One of the most annoying things when you are trying to work without a designer is to decide how to style your projects. This blog itself I know still looks rough, but fortunately I never pretend to be a designer, just translate from Figma to code but it's something I always wanted to improve.

This blog is still on its barebones, but I am somewhat happy with the result. I decided to launch like this because I know that if wait until perfection, I will never launch it, so I promise this will look better —Narrator: It won't— Allright, enough of weakness sharing.

So, what to do about it? Well, even though you are not a designer, you can still make your project presentable, or at least readable, in the end, if people can read and like your content, no matter what it looks like, they will read it. So here's what you can do:

Play with Figma

Figma is a great tool for designers, but it's also a great tool for developers. You can play around with the colors, font and positioning of elements. Like I said before, I am not a designer, but I can still make a close to decent looking project with Figma, the reason I didn't do it with my blog still remains a mystery. But hey, don't be like me, use Figma.

Use Inspiration

There's a lot of designers, frontend and full stack developers with their portfolio online, you can try to be a human LLM and get an idea of what things you'd like to see in your portfolio or project. You can also use websites like Dribbble, Behance, and Pinterest so can get some good idea.

Use UI Libraries

Something I always try to avoid when I am working on my personal website is to use component libraries, they can serve good as a base, yes, but if you get too comfortable with them, it will take away your personality, style, modjo, whatever you want to call it. But, if you are in a hurry, and you have no idea where to start, you can use libraries like TailwindCSS, Material-UI, Bootstrap, etc.

Again, don't get too comfortable with them, customize them, play around and look for other examples to see what are you capable of with the library you chose so you can make your project unique. This is specially important if you are a frontend or full stack, because you are supposed to have at least an idea of what looks decent, right?

So, that's it, I hope this helps you to make your project look better, and remember, if you are not a designer, don't worry, you can still make a decent looking project, just don't be like me and launch it when it's ready.