Logo design is a very particular skill, so don't beat yourself up over that one. Similarly, icon design is pretty tough too. Probably don't try to start there.

For a dev there are some really high-value principles that aren't too hard to learn but hugely improve your ability to understand design:

• typography is a massive topic; but you should know the fundamentals and have some idea how to choose a suitable typeface. Canva have a nice intro tutorial .
• colour theory explains why some colours look great together, but others look terrible.
• the psychology of colour gives some pointers on how people react to certain colours, noting that the specific associations are culture-dependent.
• knowing the "CRAP" principles - Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity is a good next step. They really help you understand why a layout looks 'right or wrong'.

Maybe for your next project, try focusing on colour and typography first; then add much more white space than you usually do; and work out which pieces of content should be closer together (proximity). You'll be surprised how much better you can make things look just by 'letting them breathe'.

Hi Manoj, I admit that designing a logo may really turn out to be a challenging task if you have other projects to handle. Given the fact that the logo designing process is a creative task that would call for time commitment from your side, you may want to create a schedule for it.

There are easy steps to kickstart this process and you may begin by:

1. Creating a simple design in black-and-white first

2. Next, you may start experimenting with fonts and colors so as to find the perfect mix-and-match combination that would ideally represent the brand identity

3. You can check out some free logo maker tools that would ease the designing process if you are pressed for time.

To get a detailed summary of the logo design process, you may consider checking out the content at mapsystemsindia.com/resources/how-to-design-a-log…

I think you should ask yourself if and why you really want to get better at that. Why not work with a designer?

I'm all in favour of learning many technologies to get better at each. But it seems unlikely to me that your programming will improve much by learning design. It also seems unlikely that you'll get paid more.

If you do want to do it all yourself, my first bit of advice would be to go to a website with lots of designers, and ask there. It's a pretty separate skillset from programming.

I am really crap at designing stuff, but I can get some value out of bad designs nevertheless. I do so by focusing on the UX, which does not only help designers, but also coders, equally. To do so, I read the newsletter of SmashingMag and I once even had a subscription for their entire library. I started by reading up on typography and color theory / psychology there. While I agree with a lot of stuff, I also want to bring in my individual tone, so I decided for a black/blood red color theme on my homepage, something which I would never to for a customer :D

Other than that, Hashnode News contains really nice links from time to time, like the UX checklist, how to build awesome forms, and more (which I can't seem to find right now..)

Those alone will help you create rather pretty websites, which look better than what your average guy can produce. If you want more than that, you may want to stop coding for a while and start watching and reading real design tutorials and courses. It will get you started, but design is hard and good designers are paid a lot.

I wouldn't want to be a designer. It means comping up with the face of a customer. People will judge them by the design. A lot can rise and fall with design. And I am more of a tinkerer than an artist, who has time to pour my talent into standardized constraints to make something use-able.

Tutsplus has a great guide to Web Design Theory that I recommend.

I also went through several of their Illustrator tutorials just to familiarize myself with Adobe Illustrator and vector graphics editors. These will at least help with the mechanical part of designing logos.

The creative part is another realm unto itself that's hard to teach. A lot of design curricula will start off with drawing course. So I would recommend practicing drawing everyday. Drawing is usually where an idea for logos would start.