Trying to learn basic design

I'll be honest - I've never been very good at design.

Art has always escaped me, and I struggle with laying things out in a pleasing way.

I want to get better. I think, after working with designers for so long, I should have picked up on one or two tricks by now. So here's what I'm doing.

• Starting small - I'll just work with black and white for now
• Think about layout - What works? What doesn't? What kind of spacing is pleasing?
• Go through tutorials - I'm working my way through Sarah Drasner's design for developers tutorial and it's very helpful
• Be okay with not doing a great job - I'm not going to get many things right on the first try, that's okay. That's how you learn.

So far, I'm enjoying this interesting sidebar layout. I think it's fun! I've also started combining some components.

I will definitely admit I've got some redundent components. Now that I have a semi-working layout, it's time to cut back on component clutter and clean up!