Design for Developers

Primitive Shapes Exercise

Design for Developers

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The "Primitive Shapes Exercise" Lesson is part of the full, Design for Developers course featured in this preview video. Here's what you'd learn in this lesson:

For the first exercise Sarah instructs students to create three compositions with just primitive shapes.

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Transcript from the "Primitive Shapes Exercise" Lesson

[00:00:00]
>> Sarah Drasner: We're approaching our first exercise. One thing I want to touch on before we do so is, obviously when we're working inside of Photoshop to do this kind of exercise, I am doing the most basic and quickest of layout examples. You can make them more stylish and eventually make them kind of look and reflect a real layout.

[00:00:24]
So here's an example that I really like that I found. That these little blocks of text, I took the blocks of text and I made a PNG out of it. So that you can actually use it in your layouts and grids, if you want. It's in the Git Repository.

[00:00:38]
So if you want to lay out your grid with more than just rectangles. You can actually have something that kind of shows what you mean a little bit better. Especially if you're communicating design to somebody else, they might not know what's a photo and what's a block of text.

[00:00:55]
So it kinda visually indicates which things are which as well. All right, exercise, get out your pens. We're gonna create three compositions with just primitive shapes, circles, rectangles, triangles, lines, things like that. Just like we just did. So let's try this on paper first. I do think it's great to do it inside of things like Photoshop, and Sketch, and all of those things.

[00:01:20]
But for now, I think it's kind of nice, if you're gonna do just a few a time, to try this on a piece of paper and really feel more tangible about it. You all have pencils so you can erase too. And for those following along online or in the recording, you have to do the exercise.

[00:01:40]
None of this stuff works if you don't do the exercises. If you just follow along then you won't get as much out of this course. You really have to try it too, okay.

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