give me a full road map for a person with no prior experience to learn ui design - make sure that the resouces you introduce are oriented around using figma
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Here’s a roadmap for learning UI design with Figma, from scratch:
Objective: Familiarize yourself with Figma and UI design fundamentals.
Resources:
Figma Beginner Tutorial: Figma’s official Getting Started guide is perfect for absolute beginners.
Free Course: Figma 101 by FreeCodeCamp - This is a beginner-friendly course on how to use Figma and its basic features.
UI Design Basics: Start with understanding what UI design is. You can watch this YouTube video on UI vs UX Design.
Practice:
Create a simple project, like a basic webpage or app screen, just to get comfortable with Figma’s interface.
Objective: Understand design principles such as typography, color theory, alignment, and spacing, which are essential for UI design.
Resources:
"The Non-Designer’s Design Book" by Robin Williams – A great book to understand typography, color, and alignment basics.
Design Principles Blog: Learn the basics of visual design on UX Design Medium blog.
Figma’s Design Tips: Figma tips for designers
Practice:
Apply principles by recreating simple UI designs like buttons, forms, or a homepage layout using Figma.
Objective: Dive deeper into Figma's features and tools that you’ll use daily for UI design.
Resources:
Figma for UI/UX Design by DesignCourse – Walkthroughs of advanced Figma tools like components, constraints, and prototyping.
Figma UI/UX Design Course by LearnUIDesign – Focuses on using Figma to build practical, real-world UI designs.
Practice:
Recreate popular interfaces (e.g., a simple mobile app like Instagram or a website like Airbnb) to understand the workflow and tools.
Objective: Learn how to build UI components and layouts that make designs scalable and reusable.
Resources:
Figma Design Systems: Figma’s Design Systems page will help you understand reusable components.
UI Kit: Start using Figma’s built-in UI Kits or free UI kits available online (like Figma Resources).
Typography and Spacing: Learn how to work with grid systems, alignments, and spacing in Figma for better consistency.
Practice:
Build components (buttons, forms, modals, navigation bars) and create a layout for a simple app or website.
Objective: Understand how to prototype and create interactive designs with Figma.
Resources:
Figma Prototyping Tutorial: Watch Figma’s interactive prototyping tutorial to get an understanding of how to set up interactive flows.
Advanced Prototyping with Figma: Check out Figma’s advanced prototyping guide.
Practice:
Create a simple interactive prototype of your app or webpage and experiment with transitions, interactions, and animations.
Objective: Learn the connection between UI design and user experience (UX) design.
Resources:
"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug – This book will help you understand the core principles of UX and how they apply to UI design.
UX/UI Design with Figma: Check out courses like UX/UI Design Essentials on Udemy, which covers the relationship between UI and UX.
UI/UX Design on Coursera: If you want something more formal, you can check out UI/UX Design Specialization on Coursera.
Practice:
Revisit the project you've worked on earlier and improve it by focusing more on UX (e.g., make the app easier to navigate, ensure the design is accessible, and optimize the user flow).
Objective: Start building a portfolio to showcase your skills and get freelance/remote work opportunities.
Resources:
Building Your UI Design Portfolio: UX Design Portfolio Tips - This article discusses how to create an impressive portfolio.
Dribbble and Behance: These platforms are excellent places to showcase your work and get feedback from other designers.
Portfolio Template: Use Figma’s free UI/UX Portfolio Templates to get started.
Practice:
Choose 3-5 of your best projects and display them in a clean, well-organized portfolio. Include case studies to explain your process.
Objective: Keep up with the latest trends in UI design and keep improving your skills.
Resources:
UI/UX Design Podcasts: Listen to podcasts like The UX Podcast or The Design Better Podcast to keep learning.
Figma Community: Engage with the Figma Community to see other designers’ work, find inspiration, and share your own projects.
Follow Design Blogs: Regularly check design blogs like Smashing Magazine and UX Design for trends and inspiration.
Practice:
Continuously challenge yourself with new projects and take on real-world design tasks. You can even consider joining design challenges on platforms like Daily UI to refine your skills.
By following this roadmap and dedicating time each week to learning and practicing, you'll go from a beginner to someone comfortable with designing effective, beautiful UI.
also introduce resouces to learn design concepts not matter to tool just design concepts and rules
Here’s a list of resources to learn design concepts and rules, regardless of the tool you're using (including Figma). These resources will cover key principles like color theory, typography, layout, and usability, all of which are crucial for becoming a strong designer.
"The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman
A must-read for anyone interested in design. It covers the
psychology of design, usability, and human-centered design
principles.
"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug
This book focuses on web usability, intuitive interfaces, and
simplifying user interactions. It’s perfect for UI/UX designers.
"Grid Systems in Graphic Design" by Josef
Müller-Brockmann
A classic book on understanding grid systems and layout design.
It’s foundational for creating balanced and consistent designs.
"The Non-Designer’s Design Book" by Robin Williams
An excellent introduction to design principles, especially for
beginners. It covers typography, color, spacing, and alignment in
a way that’s easy to understand.
"Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design
Skills" by David Sherwin
A hands-on book with practical exercises to help develop your
creative thinking and design skills.
Smashing Magazine: Smashing Magazine offers a wealth of resources, articles, and tutorials on design principles, UI/UX, typography, color theory, and much more.
UX Design: UX Design is a Medium publication with in-depth articles on user experience and design principles.
A List Apart: A List Apart is another well-known website that focuses on web standards, design, and usability.
CreativeBloq: CreativeBloq covers design trends, tips, and design principles for web, graphic, and UX design.
Coursera: Introduction to User Experience Design (Georgia
Tech)
This course covers design principles such as usability,
human-centered design, and prototyping. It's perfect for both
beginners and those looking to refine their UX/UI skills.
Interaction Design Foundation (IDF):
IDF Courses
Offers affordable courses on various aspects of design, including
interaction design, usability, and design principles. Courses like
“Fundamentals of UX Design” are highly recommended for beginners.
Udemy: The Ultimate Guide to Graphic Design
This course covers everything from the basics of design
(typography, color theory, grids, etc.) to more advanced topics,
with a focus on practical skills.
The Futur: The Futur offers great content on design principles, visual communication, and branding, especially in a business context.
CharliMarieTV: CharliMarieTV discusses design principles in relation to web and UI design, offering tutorials on how to approach visual design concepts.
Flux Academy: Flux Academy is a channel that focuses on design thinking, UX/UI, and client-based design, with a lot of tips for building your design career.
UX Podcast: UX Podcast covers a broad range of topics from UX design principles to trends in the design world, making it an excellent resource for designers of all levels.
Design Better Podcast: Design Better Podcast covers topics from design thinking to building design systems, focusing on high-level concepts.
The Design of Business | The Business of Design: The Design of Business explores how design concepts can be applied in the real world, including business and entrepreneurship.
Adobe Creative Cloud Tutorials: Adobe offers free tutorials on design principles through their Adobe Learn platform, which covers color theory, typography, and layout basics.
Canva Design School: Canva Design School is a great free resource for beginners that teaches design basics such as grids, fonts, colors, and layout.
Coolors: Coolors is an online color scheme generator. Learning how to create effective color palettes is essential in UI design, and this tool is a great way to experiment with color theory.
Typ.io: Typ.io is a useful site for exploring typography combinations and learning about how fonts work together.
Canva’s Color Wheel: Canva’s Color Wheel helps you understand how different colors work together based on the color wheel (complementary, analogous, etc.).
Dribbble: Dribbble is a design community where designers share their work. It’s a great place to get inspiration and learn from other designers' projects.
Behance: Behance is another platform where designers showcase their portfolios. Browse projects here to see how design principles are applied in real-world scenarios.
Daily UI: Daily UI is a free design challenge that sends you daily prompts to practice your design skills, ranging from buttons to complete app interfaces. It’s a fun way to develop your design portfolio.
Design Contest: Platforms like 99Designs and DesignCrowd let you participate in design challenges and compete with other designers, which is a great way to learn under pressure.
By diving into these resources, you'll start to understand the core concepts that make great UI design and how they can be applied to your projects in Figma or any other tool. This will build a strong foundation for your design work.