entire day once a week''.
fall in love with the process and don't care much about result, aka never compare yourself to others. Your drawings will suck, a lot, for a long time - and that's completely okay, because we all go through that. Comparing yourself to someone with years of experience will only demotimate you. This video perfectly illustrated what I mean: https://youtu.be/lRtV-ugIT0k
once you get into ha bit of drawing relatively often, you can try learning some fundamentals like anatomy/perspective. For those there are many resources online, and books.
AND PRACTICE - a lot, on paper, with pen, or wahtever you got, there's no such excuse ''I odn't have a tablet or fancy pen or whatever'', in fact most of your studies if not all, in the beginning should be on paper, before you get into digital things.

Books I recommend for a begginer:
Perspective: https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732
Anatomy: https://www.alexhays.com/loomis/ (these are free)
and this channel is absolutely amazing https://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV

When you start with basics, you will be just drawing spheres and cubes. Learning fundamentals is very different from actual illustrations - it's quite tedious and even boring, but it propels you forward fast. When it comes to drawing fun stuff tho - always question what, why, how it works and use references. Look at many other artists and question how and why they did the things they did. Once you get down to it - it becomes just pure science.

I'm not gonna go on anymore because it's quite a long post as it is, hope it helps in a way. I use photoshop, because I started with it and it's very powerful- tho it's very hard for a beginner to use, in you case I would probably start with ''paint tool sai''.

If you wanna follow me and learn more about me, you can follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/tmiracleart and the links in the stream description, as well as join my discord (link in the stream description).

u/oatmealprime · 2 pointsr/personalfinance

Hey there!
UX Designer/Researcher here. I came from a background in Psychology and Neuroscience research before UX Design. Personally I used the UCSD Extension for a certificate in UX Design. I really appreciated the course work and in conjunction with the Coursera Interaction Design felt like I was given plenty of exposure while also having flexibility to work.
From my experience in the industry, I would look into what area you are interested in. UX careers can involve programming and development, but I use absolutely no coding at my current position (at others I have though). The biggest selling point to an employer is showing an understanding of the process: wireframes, flow charts, user studies, iteration (agile/scrum/waterfall), and design understanding. I have worked on multiple billion dollar webpages and can say the process is nearly identical when scaled down.
If you are interested in some resources to start on your own I would recommend Simon Sinek's Start with Why for understanding how to look at design solutions.
Don Norman has many great books, including The Design of Everyday Things.
Some actual books to look at and learn on your own are A Project Guide to UX Design, Lean UX, and The UX Book. I highly recommend the last one I find it very thorough and digestible and for ~60 bucks is a reasonable textbook.
Lastly, once you have a grasp of UX as a concept I would get familiar with the Adobe Suite, Axure or InVision, and any others from career sites that you might not know about (I really like [Sketch]() as a cheap option ~$99).

Best of luck, feel free to ping me with questions

u/meowris · 3 pointsr/learnprogramming

Junior UX person here. Not much of a programmer myself, but it's sufficient for my needs, as I am only doing front-end design when I dabble with code. There is a multitude of ways to learn how to code, but generally speaking, I find that practicing in small repetition helps the best to retain and absorb information. When you are doing a small code example, try to rewrite differently and see how it works in each of those ways. I also recommend coming up with a small project that you can work on (design and putting a personal site live, for example), as opposed just doing the practices, that way you are presented with a real world environment that contains restrictions and possibilities.

Do you draw? It might help to learn how to draw well, which will help you illustrate designs and potentially become a fun hobby.

Some beginner level books I recommend:

u/mcdronkz · 8 pointsr/web_design

It's not the advice you are looking for, but I can't stress it enough: design is about problem solving, rather than pure aesthetics.

Sure, making things look pretty is important. However, making your design understandable and easy to use is even more important. It's probably what you should focus on.

You are designing something for real human beings. Your design should solve a real problem in the most elegant way. How? That's something I can't explain in a single comment.

This video series explains it really well. It's not about web applications, but that doesn't matter. The message is the same. You prefer reading? This and this book do an extremely good job of explaining how to design things.

Also, this article explains the point I'm trying to make far better than I ever could. Good luck!

u/LastParagon · 1 pointr/AskReddit

I would suggest starting with the basics.

  1. Perspective: Look up two point perspective. Try doing it with a ruler a couple of times. Good. Now do it without a ruler. Many times. Use simple shapes like cubes (cubes are your friend), the move to more difficult ones like cones and spheres. Try to understand how light works on shapes.

  2. Simple objects: Start with easier stuff like fruit and then move to things like glass and fabric. Feel free to look up masterworks of these subjects and try to copy them. Master copies can teach you a lot.

  3. People: Break the human body down. Start with just one thing at a time, like eyes, or hands. Then move to more complicated things like heads and torsos. Then try putting it all together. (The human body is very hard. Never feel bad for struggling with it.)

    Those are the basics. After that draw whatever you want. You will still need practice but a strong understanding of perspective and light help a lot.

    This is probably not how most fine artists learn to draw, it's closer to how I learned to draw as an Industrial Designer. That being said both methods are valid but for different purposes.

    Artists for the most part want to create something very lifelike or emotional. This tends to involve a lot of looking at things and sketching slowly and carefully. Example

    Designers on the other hand tend to focus on drawing things quickly, efficiently and with just enough shading to convey an idea. This tends to be most useful when you can only see what you want to draw in your head (usually because it doesn't exist yet).

    Edit: Also this book is an amazing resource. You might find it at some libraries.
u/bklik · 2 pointsr/Android

Design and style are highly subjective. There are elements and rules that make things "look good" (contrast, alignment, proximity, repetition, etc.), but people can come up with many different things that are all good.

Usability is the same way. There are elements and rules that make things "usable" (Flow, Fitts' Law, Kinesthesia, affordance, etc.), but people can create radically different interactions that allow for the same goals.

Our role, is to act as a mediator. As Bill Buxton said, "design is compromise." You take all these grey areas and moving parts, and create a solution that gives the end user the best experience. You'll know its the best, because you can observe and measure it through usability testing.

If you want to make things look prettier, start by reading The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams.

If you want to make things that work better, start by reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

Edit: Grammar

u/nibot2 · 3 pointsr/comics

The only advice you need right now is to improve your draftsmanship. You need to understand anatomy to be able to draw people, no matter what level of detail/realism you wish to achieve. Animators and cartoonists who who draw all varieties of cartoon characters are always masters of drawing the human form. Even drawing characters like Fred Flinstone requires you to understand anatomy, such as the way joints bend, or hands and fingers function. Having a grasp on anatomy will help your story telling, no matter how you choose to exercise (or disregard) the knowledge. The best place to start learning is a very well known book authored by Andrew Loomis: Figure Drawing for What its Worth (this is one of the most well known peices of instructional drawing literature) Buy this book and study. You already have ideas that you want to draw, and thats great, and improving your draftsmanship will help you be able to get your ideas out. In addition to anatomy, You will also need to learn some basics of perspective, to be able to convincingly draw your stage for example, or how to set up characters around the stage and make them appear to all be on the same plane. Scott Robertson has a great book that teaches fundamentals of perspective, worth looking in to How to Draw Good Luck!

u/DrDougExeter · 2 pointsr/learnart

I can definitely help you with this.


How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

This is the best book on perspective you can buy. Perspective is the number one thing you need to have a grasp on if you want to draw, especially from imagination. Practice this until it clicks for you.

For setting up scenes I recommend Andrew Loomis books, Creative Illustration in particular. Loomis has several books out and they're all amazing. Many artists have learned to draw from Loomis.

Burne Hogarth is another master of the craft and you can learn a lot about musculature and anatomy from his books. These are generally a step up from Loomis so you could move on to these once you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals to take your work to the next level. Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing, Drawing the Human Head.

For people and anatomy, Proko (http://www.proko.com/library/) has good free youtube videos. He uses a lot of Loomis and Hogarth methods (which are pretty much the standard) and presents them in a way that is easy to digest. He's constantly updating his channel and adding new videos.

If you can only get a few books, I would get the How to Draw perspective book first, then go through the Proko material, then move onto the Loomis and Hogarth stuff. These learning materials will take you pretty much as far as you want to go.

Also I highly recommend sticking to traditional materials (pencil and paper) while you're learning. Once you have the fundamentals down then you can move on to digital. You're going to make things much easier on yourself if you stick with traditional while you nail these fundamentals down.

u/Gramnaster · 2 pointsr/LearnConceptArt

I think it's a bit difficult and unfair for me to comment based on one painting alone. Do you have any sketches (line drawing, preferably) of this painting, or anything that showcase what you can do so far? Almost everyone will suggest we start designing anything in line sketches, especially if learning, so I'm interested to see what you got :D

Edit: Since you're looking for advice on how to start, I'll just say a few things that might be able to help you start.

(1) Drawing, imo, is the very foundation of all art. I think before you start painting, you should start drawing first! Here are a few links that may help you start with drawing:

  • Art Fundamentals (Free, and pretty good)
  • Foundation Group (Paid, but pretty good)
  • Ctrl+Paint (Free and Paid. Both are pretty good)

    (2) I suggest you follow an art school's course outline so you can progress pretty well. Feng Zhu Design School has an outline that they use for their students to learn how to do concept art in 1 year (16 hours per day). You can also download a detailed version of what they offer in their course, then you can have an idea on what each component means.

  • FZD Course Outline

    (3) There are also a few books that would be really useful to you when learning how to draw and render. These are supposedly the best on the internet (I only have two, the first two books in the list) Here they are:

  • How to Draw
  • How to Render
  • Figure Drawing
  • Color and Light
  • Imaginative Realism

    I think those are all I have for you now. I'm not in any way a professional artist (I'm currently studying Industrial Design), but I think the above things I've mentioned should prove useful to you. If you have any questions, you can send me a PM :D Work hard and practise every day!
u/Growsintheforest · 3 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

This is an excellent response above, and I'd like to add to this. I'm a senior at Auburn University for ID and I second that you should become familiar with sketching and, if given the opportunity, CAD software.

I've read through Scott Robertsons How to Draw book and it's a good resource for learning how to sketch.

Autodesk will often have free downloads for AutoCAD, Fusion 360, and Inventor for students. I'd recommend getting AutoCAD of the three, but I feel like Fusion is a bit more beginner friendly.

Even if you choose to go into engineering for school, sketching and CAD will help out a lot when you start your classes.

Also, if your high school has any public speaking classes, it wouldn't hurt to look into taking one. At least in my program we have pretty regular presentations, and it really helps to be able to communicate your ideas fluently when presenting a final product/end of the semester project.

Feel free to DM me as well!

u/guiguismall · 5 pointsr/learnart

You won't necessarily draw the internal anatomy every time you draw a person, but you'll definitely have to learn it by drawing it a lot. Look at it like that: when you draw a figure, the only thing you can see is the skin (and later, the clothes). Well, it happens that said skin is wrapped around a complex structure of bones and muscles, and so are the clothes of a characters. Knowing how this structure is built will let you "drap" skin and clothes the proper way, and will give you all the indications you need when it comes to adding light and shadow. As a bonus, being able to "see" the internal structure of a body gives you the ability to manipulate it, exagerate poses, and even create new ones from imagination.

Now as for how to learn it? I see in one of your old comments that you seem to have the books everyone recommends already, but have you tried using them? Grab either Loomis's or Hampton's book, and read them cover to cover while reproducing the drawings, that should be a good start. Alternatively, check out Proko's channel on youtube, he's got some material on figure drawing, too.

As a side note and to answer an older question of yours regarding drawing cars, check out Scott Robertson's book on objects and environments in perspective, or his DVDs on Gnomon Workshop if you're like me and prefer this format (subscription does cost $50 a month though, but Gnomon also has some pretty good figure drawing / anatomy courses. Your call).

u/baimo · 1 pointr/ottawa

ahoy!

If you're finding it hard to make time for in person classes, there are tons of resources online that might suit you better for the time being. Youtube is an awesome resource, I really enjoy Aaron Blaise's channel but there are tons of other free lessons and tutorials available.

Tumblr is actually a really good place to find all kinds of art blogs/refs/tutorials. Even Reddit has some drawing sections where you can get critique from others!

Lynda.com you follow along with lessons and they provide working files you can can download.

FZD School of Design

Level Up!

Other than that just practice!
These books are a pretty good jumping off point if you want to just get a strong understanding of foundations.

Sorry for the long post, I likes me some drawing yar har :)

u/sjalfurstaralfur · 1 pointr/learntodraw

I'm a computer science student too, it actually taught me how to learn difficult stuff which translated really well into my artistic endeavors.

As for the drawing you linked, it's all about 1) practice and 2) perspective drawing. It looks difficult but its not really, just takes a lot of time and patience to render it out. The artist most likely used a reference photo which used a fisheyes lens pic, and constructed his work out of that.

Scott Robertson's How To Draw is a really great book on perspective/3D drawing that would probably get you on the right course. It's more on the advanced side though so I'd probably start out with an easier book.

> My question now is.. where do I start to ever be able to create something like this? I know you've to start very small and I'm guessing I have to draw by hand as well (Which I'm okay with)


Lots and lots of practice really. I've been drawing and painting for like 9 years now and I still am not at the level of the art you linked (but getting there). You just have to realize that its not something you just learn on the fly and be done with. You really have to dedicate yourself to it to be that good.

u/bare_face · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

Start by doing lots of sketches in black and white with a pencil or bic biro. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, overlap sketches, make notes and show your construction lines. Sketch in 2D and 3D, sketch details and forms.

Sketch faster. Sketching is exploration and your hand should be working fast to keep up with your brain! Here's a good example of black and white sketches with a little colour, note how they're not clean and perfect and you can see how they've been built

Only use colour where necessary - you're sketching not rendering. Use it to make the best ideas stand out, or to add detail such as material selection and exploration of colour choices.

Save up and get some decent marker pens. Magic markers or Letraset pro markers are good. 3 shades of neutral grey should do to start say N1, N3, N5. These are buildable and can be layered to create darker shades and the shades (C2, C4) in between. Use these to add simple shading and a group shadow, shading should be used to help communicate form. Sharpies are ok for outlining or adding a line of colour, not for colouring in areas.

Get an A3 marker or layout pad, the paper is semi transparent so you can trace over other sketches or use an underlay to speed up the sketching process. They also don't soak up the ink or bleed so your images will look crisper and marker pens will last longer. I say A3, because generally this is the paper size ID's use, so get used to filling that page! The brand doesn't matter but I usually use Goldline layout pads as the paper is whiter.

Practice, practice, practice. Copy other peoples sketches, a good book I always advocate when people are looking for sketching feedback is one called Sketching for Designers by Koos Eissen. If you can get a copy then try to recreate the sketches and emulate some of the techniques, your own style will come after. Otherwise look on Behance and try to recreate any ID sketches you like for practice.

Good luck :)

Source: I'm an ID. Edit: Spelling/grammar

u/Garret_AJ · 3 pointsr/conceptart

I don't like to give crits to fix what you have. It's a sketch, and you should think of sketches as disposable. Learn something here and move on. I would say my big crit is they're more organic looking than robotic.

That being said, I recommend you do some study before you try again. When learning to make robots there are two very essential things to learn; Human anatomy, and contemporary mechanical engineering.

Human anatomy: Really dive in to understand how joints actuate with muscles and ligaments. These will help you understand how your robots joints should work as well. It will also work to make your creations more believable.

Here some links:

- https://www.pinterest.com/achinzoo/anatomy/

- https://flabergastertron.tumblr.com/

- https://sketchfab.com/search?q=anatomy&sort_by=-pertinence&type=models

I also recommend this book on Analytical Anatomy: Figure Drawing: Design and Invention

​

Mechanical: don't just look at this stuff, you need to understand how things connect. Why did they engineer this or that a certain way. Is it supposed to move? How should it look. Is it supposed to be a conduit for wires? how does that look? Draw these things, build up the muscle memory. They will express themselves when your drawing creatively I promise, but you first have to do the studies.

Here's some links

- https://imgur.com/r/MachinePorn

- https://www.pbase.com/amoxtli/uss_midway

- https://sketchfab.com/search?q=robot&sort_by=-pertinence&type=models

​

And here's a fantastic book you should have: How to Draw: By Scott Robertson

I like where you're headed, but I think you can do better. Keep drawing and I hope that was helpful.

u/Stupid_Guitar · 18 pointsr/funny

If you really want to draw, I'd suggest picking up How To Draw by Scott Robertson.

It leans more towards technical drawing, but one could apply the techniques learned to many types of creative drawing. There's an app you can download that scans certain pages that will link to video tutorials as well.

It's a hefty tome, but don't let that scare you off. A beginner with a willingness to practice will find their skills improve significantly, but you gotta put the time into practicing, no two ways about it.

Once you find you can handle the basics, I'd suggest taking a figure drawing class, or drawing from life in general. Community colleges are great for this sort of thing, since it would be very inexpensive compared to art school or private lessons. Anyway, good luck!

How to Draw

u/samort7 · 257 pointsr/learnprogramming

Here's my list of the classics:

General Computing

u/DrShadyBusiness · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

This book is great at developing your basic sketching skills. Mastering the basics is the secret to becoming a master designer. like /u/Methylene_Chloride said, some of you perspective is off, which throws some of the pictures.

There are plenty of books and resources out there to help! So sketch until your fingers bleed. Learn some drawing techniques like 3 point perspective drawing.

http://www.portfoliohandbook.com/

This website will help with structuring and presenting your work in a professional manner. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. You could be the greatest car designer ever, but if your portfolio is shit you wont get the job. Learn how to present your work, employers won't read any text you put with sketches or work, you need to present it in a logical order so it tells a story they can follow as they flick through your portfolio.

You could also take a year out, try and get an internship somewhere to see how the actual industry works. I wish i did this before i went to uni, as it would have given me more drive to succeed. If you do, do this you will definitely see a difference in how people work ina professional setting and at uni. Uni will be a lot more laid back than a job.

Good luck

u/Veelze · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

There are a lot of people recommending certain books and videos, but personally those suggestions never worked out for me and arent the best start since they concentrate on being too flashy or don't teach the basics. The 2 books you want to buy are

Sketching: The Basics - Koos Eissen, Roselien Steur

Sketching: Drawing Techniques for Product Designers

Both are hard cover at a price of $29 and are by far the best sketching tutorial and reference books I ever purchased.

And as a starting point to sketching, buy a batch of fine point ball point pens (I recommend the Bic Ultra Round Stic Grip Black Ink Fine purchased at Staples), a ream of paper, and just start drawing straight lines across the pages.
Draw with the pen to build confidence, draw straight lines because it's the basis of product design sketching.

Then take those 2 books I recommend, and start copying page by page while practicing straight lines every day (2-3 pages a day)

u/viditb · 1 pointr/UI_Design

Woah! That’s a terrible experience, you should definitely get a refund!

Some online resources which may help you:
Coursera has a very good Introductory course on UI and UX design, with topics ranging from prototyping, wireframing & user studies. Attended the course a couple years ago, and it’s been incredibly useful!
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design

Butterick’s practical typography website is a great resource for Typography studies
https://practicaltypography.com/

Nielsen Norman Group’s articles often have great insights on interface design:
https://www.nngroup.com/

If you’re designing for a specific platform, you could read their human interface guidelines, which provide a lot of practical help.
https://developer.apple.com/design/
(Make sure to watch their WWDC sessions, which often talk about basic principles in UI Designs)

If you haven’t already, check out the Design of everyday things by Don Norman. It’s definitely worth reading to get a hang of basic design principles.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540074486&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=design+of+everyday+things&dpPl=1&dpID=410RTQezHYL&ref=plSrch


u/JogaBonito7 · 1 pointr/startups

Sure! Industrial Design is quite hard (imo) to learn from purely free resources online etc. I would suggest learning some form of CAD software through tutorials online. SolidWorks is a big one however if you'd like to learn the basics for free then Google SketchUp isn't too bad. As for the other aspects, learn about manufacturing processes (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Manufacturing-Processes-Design-Professionals-Thompson/dp/0500513759 is a great book), sketch sketch sketch and develop an understanding of the breakdown of products. Also check out websites like Core77.

I know I've waffled on and probably missed the point. But hopefully that helps! I'd certainly recommend doing some sort of course at a local college if possible!

u/ClockworkSyphilis · 2 pointsr/Design

Definitely! Good places to start are Buxton's Sketching User Experience and Norman's Design of Everyday Things


Also, the people over at Kicker Studio keep a list of the top 10 books of all time as well as a very good essential reading list.


Interaction design is a huge field, as deep as any other, so it's not just something you can pick up a book or two and become an expert in or know all the details that go into a good design, but it's definitely worth learning something about it.


One nice article that will start to change how you view interfaces is Raskin's Intuitive Equals Familiar.

Good luck!

u/madinitaly · 2 pointsr/instructionaldesign

Hi Mike,

I took the E-learning Instructional Design certificate course at University of California Irvine, finished in September this year. Although some classes were better than others, overall I found it a really valuable experience. Even if you don't do the whole program, the very first course in the series will teach you so much that you'll need several months to mull it over and apply it all to your work. Each class costs $550-ish. so it's a $3000 program, but that's only if you choose to do all 6 classes and get the certificate.

I'm ready the Accidental Instructional Designer at the moment, by Cammy Bean. Best ID or e-learning book I've read, ever. Full of simple, smart, quality tips. Funny to read, too. Buy it! :)

u/lac29 · 3 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

There are a lot of books out there that will help you. At OSU we're using this book for reference (required) in our sketching class: http://www.amazon.com/Sketching-The-Basics-2nd-printing/dp/9063692536/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343289990&sr=8-1&keywords=sketching

There are a ton of other books specifically for ID type sketching if you want that I can recommend. There are also a lot of online resources and videos both that can be bought or are free. Here is one very good resource/reference.

http://www.sketch-a-day.com/

ID sketching is different from fine arts sketching. If you are not comfortable drawing/practicing using your own imagination, try imitating/copying ID sketches from professionals. You need to build a visual vocabulary before you can draw/make your own products/designs. Copying helps a lot to give you that foundation.

Edit: Learning how to draw in perspective is a key foundational skill in ID sketching. Also, rendering using things like marker, etc ... they come later and can take awhile to learn. Prioritize basic sketching using a medium you are comfortable with (honestly though, I think the majority of professionals use a simple/cheap pen [not pencil although you're welcome to use it if you're better at it]).

u/gu1d3b0t · 4 pointsr/virtualreality

Ignore Carmack (on this one, very specific issue). His conceptual model of what a UI is, can be, and should be, are extremely one directional, vision-centric, and rooted in ancient PARC UIs made for a completely different medium under totally different constraints. VR is a spatial medium by nature, and it simulates the real physical world. In VR, the world IS the interface. You don't need to conceptualize the UI as a separate thing at all. There are only interaction mechanics. You are designing for a mind, not for a rectangle.

To really hammer this home, I recommend studying the following titles:

u/YattyYatta · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

3rd year product design student here, so I'm offering what knowledge I have.

>What sketching exercises are helpful?

I'd say getting into the habit of drawing on a daily basis is probably the best. There is no way you won't get better. Watch some youtube videos or get a good textbook (I use this one)

>What things should I start noticing around me every day to build a designer's mentality?

Literally everything.

>What habits should I work on cementing into my daily routine?

  1. Be open to criticism. Not everyone will like what you made, or agree with what you have to say.

  2. Take pride in what you made, but don't become too attached to your prototypes. They will probably fail/break during testing, so take that as an opportunity to iterate and improve the design.

  3. Don't be afraid to ask "why?" Ethnographic research is good design practice.

  4. Document everything because you want to tell a story. See something cool? Snap a pic. Try playing around with different materials, methods, sequence of production. Organise everything into a binder so you can refer to it in the future, bring it to interviews, etc. The process is an important part of the portfolio
u/weenie131 · 1 pointr/stevenuniverse

Sorry this is really not going to be helpful but I'm going to say it anyways. It's mostly practice. The more you try it, the more easily your eye spots it out. And by practice, I don't just mean look at stuff and try to find the shapes in it. Draw it out, build stuff out of geometric shapes or go over your drawings and fill it in with geometric shapes. If you search up analytical figure drawing, it basically takes this concept and applies it to the human figure. If you really want to go in depth, a book that really helped me with the technical aspect of art was the book, How to Draw. I'll link it at the bottom.
I think a lot of technical drawing is mostly retraining the things your eyes notice as well as muscle memory. If you practice enough, you'll get there. Some people like to say drawing is a talent, but the real talent is work ethic. If you want to get better, and you work at it, you will.

Link to analytical figure drawing example:
http://theartreferences.tumblr.com/post/33190998640/analytical-figure-drawing-week-6-shoulder
Link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422224291&sr=8-2&keywords=how+to+draw

u/theholyraptor · 3 pointsr/AskEngineers

Further reading/research: (Not all of which I've gotten to read yet. Some of which may be quite tangentially relevant to the discussion at hand along with the books and sites I mentioned above. Consider this more a list of books pertaining to the history of technology, machining, metrology, some general science and good engineering texts.)

Dan Gelbart's Youtube Channel

Engineerguy's Youtube Channel

Nick Mueller's Youtube Channel

mrpete222/tubalcain's youtube channel

Tom Lipton (oxtools) Youtube Channel

Suburban Tool's Youtube Channel

NYCNC's Youtube Channel

Computer History Museum's Youtube Channel

History of Machine Tools, 1700-1910 by Steeds

Studies in the History of Machine Tools by Woodbury

A History of Machine Tools by Bradley

Tools for the Job: A History of Machine Tools to 1950 by The Science Museum

A History of Engineering Metrology by Hume

Tools and Machines by Barnard

The Testing of Machine Tools by Burley

Modern machine shop tools, their construction, operation and manipulation, including both hand and machine tools: a book of practical instruction by Humphrey & Dervoort

Machine-Shop Tools and Methods by Leonard

A Measure of All Things: The Story of Man and Measurement by Whitelaw

Handbook of Optical Metrology: Principles and Applications by Yoshizawa

Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon by Gray

Machine Shop Training Course Vol 1 & 2 by Jones

A Century of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, 1882-1982

Numerical Control: Making a New Technology by Reintjes

History of Strength of Materials by Timoshenko

Rust: The Longest War by Waldman

The Companion Reference Book on Dial and Test Indicators: Based on our popular website www.longislandindicator.com by Meyer

Optical Shop Testing by Malacara

Lost Moon: The Preilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Lovell and Kruger

Kelly: More Than My Share of It All by Johnson & Smith

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Rich & Janos

Unwritten Laws of Engineering by King

Advanced Machine Work by Smith

Accurate Tool Work by Goodrich

Optical Tooling, for Precise Manufacture and Alignment by Kissam

The Martian: A Novel by Weir

Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain by Young Budynas & Sadegh

Materials Selection in Mechanical Design by Ashby

Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer by Shute

Cosmos by Sagan

Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners and Plumbing Handbook by Smith Carol Smith wrote a number of other great books such as Engineer to Win.

Tool & Cutter Sharpening by Hall

Handbook of Machine Tool Analysis by Marinescu, Ispas & Boboc

The Intel Trinity by Malone

Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals by Thompson

A Handbook on Tool Room Grinding

Tolerance Design: A Handbook for Developing Optimal Specifications by Creveling

Inspection and Gaging by Kennedy

Precision Engineering by Evans

Procedures in Experimental Physics by Strong

Dick's Encyclopedia of Practical Receipts and Processes or How They Did it in the 1870's by Dick

Flextures: Elements of Elastic Mechanisms by Smith

Precision Engineering by Venkatesh & Izman

Metal Cutting Theory and Practice by Stephenson & Agapiou

American Lathe Builders, 1810-1910 by Cope As mentioned in the above post, Kennth Cope did a series of books on early machine tool builders. This is one of them.

Shop Theory by Henry Ford Trade Shop

Learning the lost Art of Hand Scraping: From Eight Classic Machine Shop Textbooks A small collection of articles combined in one small book. Lindsay Publications was a smallish company that would collect, reprint or combine public domain source material related to machining and sell them at reasonable prices. They retired a few years ago and sold what rights and materials they had to another company.

How Round Is Your Circle?: Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet by Bryant & Sangwin

Machining & CNC Technology by Fitzpatrick

CNC Programming Handbook by Smid

Machine Shop Practice Vol 1 & 2 by Moltrecht

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles A fantastic book with tons of free online material, labs, and courses built around it. This book could take a 6th grader interested in learning, and teach them the fundamentals from scratch to design a basic computer processor and programming a simple OS etc.

Bosch Automotive Handbook by Bosch

Trajectory Planning for Automatic Machines and Robots by Biagiotti & Melchiorri

The Finite Element Method: Its Basis and Fundamentals by Zhu, Zienkiewicz and Taylor

Practical Treatise on Milling and Milling Machines by Brown & Sharpe

Grinding Technology by Krar & Oswold

Principles of Precision Engineering by Nakazawa & Takeguchi

Foundations of Ultra-Precision Mechanism Design by Smith

I.C.S. Reference Library, Volume 50: Working Chilled Iron, Planer Work, Shaper and Slotter Work, Drilling and Boring, Milling-Machine Work, Gear Calculations, Gear Cutting

I. C. S. Reference Library, Volume 51: Grinding, Bench, Vise, and Floor Work, Erecting, Shop Hints, Toolmaking, Gauges and Gauge Making, Dies and Die Making, Jigs and Jig Making
and many more ICS books on various engineering, technical and non-technical topics.

American Machinists' Handbook and Dictionary of Shop Terms: A Reference Book of Machine-Shop and Drawing-Room Data, Methods and Definitions, Seventh Edition by Colvin & Stanley

Modern Metal Cutting: A Practical Handbook by Sandvik

Mechanical Behavior of Materials by Dowling

Engineering Design by Dieter and Schmidt

[Creative Design of Products and Systems by Saeed]()

English and American Tool Builders by Roe

Machine Design by Norton

Control Systems by Nise

That doesn't include some random books I've found when traveling and visiting used book stores. :)

u/CodingDojo · 1 pointr/web_design

For UX:

'Don't Make Me Think' by Steve Krug. --> This is a great book for UX and design fundamentals

Link to purchase
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321344758/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=33857011795&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5285549020583777492&hvpone=22.79&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_9tu6h5g71k_b

For Graphic Design Fundamentals:
'Creative Workshop - 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills'

Link to purchase
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Workshop-Challenges-Sharpen-Design/dp/1600617972

For Design as a whole!
'The Design of Everyday Things'

Link to purchase:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107

The UX book and Design as a whole books are shorter and will be quick to complete. However, the graphic design book will be quite challenging, especially if you aren't familiar with Adobe CS. But I assure you that you will be a much stronger designer afterwards. (When I first started off doing graphic design, I wish I had this book to give me projects to work on)

Overall, expect to spend ~$40 on all this, but these would be a great place to start I think. 1 month time to finish reading the books, and 3 months to finish all the graphic projects.

Hope this helps, good luck!

  • Stephen, Student Advisor @ CodingDojo, a 12-week bootcamp for aspiring web developers in Seattle & SF (more info at http://codingdojo.com/l/info/r ).
u/EntropyArchiver · 2 pointsr/SketchDaily

Only 5~ months ago did I decide to get serious about improving my art in my free time. For most of my life I only doodled occasionally. So I thought I would describe my plan of action with books and resources that I will likely be using. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My process will be basics of construction-> perspective -> figure drawing -> digital art and rendering. Approximately 45% will be improving, 45% will be doing what I want for fun and 10% will be a daily sketch(this subreddit) that takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to complete. for fun I will be doing anything from digital to water color.

Construction and perspective: First I am starting my art journey by completing draw a box . Next I will go through Marshall Vandruff's Linear Perspective Videos and Perspective Made Easy simultaneously while referencing with how to draw by Scott Robertson. Briefly I will gloss at Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain or keys to drawing pulling ideas of where I might find weakness.

Figure drawing: Once those are finished, I will begin my figure drawing phase. I will move onto free proko subsided with loomis books such as this, other photo references sites like http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en and Figure Drawing: Design and Invention. I will also reference Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist and maybe more depending on my budget.

digital art and rendering: For the final stage of my journey, I will venture into ctrlpaint. Simultaneously I will be reading How to Render, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

After that.... I don't know. We will see were I am in a year.

u/Gereshes · 2 pointsr/AskEngineers

In no particular order but all of the following are great.

  • Skunk Works by Ben Rich - I reviewed it here
  • Ignition! - It's an informal history of liquid rocket propellant and I did a more in depth review of it here
  • The Design of Everyday Things - A book about how objects are designed. It changed how I look at the world and approach design. It took me few tries to get into it the first time.
  • Introduction to Astrodynamics by Battin - A great textbook on the basics of astrodynamics that is both easy enough for undergrads to start, and rigorous enough to keep you interested as your math skills improve in grad school and later.
u/syslinkdown · 2 pointsr/Favors

Sweeeeeet, thanks! It's a moderately famous (for a teapot, I suppose) example of self-defeating design. It's featured on the cover of The Design of Everyday Things and is a prized part of the author's personal teapot collection. I have a friend who really wants one. If you can CAD it, I can get it 3D printed in ceramic, fired and glazed. If I can do all that before some undetermined time in September, I'll have a lovely gift for when said friend (hopefully) passes an important milestone.

Again, thank you so much for even attempting this. PLEASE let me do something nice for you in return!

u/msupr · 3 pointsr/Entrepreneur

Had this list together from a blog post I wrote a few months ago. Not sure what exactly you're looking for, but these are my favorite books and I'd recommend everybody read them all. There are other great books out there, but this is a pretty well rounded list that touches everything a company needs.

The Lean Startup https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898

Business Model Generation https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

Talking to Humans https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Humans-Success-understanding-customers-ebook/dp/B00NSUEUL4

Predictable Revenue https://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213

To Sell is Human https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Human-Surprising-Moving-Others/dp/1594631905

Rework https://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745

Delivering Happiness https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220

u/gray_rain · 0 pointsr/learnart

There are three things I would recommend to you. :)

  • This GIGANTIC page of info on color and light
  • Scott Robertson's How to Render
  • James Gurney's Color and Light

    You'll find that a lot of information on color out there is almost strictly theory oriented (not a big surprise considering it's called color theory), and there isn't much practical help on how to apply that information. Each of the things I just suggested are all very practical sources of information for learning how to work with color.

    Some things you should note, though...the Scott Robertson book is designed to build on top of his book How to Draw. That book teaches you perspective and how to create proper 3d forms in 2d space. How to Render builds on that by teaching you how light will interact realistically with those forms you now know how to create. If you don't want to work through How to Draw, that's fine (though I highly suggest that book as well)...but you'll probably be losing out on a fuller understanding of the concepts.

    Make sure that before you move too much into painting and color working that you can make well constructed drawings and can handle value properly. Those two are the most important. Why? Because if you don't have a proper looking drawing then no matter how well you can render and lay color over it...that won't save it...it will still look wrong. And if you can draw well constructed things but you're weak in values, then you're really in trouble. If, when you lay down color, the values of those colors are wrong, then your well constructed forms that you drew will no longer read as the forms that they're supposed to because the "light" that's interacting with the form isn't interacting like it would in real life so your eye reads it as a different form than you intended.

    I understand that they style you're going after isn't at all realistic. On some of them the color that's there isn't even being used to render...it's simply there as a graphic element. Which is fine! Really awesome style. But you will be well served if you put in the time to learn the technical application of light and color. That way, since you know the "rules", you'll have control over the color...when to use it realistically and how and when to use it graphically...rather than the color having control over you. :)

    Hope this helps! :)
u/FetusFeast · 1 pointr/books

lets see...

u/gmz_88 · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

You need to draw through. That means drawing every side of the cube, even if you don't see that corner.

None of your lines are straight. Practice one movement of your arm that results in a perfectly straight line. it's hard to make yourself learn this but practice is important. once you have that one perfectly straight stroke just rotate your paper around and do the same motion every time.

You also need to work on your perspective.

these are some great books to start with: 1-2-3.

u/meliko · 27 pointsr/AskReddit

Depends on what you want to do — UX is a pretty broad field. I'm a user interface designer with a UX background, which means I've designed sites, web apps and mobile apps, but there's plenty of UX positions that don't require any sort of visual design or front-end development experience.

For example, there are labs that conduct user research and interviews, run focus groups, or do user testing. Hell, you could even apply to be a user tester at a site like usertesting.com. Not sure how much money you can make from that, but it's something.

Also, there are UX positions that go from beginning research and discovery for projects up through the wireframing, which doesn't require any visual design experience. You'll usually hand off your UX work to a designer or a developer to implement.

Some good books to read about UX are:

u/Ophichius · 1 pointr/fo4

If you've got the time and resources to spare, try making maquettes. You can get modeling clay fairly cheap, and it can be incredibly helpful to throw together a quick maquette, chuck it under a lamp, and see what happens with the light.

If you want a great pair of books on light and form by a master painter, check out James Gurney's Color and Light and Imaginative Realism. His blog is worth a read as well, it's always informative and interesting.

If you want a more technical approach to lighting, How to Render is a fantastic technical examination of how light behaves on various surfaces. The associated How to Draw is an excellent technical book on perspective. Both are a bit dry and clinical, but quite excellent.

Anything by Andrew Loomis is also well worth picking up.

u/mandix · 1 pointr/cscareerquestions

I'm telling you... you do not have to wait to become a web designer especially if you have any CS chops. It sounds like you need some kind of validation lol? In design you have to be an entrepreneur, design your own experience, find out some people who are doing design x software email them... surprise them, designers love surprises and something different... make your own luck.

As far as Amazon good books, you really want to aim for a whole view of design at this point. Think of it like you wouldn't learn run before you can walk, there is A LOT out there.

u/TheHangmen · 0 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

I enjoyed The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman which everyone seems to recommend for designers of all types from UI to ID.

I haven't looked at any of the others suggested for materials but I was very surprised at how good Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals was when I was looking through it last week, it's full of images and diagrams and does a great job of going over things. Much more interesting than this book which I used in Man. Tech.

u/Matthew_McHiniNini · 2 pointsr/AskMen

No worries! ID doesn't just belong to the art worlds a lot of technical schools teach it to. Being artistically talented is one thing but it's not everything.

Besides! Everything that I know about drawing like an industrial designer was pretty much introduced and taught to me with this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Product-Designers-Portfolio-Skills/dp/1856697436

That said it does help to have a degree to do product design, but with any skills related to drawing or making things by hand and you could easily find yourself at a general firm! Nothing corporate but screw corporate.

u/mechtonia · 11 pointsr/MechanicalEngineering

Try The Design of Everyday Things.

Every engineer should read this book.


FWIW, I discovered that good design always happens iteratively. The longer I spend in this career, the more convinced I am of this concept. The idea that an engineer sits down with a blank piece of paper (or screen) and creates an elegant, useful, efficient design is just a fantasy. As a consultant it is really hard to communicate this to clients. The cost of their one-off custom machine isn't going to be in the same ballpark as the standard model machine they bought a few years ago from a company that sales a few dozen of the exact same model every year. I say that to say, good designs don't come just from a good fundamental understanding of design principles, they come from actual experience in the relevant domain.

u/alilja · 2 pointsr/userexperience

I can't believe no one's suggested the phenomenal and foundational Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. He essentially created the idea of user-centered design, and his book is still the best overall explanations of what makes good design good.

I'm one of the founders of /r/designforpeople where we cover material like this. We're focused on the intersection between people and design, with a focus on how good and bad design affects the people that have to use it every day. We've just started up but I think you and your interest would be a great addition to it. If that sounds interesting — come check us out!

u/black-tie · 3 pointsr/Design

On typography:

u/vandebar · 2 pointsr/UniversityofReddit

Experienced designer here. The best way to learn to sketch by yourself is to watch tutorials and to practice a lot. The Gnomon Workshiop is an amazing ressource for basic sketching in industrial design. I strongly suggest that you check out the "Basic Perspective Form Drawing" DVD. A lot of student try to make awesome photoshop rendering before they know the basics of perspective, dont fall in this trap.

There is also ID Sketching which is a cool website with tutorials

A good book on the subject
Drawing Techniques for Product Designers

As for design theory, one of the most common reads in university is the The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
The Design of Everyday Things

I remember a teacher saying that to be an expert at something you have to put 10 000 hours in it, so you better sharpen those pencils ! Tell me if you need more information.

u/J-Wh1zzy · 3 pointsr/learnart

Definitely, not sure what your budget is but there's a book I have called "How to Draw" https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1933492732/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491345682&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=how+to+draw+scott

It goes from A-Z learning to draw and think in 3D. It's an awesome book. I'm currently in art school and I had the pleasure of hearing one of the authors talk about it. After this book there's a second one called "How to Render" which goes through all the dynamics of light.

The thing I really like about these books is that it approaches drawing from an analytical point of view and really gets at the science behind it.

u/iamktothed · 4 pointsr/Design

Interaction Design

u/Spud_Spudoni · 3 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

In terms of hand sketching? If so, I've found this book to be super helpful:

https://www.amazon.com/Sketching-12th-printing-Techniques-Designers/dp/9063691718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498808723&sr=8-1&keywords=product+sketch+for+product+designers

Whenever I'm stuck on a sketch or idea, and either need inspiration or need help visualizing a form, I'll flip through the pages of a book like this and find one of the sketching styles or one of the many products listed in books like this to keep things moving.

u/MrLime93 · 2 pointsr/graphic_design

The psychology of design is something that's always interested me. I studied it for about a year and it killed. The work was intense but I got a good understanding for the user/designer thought process. If you are in the mood for some light reading then I'd reccomend The Design Of Everyday things by Don Norman

I'd also recommend looking into The seven stages of action concerning user centred design

Good luck with the thesis and keep us updated :)

u/biscuitsong · 1 pointr/tarot

What about the Steampunk Tarot? (There are a couple but this is the one I mean: The Steampunk Tarot https://www.amazon.com/dp/0738726389/)

Maybe also check out the Modern Spellcaster’s Tarot, Pagan Otherworlds, and Darkness of Light Tarot. These aren’t in the same digital art style but they might appeal to you.

Before buying anything, I’d recommend searching on YouTube for deck flip throughs (if you don’t already do that) so that you know you’ll like the whole deck.

Edited to add: Decks by Kim Huggens also look similar to Ciro Marchetti so you might want to look at those too!

Edited to add: Another one to check out is Ellis Deck: https://ellistrations.bigcartel.com/product/ellis-deck-5th-edition Very heavily RWS-based (though not a clone) but the illustrations are truly unique. The colors look pretty bright in photos, but the real-life colors are more muted.

u/jamesfilm · 1 pointr/gaming

Do you not agree that there are a whole load of really immature books about game design that are sold more on the fact that "its a book about games" than its inherent content ?

Even within the space of magazines I think it would be fair to call Nintendo power immature and something like EDGE , Games TM or Develop magazine Mature.

for someone starting from scratch you would get allot more by reading these books than by watching EC ( obviously can do both and EC is a nice starting pion for someone totally new to games)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0465067107?ie=UTF8&tag=alwaysblack01-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0465067107

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0273693646?ie=UTF8&tag=alwaysblack01-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0273693646

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1932111972

allso over view books on Game theory , the history of the microchip and computing , evolution and basic biology can be incredibly good in helping think about games as an art and the limitations in the development of software.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fun-Games-Text-Game-Theory/dp/0669246034/ref=cm_lmf_tit_12

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321193679/zx81orguk00

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/zx81orguk00

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-History-Information-Machine-Technology/dp/0465029906


I realise EC is just easily consumable general information and that's fine just wish they did it without the pretence , like I said in other comments I'm glad they make it even though it personally annoys the hell out of me its beneficial for games as a whole as there is a general lack of even moderately intelligent talk about games.


u/righttothaleft · 6 pointsr/minimalism

This is a great book on the topic for people interested.

Really popular in the startup scene, guess it's good to know what your up against. Or use it for good :)

u/jeffderek · 37 pointsr/magicTCG

This is an improvement. I'll give you that. I appreciate the effort that went into it. It's very pretty in some ways, and the mouseover effect on the tiles is kind of cool I guess.

It's still an incredibly space inefficient way to distribute information. Look at this. I've got a 1920x1080 monitor with Firefox full screen, and I can't even see 9 of your links at once. I can't read the preview text of any of them without mousing over. Is there some reason you can't display this information in a manner where I can just, y'know, read it?

A good start to being able to display a lot of useable links to articles at once is within the article archives, which with a slight bump in title size would be an excellent front page set of article links, but even that is a pain to deal with because this is the first thing you see upon loading the archives. Full screen on a 1080p monitor and I can see the entire preview text of exactly one article without scrolling down.

This site was designed by someone who thinks a lot about how to make things attractive and is good with graphical design software, but has no concept of User Interface Design. Please buy everyone on your design staff a copy of The Design of Everyday Things and make it mandatory reading. It's very possible to design for both visual aesthetic as well as functionality, that just hasn't happened here.

Aside from that I'll echo the disappointment that you can't middle click on the giant boxes, only the "read more" link, no idea why that functionality doesn't work.

Let me reiterate that I believe this is an improvement and I appreciate that effort is being made to make a better experience, but there's still a long way to go, and a company the size of WotC shouldn't need me to tell it that.

u/AlSweigart · 2 pointsr/learnprogramming

Focus on UI design.

A lot of people tend to think of programming as very math-heavy (it's not, unless the domain you're writing software for is weather simulations or something that itself requires math). So we end up thinking the technical side is important and the "soft skills" are unimportant (or at least, not worth including in our study time).

I'm old enough now where I still like programming, but I've realized I don't care about code; I care about making software that people actually use and find useful. Building a tesla coil in your garage is cool, but so what tons of geeks have done that. I want to make something useful, and it doesn't matter how elegant your algorithms are if your program is confusing, unusable, or solves the wrong problem.

I'd recommend these books, in roughly this order:

u/isharq · 6 pointsr/geek

Now, a cleverly designed card reader would have been built in such a way that the user can't make a mistake.

There are four ways of putting the card through the machine, but most people have figured out, by now, that the magnetic strip bit actually has to go down into the machine.

So, in the spirit of mr Norman, who apparently is a bit of an authority at these things, I ask of Reddit: How much would it cost to add a magnetic reader on both sides of the card reader?

That way:

  • It wouldn't make a hoot of a difference which way you put your card through the reader.
  • We'd save a ton of time at the cash registers
  • There's some redundancy: If one of the reader snuffs it, you turn the card around and use it the other way
  • Card readers would be just that little bit easier to use for everyone.

    See how easy that was?
u/mazaer · 5 pointsr/learnart

I strongly recommend Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" book. It is almost entirely dedicated to perspective drawing. It teaches everything from the basics of two and three point perspectives all the way to more complex things such as mirroring curves and even correctly drawing things like staircases in perspective. It's also super cheap for what it offers:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=la_B0034O5O32_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417522342&sr=1-1

Grab that and work your way through every exercise one-by-one and you'll come out with a firm grasp on perspective drawing. He also has an accompanying website for the book that you can log into that goes through some of the lessons in video format. As he is a teacher (and so is the co-author), they both do a great job of explaining things in the videos.

u/BradChesney79 · 3 pointsr/java

A couple of lighter reads I was glad to come across:

DMMT
https://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach-Usability/dp/0789723107

The Design of Everyday Things
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654

Read these when you're feeling burned out. They are nice, real easy, feel good reads.

Regarding testing. Every function gets at least one test. Happy path always. The most common expected failures. Edge case testing when you find out you need it.

When you're really good at it, you'll be able to feed arrays of representative dummy data while your directories are being watched for changes. But first, a happy path test for every function. Start there.

Unit testing of the code.

Selenium webdriver is what I've used client side to simulate repeatable use & abuse of the final product.

Integration test are just unit tests passing when you jam everything together. A much bigger issue when you are doing a lot of Dependency Injection-- you need to check that the "handler" you are putting in actually works.

  • Unit tests
  • Client side testing
  • Continuous integration(CI)

    Continuous integration is helpful that your "builds" have all the unit tests and a ping to the selenium tests to run as part of the flow of a release. Just a tool to listen for you to make changes. Learn the three things separately, I've not found a good resource that chains them all together.
u/invicticide · 6 pointsr/gamedev

An artist. :P

No but seriously, here are some things I'd love to be gifted as an indie game dev (if I didn't have them already):

  • Rules of Play. It's maybe getting a little harder to find at a reasonable price, but is a wonderful resource. Some people pan it as a beginner textbook, but as a 10-year game dev veteran I still go back to it occasionally and it reminds me about fundamentals I've let slip over the years. Worth every penny.
  • Envisioning Information. Not directly game dev related, but it's a definitive resource for the kinds of visual design problems we have to solve every day (and that so, so many game devs simply don't know anything about, sadly).
  • The Design of Everyday Things. You can probably get this in paperback for super cheap. It's old, and it's about industrial design, but more importantly it's usability. The core principles in this book should be the backbone of any game designer's education.
  • Got an excellent card/board game shop in the area? Gift certificate the fuck out of the bitch. (Video game devs loooove tabletop games. Yes, we're even bigger nerds than you thought.)
u/SparkyPantsMcGee · 3 pointsr/gamedev

Here’s a fun exercise: find a simple game you like, but don’t go farther than the SNES/Genesis generation of gaming. Play the game and study it. What makes that game special? Focus on its mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. Write it all down too. Then take a mechanic and completely change it while also adding a brand new mechanic to the mix as well. Add your own art style and just have fun with it.

Don’t worry about it sucking, this is an exercise for your design skills. If you understand modeling and you understand coding, it seems you are just missing design. Read books on design, I can’t recommend “The Design of Everyday Things” enough. This book covers design as a whole and gets you to think about why we build things the way we do.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465050654/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526568855&sr=8-1-spons&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+design+of+everyday+things&psc=1

u/kentzler · 5 pointsr/learndesign

You could start checking the UI Guidelines from the system you want to design for.

Read Sketching User Experiences.

Work on side projects. Get inspiration from Dribbble. Don't just copy, Steal Like an Artist.

After that, check design+code

If you want to know more, feel free to PM me, I'd be glad to help! :D

u/reddilada · 46 pointsr/learnprogramming

I'm not familiar with anything current but I'm sure it exists. When I was doing the bulk of my learning we were still carving holes in strips of cardboard to produce code. Someone younger would probably give better, more current advice.

In general, refining your problem solving skills involves a great deal of introspection. Everything you complete you should go back and analyze the stumbles you had along the way. What caused delays, what produced bugs, what just didn't work very well. Look at these things and try to determine what you could have done differently. No better teacher than failure.

Two very old books that got me started: Aha: Gotcha and Aha:Insight. They are amazing puzzle books written by the master of puzzles, Martin Gardner. They have a bit of a math slant, but not too much. Read the reviews to see if it floats your boat.

Math, imo, is the basis of solid problem solving. It's the reason we learn math from pre-K all through university. You're not doing it so you can do calculus at the grocery store, and I've never used a lick of it in my career, but it does teach you how to think in a logical manner, breaking big problems down into little ones.

Another book that had some impact on my career was Design of Everyday Things. Good read for usability.

u/ActiveNerd · 1 pointr/software

Most of this convo is TL;DR but form skimming, I think I get the idea.

Two ideas:

  1. More customizations don't necessarily make software better. They make make it more aesthetic to you but most of the big companies are focused on making a product that works well for everyone and probably don't give much thought to individual users but instead the overall experience. They are solving a greater problem. I would actually counter your argument to say that if Windows Media Player had all the options of VLC that there would be someone else who would come along and say 'Options?! Screw options! We just make a player that plays stuff.' See book: The Design of Everyday Things and other design books. Simplicity is often overlooked.

  2. Freeware has more customizations because there are less users. Open source lends itself to someone who wants the feature to add it. Essentially, for a large company, the ROI is not worth it and the complexity could jeopardize their hold on consumers who are not as tech savvy. Customizations and freeflow can greatly increase the codebase and the complexity of the software scales with the square of the codebase (ie. more options make the software less maintainable. More tests. More bugs).
u/MeltedChi · 2 pointsr/ComicBookCollabs

That's great to hear -- I'm really glad it's helping out.

I also find his "How to Draw" and "How to Render" books hugely valuable, as well.

u/coolplate · 1 pointr/Design

I'm in a similar position. I'm working on a PhD in Electrical Engineering, so that boat has pretty much sailed for me. I LOVE manufacturing processes and design. I hear these two books are good:
Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design

and
Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals

I might want to do a post of my own to see if I can get some advice for myself. Does anyone have ideas of how I can get into product design? I'm interested in things such as those that are posted on Yanko Design.

u/SilverSabrewulf · 2 pointsr/learnart

I have Scott Robertson's How To Render, but I haven't started working with it yet, as I'm still focusing on some other fundamentals. It's a very exhaustive book that's very information dense. Not for the faint of heart. It's essentially the follow-up to How To Draw, which is one of the most recommended art books on the internet. This one builds on that.

Framed Perspective Vol. 2 by Marcus Mateu-Mestre is similar, but is more basic (and also a bit more accessible) and focuses more on how to shade characters. There's a section in chapter 3 that's devoted to the major plane changes of the human body and how that affects shading.

Both books assume you know the basic principles of linear perspective, which they teach in their respective predecessors.

Someone more knowledgeable about teaching art as a subject may have recommendations that are more appropriate. I'm still a learner myself, but the teacher in my weekly art classes often pulls exercises from these books (usually in a more simplified format for us novices :P).

u/lgtm · 3 pointsr/androiddev

You can definitely make good looking apps on your own! Keep in mind, though, that interfaces are about aesthetics AND usability. You don't need any artistic gifts or graphic design skills to create an efficient and usable interface.

I know you're looking for something Android-specific, but I'd recommend starting with The Design of Everyday Things to get a high-level idea of how you should approach design. You might also want to consider watching Sketching and Experience Design, which is a 2007 talk given by Bill Buxton that covers the process of design. He also has an excellent book on sketching UI.

u/leks_t · 1 pointr/Entrepreneur

There are a number of questions you need to ask yourself when building a physical product. Here a few to start with

  1. What materials do you want it to be made out of? There is a difference between the cost of injection molding (plastic) and die casting (stainless steel).

  2. Do you just want to build a frame around an OEM part or design it from the ground up? You can use sites like Alibaba to buy existing parts and build a frame around that. For example, you can use this (http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-Quality-Stainless-Steel-Polished-Watch_60426012992.html?spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.7fcp9a&s=p)

  3. Can you afford it? Making the mold, manufacturing, regulations shipping, etc. Many people underestimate how much it will cost for manufacture. Making a plastic mold tool can run you $10,000 minimum and that is for a small part.

  4. Do you want to outsource it? If it's made in China, you're most likely going to have to fly there and make sure the parts are made correctly. It will be cheaper though. If you want it to make in the United States, it's going cost you more.

    3D printing can be good to in making prototypes and validate if people it in the first place.

    Here are some good books basic books to learn about product design.

  5. Manufacturing - https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Processes-Design-Professionals-Thompson/dp/0500513759/ref=sr_1_8/000-3022921-3912901?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468546649&sr=1-8

  6. Prototyping - https://www.amazon.com/Prototyping-Modelmaking-Product-Design-Portfolio/dp/1856698769/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=41vzIIrA8mL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR124%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=836FPVZDP54MFYMRXGD6

  7. Materials -https://www.amazon.com/Materials-Design-Chris-Lefteri/dp/1780673442/ref=zg_bs_3564966011_53

    An option is also to hire a design firm to help make the design possible for you to manufacture. However, you will still have to pay all the other costs.


u/kindredfold · 5 pointsr/Design

I wish I did, but any good design book (think The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman) should mix in elements of how the human psyche interacts with good and bad design, so even if we don't have any currently, we have some books that can help fill this gap.

I am also interested in specific psych/soc application books as well though.

u/Zamarok · 2 pointsr/intj

I can only choose one?!

User-experience design. I'm a web developer/designer, so much my work is to make websites intuitive and easy to use. As it turns out, doing this is quite difficult; UX design is almost a science in itself.

If you'd like to read a superb book on the subject, check out a book titled The Design of Everyday Things.

If you're still thinking "how complicated could it be?", check out this new edition to my bookshelf: The Elements of Typographic Style: a ~400 page treatment on typography alone. Very few notice the good/bad about the typography of a website or publication, if it looks nice, and less do anything more than just notice. Yet if it doesn't look so great, everyone will notice.

The mark of a good UX designer is that the user barely notices his design at all.

Or maybe number theory. If you let me, I'll lecture you about things like information theory, Euler's works, or my favorite math problems all day. :)

u/mcpbowman · 1 pointr/product_design

While at Uni we were recommended to buy this book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sketching-Drawing-Techniques-Product-Designers/dp/9063691718

Its pretty good to read through, from basics up to more advanced techniques.

Also, you could take an object (whatever product you like) and study its form (you can clearly do this already if you can draw well from observation).
Set yourself a mini project to sketch out variations of the same product, they could be small changes to the details or slight changes to the shape. This way you are using a skill you already have and using it to develop one you want to work on.

Unfortunately there is no substitute for practice so give yourself realistic targets and stick to these, e.g. 10 concepts a day.
You don't have to show these to anyone and don't be precious, just get your ideas down on paper and you will begin to see improvements :)

u/Wentzel142 · 6 pointsr/cscareerquestions

I'm just about to graduate with my undergrad in CS with a specialization in HCI, and have had multiple UX internships. Read these two books, they'll provide a really good baseline of knowledge about user-centric design.

The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman

Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

While the second one typically focuses more on web, they're both amazing books that should be in the library of any UX/HCI specialist.

The best way to start building a portfolio is to, well, just do. Find anything (not just a program/app, even) that you don't like the design of, and start from there. Try and redesign it to make things easier to figure out. Show it to others to gauge reactions and get feedback. Iterate and improve.

There are a bajillion different programs for UI prototyping, but the first tool I'd suggest is good ol' pencil and paper. Get yourself a sketchbook and keep it in your backpack (or with you in some other capacity) at all times. When you have a design idea, drop everything, make a quick sketch, and go back to what you were doing. Ideas are fleeting and temporary, so it's best to get it on paper before you forget. Once you've got time, try and improve on those designs and think of what would work and what wouldn't. After you're happy (and have shown it to others for feedback), take it into some prototyping app like Balsamiq, Indigo Studio, or Sketch. Render it in high quality and start seeing how users would react to it in its natural setting (put it on a phone, or on a computer, etc. for testing). It's all about getting user feedback because one person on one computer may not have all the right ideas.

tl;dr: Read books. Redesign crappy things. GET A SKETCHBOOK. Feedback, feedback, feedback.

u/Beestonian · 1 pointr/learnart

probably the most fundamental drills you can do, is not at the scale of eyes or hands or objects. Drill a few basic things like:

  • measuring proportions
  • measuring angles
  • drawing straight lines (freehand)
  • drawing circles and ellipses (freehand)
  • drawing curved lines accurately

    pretty much anything you should be 'grinding' is relating to hand eye coordination or measurement accuracy.

    See Dorian Iten's accuracy guide and Scott Robertson's "how to draw" for descriptions on where I get these. Why do you drill these basic motor/visual skills in particular? Because you will apply them in *every single drawing you will ever do. You will use those skills to understand marks in higher arrangements like eyes and hands.
u/mantra · 16 pointsr/cogsci

Not actually new; even bit. This dates back further to the 1960s and 1970s. All these concepts are, for example, the basis of computer-human-interaction theory. If cognitive scientist don't know about this and haven't been integrating it into their ideas already, they've been missing the boat and missing a wide swath of historical work.

It's the theoretical basis that was used practically to developed the radical computer innovations of Xerox PARC in the 1970s: you know, stuff like: window-based GUIs, mouse-based screen pointers, ethernet network connections between computers, object-oriented languages, laser printers, etc.

See the work of Alan Kay and others. It was that work that inspired Steve Jobs to create the Lisa and Macintosh, which begat MS Windows. His concept of the "Dynabook" is basically what the new Apple iPad is, for example. And yes, Apple usability taps into all this and still does.

When you use a modern computer, you are using embodied cognition theory. A mouse/windows GUI is tapping into the embodied metaphors of your inner 2-year-old self (Piaget's 1st "Pre-operational, Affective Learning" phase). Basically at that age you are moving objects in the physical world and learning physical NOUN-VERB and NOUN-VERB-NOUN concepts of manipulation and control. Note that this is also what the Montessori method of teaching is tapping into and trying to develop/enhance.

And the computer GUI metaphor attempts to recreate those actions. A mouse and windows GUI is is just a MOUSE-MOVES, MOUSE-MOVES-FILE, MOUSE-SELECTS-FILE, MOUSE-MOVES-FOLDER, etc. which are implemented in software/graphics to visually to look just like physical object manipulations.

This is just "2 year old skills" being tapped unconsciously because they've been deeply subsumed as embodied metaphors - they are second nature so anything that uses them is "easy to learn and to do".

This is the entire basis of most usability design in engineering. See Don Norman. The rest is empirical and theoretical mathematical characterization and models of the details. Things like Fitt's Law, for example, which is central to GUI design.

Contrast this with a computer command-line interface like DOS or UNIX. This is symbol manipulation rather than object manipulation (did I mention Object-Oriented Programming). You are tapping into your inner 12year-old self (Piaget's Formal operation stage with these interfaces. You can't actually "see" how the computer is doing things for you but you have an abstract response in the form of text symbols. But this level of cognition is not such a deeply subsumed level of your cognition in terms of metaphors so not so transferrable as skill leverage. It takes more effort and focus.

Some people, due to genetic or environmental reasons, never develop their abstract symbolic cognition very well. These folks usually and eternally suck at using command line computers but can do just fine with mouse-window GUIs.

This is because unless you have some serious mental retardation, everyone has about the same level of 2-yo cognition buried in their heads but not everyone the later developing 12+yo cognition. In a lot of ways, the success of computers is "proof" of Piaget after a fashion.

Edit: typos

u/s1e · 4 pointsr/userexperience

Here are a few:

Elements of User Experience, Jesse James Garret: What a typical experience design process is made up of.

Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge: Seminal thoughts on Interaction Design, holds up to this day

Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug: One of the first books to gave the issues of IA and UX design a human, customer point of view.

About Face, Alan Cooper: Another take on the whole process, dives a bit deeper into every stage than Garret's book.

Designing For The Digital Age, Kim Goodwin: Human-centered digital products

Sprint, Jake Knapp: A condensed prototyping methodology

100 Things To Know About People, Susan Weinschenk: How people think

There are a few more Product Design related books I recommended in another thread.

IDEO's design thinking methodologies are also a great resource:

Design Kit, A book and toolkit about human centered design

Circular Design, A guide for holistic design, organization friendly.

Cheers

u/Himekat · 3 pointsr/cscareerquestions

Non-fiction:

  • The Design of Everyday Things -- not about programming, but a great resource in general for viewing things from a design perspective, and it was required reading in my CS curriculum.
  • Don't Make Me Think -- another design-oriented book about web usability. It's quite a quick read since it's mostly pictures.

    Fiction:

  • Sourdough -- it's a fun whimsical story about Silicon Valley, programming, and baking bread. Very quick, light read.
u/ShiftedClock · 8 pointsr/Games

It's a way of monetizing variable rewards. Hooked is a great book to read if you're curious about how to use variable rewards to create addictive user behaviours. Reading that book was like reading a tome of dark magic. Evil, powerful stuff.

If Overwatch was really evil, they'd give random bonus lootboxes between levels, instead of always after you level up.

u/quarlwithcode · 1 pointr/Entrepreneur

Personally I find that using what you know is best. Consumers don't care what you're using for your stack as long as your app/product solves their problem. Focus more on the features and UX of the product as a technical founder because this is what you'll be able to push and what your customers will care about more.

One book that helped me consider consumer psychology more was Hooked.

Also I've been assuming that your venture is B2C. If you're business is B2B you may want to talk to potential customers first through interviews and see what they might expect for your stack (depending on your venture of course).

Hope this helped some :)

u/metasophie · 1 pointr/userexperience

> Wow, was not expecting a book first published in 1990! It looks interesting, but do you think it contains enough relevance today?

Tufte is one of the seminal leaders of visual design.

Old books are often the best books.

Here's one for you from the woman that defined the industry Lucy Suchman's Plan's and situation actions

Donald Norman's Design of Everyday things

Alan Cooper's don't make me think

Alan Cooper's The Inmates are running the asylum

u/-t-o-n-y- · 2 pointsr/userexperience

If she's interacting with a lot of users I would suggest reading Practical Empathy. Observing the User Experience is another great resource for learning about user research. User experience is all about people so it's always a good idea to read up on human behavior, psychology, cognition, perception, learning and memory etc. e.g. books like Hooked, Bottlenecks, Design for the mind, Designing with the mind in mind, 100 things every designer needs to know about people, 100 more things every designer needs to know about people, Thinking fast and slow, Predictably Irrational and I would also recommend Articulating design decisions and Friction.

u/Random · 3 pointsr/gamedev

The Art of Game Design - Jesse Schell is very very good.

Game AI (Millington and Funge new edition iirc) is very very good.

Some non-game-design books that are very useful for those doing game design:

Scott McLoud: Making Comics (the other two in the series are good but the section on plot, characterization, and development in this one is great)

Donald Norman: The Design of Everyday Things. (How design works and how people interact with technology and...)

Christopher Alexander et al A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, and Construction (Thinking about scale and design elements and modularity and...)

Kevin Lynch: The Image of the City (How do urban spaces work - essential if your game is set in a city - how do people actually navigate)

Polti: The 36 Dramatic Situations (old, quirky, examines how there are really only a few human plots)

Matt Frederick: 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School (how to think about and execute simple art, improve your design sense, ...)

u/YikYak · 1 pointr/hwstartups

This relies a lot on contract work, I would try to partner with someone who knows or learn as much as you can. Much of what you want is not difficult but is somewhat time consuming to learn. I'd recommend giving Prototype to Product a read. It was just published this year and gives a really great overview of developing a hardware product from the ground up including cert info.

Also FYI, you should use a pre-certified module for wifi and not design in the wifi yourself. The pain to get a working design and the extra $10k to certify it with the FCC isn't worth it unless you're selling a lot of units.

u/EOMIS · 5 pointsr/TeslaModel3

Looks like that thing was designed by the same guy that does the UI.

Please, please, please, do us all a favor and read this book. It's not that long, and will be the most important book you've ever read:

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107

u/unclefishbits · 2 pointsr/funny

Oh my gosh, I can help. This is a wonderful "art" in Japan... the art of the useless invention.

---------

From the land of the rising sun, strangely practical and utterly eccentric inventions for a life of ease—and hilarity.

In Japan Kenji Kawakami is famous for his tireless promotion of Chindogu: the art of the unuseless idea. Meant to solve problems of modern life, these bizarre and logic-defying gadgets and gizmos are actually entirely impractical. Addicts of the unuseless will love this collection of 200 Chindogu, including the Drymobile (your laundry dries as you drive), the Solar-Powered Torch (never runs low on batteries), Duster Slippers for Cats (now the most boring job around the house becomes hours of fun...for your cat!), Walk 'n' Wash Ankle-attachable Laundry Tanks (a perfect solution for the problems of inadequate exercise and hygiene), and many, many more... These hilarious inventions have taken Japan by storm. Every one of the 200 items in The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions has actually been manufactured to the highest standards, fully tested by pioneering members of the Japanese public, and documented in their unuselessness with 442 color photographs. 442 color photographs

this book is AWESOME:
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bento-Unuseless-Japanese-Inventions/dp/0393326764

so fun. and my first helpful reddit comment ever.

u/inconceivable_orchid · 5 pointsr/web_design

Absolutely. In fact, another book that was published a long time ago (1988) but is a must-have is "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. Norman. Here's an Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0465067107

The best thing about Don't Make Me Think is that it can easily be read in one day (or one plane ride, as the book itself touts).

u/I_WorkWithBeer · 4 pointsr/pics

As someone who just moved, I have to agree. I think boxed books out in the garage are more accessible than this. There are reasons certain furniture designs haven't been used. Its not because they haven't been thought of, but rather that someone realized it was functionally defiant.

Seriously, OP. Get this book for your friend. As a designer, It is honestly one of the best reads I have ever had. It is very conceptual, and really cuts to the chase one how to be artistic, creative, but never loose the basic necessity of function.

u/clamo · 6 pointsr/learnart

ok i got two for you! ive been using these books to teach myself in my free time when i have downtime from my classes! they work great as guides to teach you fundamentals of figure drawing and perspective/ environment drawing.
figure drawing:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS514US514&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=figure%20drawing%20design%20and%20invention

environments:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=pd_sim_b_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AZB9YYFC6AJ5WER0WQY

u/4FK · 1 pointr/learnart

this is a great book!!! XD

u/QuimMaster · 3 pointsr/learnart

Looks really good. Now I'm not much of a vehicle artist so I don't want to lead blindly.

Have you checked out Scott Robertson? Phenomenal technical traditional artist, his techniques translate to digital also.

One of his books (he has many); https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Render-TP-Scott-Robertson/dp/1933492961

His YouTube channel; https://youtu.be/dzhyKtavwMU

Sorry I couldn't offer much direct help, however I hope these resources help you out.

Keep going at it!

u/mstoiber · 2 pointsr/web_design

Sorry, ran out of time. Here's the rest of my answer:

If you are more of an engineer and not that interested in design, but in Front-End Development, start with Bulletproof Web Design, following up with Transcending CSS.

For JavaScript, read You Don't Know JS and Eloquent Javascript. (The second edition of Eloquent is going to be released on 17th of november, if you can't wait until then, there's a first edition aswell)

A very important design book I forgot aswell: The Design of Everyday Things.

Good luck on your way to mastering Web Design!

u/brokenwings0584 · 1 pointr/learntodraw

How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination by Scott Robertson:

amazon dot com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

I haven't made it to far into the book because my primary focus is on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but so far it seems pretty fun. It's about $25ish.

u/whisperingmoon · 7 pointsr/SubredditDrama

It's not an entirely unreasonable comparison.

Nowadays you can buy your own tarot cards in a hobby shop with a booklet about how to "skillfully read them." Special editions-- like [steampunk] (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Steampunk-Tarot-Barbara-Moore/dp/0738726389/ref=pd_sim_b_12?ie=UTF8&refRID=1GE2RA0ZY73T7VTV9K92) and [angel] (http://www.amazon.ca/Angel-Tarot-Cards-Doreen-Virtue/dp/1401937268/ref=pd_sim_b_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=1GE2RA0ZY73T7VTV9K92)-- are released every now and again. Like Magic Cards, most people roll their eyes when they see them come out, except for a small crew of highly devoted fans. Both have a lot of fairies.

Now, Pokemon on the other hand...

u/Scott_Doty · 2 pointsr/cordcutters

I have not used NAS products but I used to teach ergonomics and would assign the students to design instructions as a class project.

Not sure what your approach is but if you are only testing or getting feedback from experienced users you may be missing out on some important opportunities that will help all users. Try testing things out with people that have varying experience levels. [Obviously getting feedback from experienced users as you are doing is also very important.]

A very easy read if you have not read it is:

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

You may know of this already, not sure what the training is for technical writing.

u/Philipp · 1 pointr/WTF

Thanks, just ordering the book now... sounds interesting. I fully agree that things should look like what they are because "people don't read".

u/NervousMcStabby · 11 pointsr/startups

>This article (in it's entirety) was taken from my blog.

So you'll attribute your article back to your website, but will make no mention of the fact you are using the Hooked model from the book Hooked by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover? No, putting their book under "recommended reading" after liberally borrowing their ideas and even their iconography doesn't count. Later, in the comments here you say this article was "inspired" by Hooked. No, it wasn't inspired by it, you jacked their ideas and are trying to pitch them as your own.

Now, obviously Hooked isn't the first book about building products from a behavioral approach, but you've taken their phrases, their images, and even their examples and attempted to pass them off as your own.

At least produce something original. It's fine to write an article about Hooked, about habits, and about building habit-forming products, but it isn't alright to borrow other people's work without attribution.

I'd highly recommend people read [Hooked (non-affiliate link)] (http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419945470&sr=8-1&keywords=hooked) and read more of Nir's work. [This] (http://www.slideshare.net/nireyal/hooked-model) slideshow is a pretty good starting place, as his blog

u/remzc · 0 pointsr/linux

> do not require to think about how to use it

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654

"knowledge in the world" - easy to figure out how to do things w/out thinking/knowing all the details. if you know what you need to do, you can figure out how to do it.

vs.

"knowledge in the head" - you have to memorize things. harder learning curve. much much more efficient for power users. most cli tools are "knowledge in the head". most CLI applications in linux are "knowledge in the head" applications because they don't have the same UI affordances as a desktop/windowed application.

GNU screen and tmux ARE CLI applications. you might run one on your desktop directly, but they are even more useful to run on remote servers and keep a persistent session.

also, you may have to tweak the config a bit, but i see almost no difference in actually using screen vs. tmux (except tmux has better features). even the default key-bindings are the same.

u/dustinmm80 · 2 pointsr/devops

Looks like you've got a great list already!

From an architecture point of view I really like The Design of Everyday Things.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465067107

I use it now as a reference to remind me to keep things simple.

u/tandem7 · 2 pointsr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

It's the Steampunk Tarot - /u/rarelyserious actually gifted it to me :) I love it a lot so far, this is the first time I've really had the chance to use it.

u/bwalks · 3 pointsr/cscareerquestions

Design of Everyday Things is a really good book. Understanding how someone uses the things you build is vital in creating good products.

u/Kriss-Kringle · 2 pointsr/DCcomics

You need to pick up an anatomy book because right now you're inventing muscles and applying too many shadows until the whole drawing becomes visual noise and it doesn't read clearly.

First off, I'd recommend you study Figure drawing for all it's worth by Andrew Loomis. You can probably find a PDF of it online for free and it's not overly complicated for a kid to understand. Then, if you feel you want to stick with drawing in the long run convince your parents to invest in these books:

Atlas of human anatomy for the artist

Human anatomy for artists : The elements of form

Classic human anatomy: The artist's guide to form, function, and movement

Figure drawing: Design and invention

How to draw: Drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

How to render: The fundamentals of light, shadow and reflectivity

Color and light: A guide for the realist painter

u/tiler · 12 pointsr/reddit.com

these were probably programmed by the cheapest programmers around without too much put into design, or the design work focused on the color scheme and not the functionality.

don norman's design of everyday things is a great read on the topic, if you're interested.

u/sixilli · 1 pointr/learnart

I would recommend How to Draw by Scott Robertson. He does lots of digital art but the book can easily be followed by using any medium of your liking. The book is filled with practical examples and knowledge. Many perspective books dive so deeply into the science they forget to show you how to use and apply it to your work. The book also comes with links to hidden videos to go with the book. Here is a video of him paging through the book. You can check out his other tutorials on that same youtube channel. His videos usually focus more on advanced subjects a bit past the basics but any skill level can learn from them.

u/IllyriaD · 12 pointsr/anime

Anatomy and form both need a lot of practice.

You can get Andrew Loomis' book, Figure Drawing for All It's Worth for free on Goodreads -
https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/147941.Figure_Drawing_for_All_It_s_Worth

Undoubtedly she will need to work on perspective as well, and I would highly recommend getting Scott Robertson's book, How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination. -
http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=la_B0034O5O32_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452971897&sr=1-1

u/MAGACAP · 5 pointsr/The_Donald

The addiction part is by design. Read Nirl Eyal "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" if you are interested how they and other Silicon Valley companies do it. Also lot of people who seem to have great life in fb/instagram/fad can be quite opposite in real life. Its not that hard to manufacture a certain look.

https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788/

u/morrison539 · 3 pointsr/gamedesign

Nice rundown. Here are some other books I would recommend OP check out:

u/NPC_Chris · 2 pointsr/tabletopgamedesign

The Design of Everyday Things is incredibly helpful. It's not about game design at all, but I find some of the best advice comes from other design disciplines.

u/-Brightraven · 2 pointsr/Logo_Critique

I think it might be helpful to start from the beginning and learn the principles and hierarchies behind the bells and whistles of Adobe CC.

u/xiongchiamiov · 3 pointsr/programming

A fantastic book. Another great one is http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465050654/ (I have the older version).

u/mglachrome · 12 pointsr/dwarffortress
  1. No capitalized hot keys
  2. undo on every non-trivial actions (squad/noble/military/burrow management.
  3. Everything that is longer than one page: make it searchable.
  4. For building walls/floors: Select material(s), just designate until done or out of materials.
  5. Standardized hot keys for every sub menu(stocks/trading/trading request/stockpiles, for a start)
  6. Offer undo for every non-trivial function (burrows/military/nobles)
  7. Unified scrolling: Not Pgdown/PgUp | +/- | / - *

    Actually, read some books about interface and object design - it is really fun and enlightening. For start: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465067107/
u/ferrarisnowday · 0 pointsr/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu

You're around that particular device every day. Just like you know how to use the doors at school or work. Such a mindless process can throw people off when it deviates from the norm, though. Maybe the Yes/No is switched left and right, or even top and bottom. Maybe the card swiper is on the top instead of the side, or swipes in the opposite direction. Sometimes you even insert the card instead of swiping. Some places don't even ask about cash back. Some places ask if your cashier greeted you on the screen.

The Design of Everyday Things is a good book on User Centered Design. Just because something is simple once you learn it doesn't necessarily mean it is well designed...even if learning it only takes 3 seconds.

u/agnosgnosia · 1 pointr/DCcomics

Not bad. The thing that jumps out to me that could be improved is the mallet. For one, the bottom dark line under the diamonds doesn't curve on the left at all. The two diamonds on the outside also look off. The left one should be more foreshortened. It just dawned on me how you could draw the construction lines to make this look better. Admittedly, this could have been done better if I had split the oval reference lines more equally, but the prinicpal is there to get you understanding how to make construction lines for the diamonds to look better. I just kind of eyeballed it.


This book, How to Draw by Scott Robertson, can give you more in depth instruction on how to draw shapes from different angles.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

u/obi1kenobi1 · 1 pointr/nottheonion

Speaking as a (increasingly disillusioned) Apple person, I'd probably buy it if it were $25, but then again I already own most of the computers/devices in my collection. Worst of all this book pretty much already exists, Apple Design by Sabine Schulze. The pictures/printing quality certainly wouldn't be as good as this overpriced Apple version, but it covers the same time period and probably has a lot more information.

On the other hand there is a book that Apple fans will pay that kind of money for, and after reading the title I was hoping this was a sequel. Apple is notoriously very secretive about their design process, so apart from the (near production-ready) prototypes that occasionally leak you never get to see behind the scenes. In 1997 they allowed a photographer to come in and photograph many of their top secret prototypes and design studies, resulting in the book AppleDesign. You know those Imgur albums of crazy Apple concepts like 1980s "iPads" and desktop smartphones that make it to the top of All a few times a year? Those are from that book. I've wanting to buy a copy for a while, but in the decade that I've been watching it I've never seen a copy go for less than $100 (and it's not even a hardcover). If this new book was like that one, focusing on Apple concepts rather than just production models, I might be tempted to spend the money on it.

u/SweetWetRain · 1 pointr/tarot

You Capricorn would love this....if you aren’t an experienced reader, the pics make it easy to read as you’re starting out.
tarot deck

u/modeless · 21 pointsr/programming

The best book to read as a developer is The Design of Everyday Things. If every developer read it, the software world would be a better place.

u/12GaugeSavior · 7 pointsr/Unity3D

My advice, as a long time UI/UX designer is test early and often on people who have never seen your game. This has been the only way for me to ensure things are improving. Once someone has tested your UI once, they bring that knowledge with them into their next play session, negating any indications of weather or not this is easy to understand and use.

Also, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Billions of dollars have likely been spent trying to solve the very problem you are. Look at what is out there, find the good stuff, and use it as a starting point for your own problems. Shops in particular, have TONS of examples of successful and unsuccessful designs. My primary resource is the hundreds of games I own on steam, and my memories of the best systems I've encountered.

The Design of Everyday Things is about the only book I'd recommend, but it does not focus on UI/UX so much as design as a concept in itself.

u/wanderingm00se · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

Rapid Viz is an extremely basic ID visualization book. Lots of great exercises for beginning drawers who want to express ideas. Once you get through that try PFD link here.
https://brownstudio12.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/rapid-viz_15-53.pdf

Once you get through that you could try something like this (https://www.amazon.ca/Drawing-Product-Designers-Portfolio-Skills/dp/1856697436) or some of Spencer Nugents ID sketching tutorials (https://vimeo.com/idsketching).

u/Fran · 1 pointr/books

I've never seen the movie objectified, but I love this book:

Robin Williams, The Non-Designer's Design Book

edit: After a quick look at IMDB, you may want to try a Donald Norman book like:

u/Brendan_Fraser · 2 pointsr/learntodraw

Practice practice practice.

Start from the beginning and just keep doing it. The more time you put in the better you get. Success doesn't happen over night. Check out the book "How To Draw" to learn perspective drawing which will teach you form and shapes correctly. Also check out https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals

u/I_am_godzilla · 1 pointr/DigitalPainting

Definitely classes. If you're not doing classes for whatever reason. I suggest making these three books your bible.

How to draw - Scott Robertson

Color and light

And finally

Bridgman's Drawing from life

No need to get them all at once. But these three books are chock full of lessons that you will revisit over and over as you progress in your art. Strongly recommended.

u/arntzel · 3 pointsr/IAmA

I completely agree with Tootlips, design is tough for nondesigners. When making an application I often download as many apps as possible in that genre to see how other developers have built similar apps. If you are interested in learning design yourself I would recommend checking out Hack Design hack design and/or Udacity: udacity design. The Udacity course is based on a famous design book "Design for Everyday Things": Design-Everyday-Things

u/BlinkingWolf · 1 pointr/tipofmytongue

Found it! The Timeless Way Of Building was what I was looking for. Other interesting suggestions were A Pattern Language and The Design Of Everyday Things

SOLVED

u/xensoldier · 1 pointr/conceptart

Yup I highly recommend you get his newest book "How To Draw", fantastic book.

u/mortini · 1 pointr/learnart

Scott Robertson in one of his videos talks about building muscle memory for drawing straight lines and ellipsis. Once you do this, you simply 'turn the pad' to position the paper so it's wherever you want to draw.

Technical Pen and Paper does two things for you. The way it feels when you drag a pencil tip across the paper is called 'tooth.' This is feedback that your hand can feel as it will feel different as you speed up or slow down. Or different types of paper. But you can feel the pencil move across the paper.

Tablets generally don't have any tooth - or very very little. So it's difficult to build that 'muscle memory' for drawing a straight line.

The first few lessons on drawabox you could work on those at your desk without any issues. It's really about getting confidence with basics and line quality.

How to draw - By Scott Robertson is pretty good. It's really based on perspective and drawing things in perspective, though, and isn't as much designed in lessons but as in sections for different types of perspective tasks.

u/LeonardTimber · 1 pointr/AskEngineers

My personal favorite is Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals, which is sort of an overview and simultaneous deep dive into pretty much ever manufacturing process out there and how to design for it.

u/Halzman · 1 pointr/learnart

Well, I've gone ahead and picked up the recommended How To Draw book, since that seems to cover primarily what I'm trying to get better at (that flip through you did was perfect!).

I really enjoyed the advice you gave throughout your videos, like only committing to what you know you can do, and the risk/reward perspective. You make quite a few compelling points!

As far as topics - I've always marveled at how an artist can take a blank canvas, draw an outline, and then add details to bring them to life. I have enough technical skill to make a decent copy of an existing image, but I could never start an original concept from scratch without just creating generic stuff. Mentally I have an idea on features or style, but I'm never sure on how to incorporate them.

I guess my question would be - How do you 'design' the uniqueness to an idea? How do you figure out what kind of character to give it?

u/Redfo · 2 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

This
is my textbook for Manufacturing Materials and Processes class. Seems pretty good.