Learning Design as a Hobbyist Gamedev

July 5th 2023

hi. My main goal right now is to finish my game ULTRAMASSIVE. However, I'm currently lacking the design skills to make it look the way I want. So, I gotta learn how to make it look better.

The first step is to find resources for the skills I'm lacking. The topics will probably resolve around Visual Design mostly. This page will list resources that I have found and were helpful, or resources that might be helpful in the future. I'm also planning to document what I've learned along the journey, however this page might not be the right place for that.

If you have any input, or recommendations, please share them with me on mastodon.

Topics

The main goal is to build up a foundation by learning the most important principles and concepts to help me improve the visuals of my game.

That's why I'll mainly focus on these aspects:

• Practical general advice (like this),
• How to pair fonts,
• How to pick good / matching color pairs,
• How to design a logo,
• Interface Design for Games (UI).

What I'm not looking for:

• Design history,
• Designer memoirs,
• How the business works,
• How to run a studio.

Articles

• Visual Design Rules You Can Safely Follow Every Time: Practical advice, super useful!

Unsorted links

For now... are these gonna be useful? No one knows!

• WALKER
• HI FRUCTOSE
• AIGA Eye on Design
• CREATIVE BOOM
• Ray Gun Magazine
• fontpair

Books

I can't actually recommend any of these, because I haven't read them yet. However, I am including info about why I think they might be helpful. Come back later to read about what I actually thought of these. Maybe I will have read one or two by then!