Ask HN: How can i get better at design and using design tools

You should distinguish between design skills and tool skills in your quest for learning. To draw the parallel with the technology world - knowing IDE well does not make you a good programmer nor computer scientist. So being skilled with Photoshop or Illustrator won't make you a good designer.

In my opinion the good introduction to basics of graphic design 'seeing' would be this book: http://www.amazon.com/Graphic-Design-The-New-Basics/dp/15689...

It's essentially like Graphic Design 101 the modern way. It would be a good start towards more specialized learning towards interface design, user experience design, information design or data visualization disciplines.

Practice, practice, practice! The same way it took you time to learn programming is now the same for design.

I'm a big fan of themeforest.net and graphicriver.net - as much as the assets are for sale, they provide huge galleries to gain inspiration from.

I'll also spend hours just looking through the app stores for design ideas.

Also, look at your competition - look at their design. Step back and don't look at things from a programmer point of view. Look at them from a strait up user point of view. What do you like? What's confusing? What's ugly?

Feedback is key also - you said your working with your brother and someone else. Show them what you design and listen. Show it to friends, so it to strangers you meet at the coffee shop. Any input (good or bad) is input.

Read a lot about design. There's hundreds books you can start, I particulary love grid/typography books, they cover about 80% of the design topics.

You can also improve your skills using software by watching screencasts. If you have money, Lynda.com and many others are available by searching google. If you don't you can rely on Youtube, many people there post tutorials.

For web developers, whenever you see some styling you like when you're browsing and you don't know how to do it, use dev tools to figure out how it was done in CSS.

For UX there are a breed of great drag and drop tools like http://xiffe.com which require almost no training.

can't say I'm an expert but I think the key is the design approach, its like when someone tells you to open your eyes, you open it and see. you already interested in it now you should look sites like behance.net or search articles but it's more important to think about the designs. but dont worry it realy isn't that hard. one more thing: less is more, especially nowdays

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?