It’s in Squarespace, Wix, Microblog, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Softr, Gumroad, Teachable, Thinkific, and countless others.

It’s usually located under Design, Theme, or Advanced.

It looks like this:

It’s The Box.

Into this box, one pastes CSS.

This implies that the website owner:

• knows enough CSS to know what to do with this box

• can form a CSS selector that “works” (i.e. specific enough to the problem but not overly specific)

• knows enough CSS properties to spell out the styling that they want

• understand the cascade enough to know how to make their style work when it doesn’t

Wow. So why is there so much code in no-code site builders?

True, you don’t have to use the box. But if you use no-code tools long enough, you’ll eventually find something that you’d like to tweak just a little bit relative to what you’re able to customize with the tools.

Where does one go to learn this CSS? The professional courses are all focused on layers of command-line tools, over-powered code editors, and Git repositories. None of these things help with The Box.

Furthermore, the browser’s devtools are pretty inpenetrable to those who don’t know HTML and CSS already.

In the short term, we must teach CSS to navigate The Box. (And let’s face it, many of today’s “full stack” coders aren’t able to navigate it, either.)

In the long term, we need to improve our interfaces in some way so The Box isn’t needed.

This is a big problem to solve that no one is talking about.

Design is a load of CRAP:

• Contrast

• Repetition

• Alignment

• Proximity

Following rules = professional-looking designs

Courtesy of Ms. Robin Williams, and HER fantastic book, [“The Non-Designer’s Design Book."] (https://peachpit.com/store/non-designers-design-book-9780133966152)

**CONTRAST: **

• Contrasting colors, not a bunch of muddy neutrals

• Contrasting fonts, not Arial and more Arial

• Contrasting size, not sizes 12 and 14

REPETITION:

• Repeated layouts, not something unique on every page

• Repeated elements, like icons used consistently

• Repeated colors, fonts, sizes

ALIGNMENT:

• Think about straight lines on your web pages, which guide the eye and increase legibility

• On the web, everything looks better LEFT-ALIGNED (see note) and not CENTERED

• CENTERED is for WEDDING INVITATIONS

(note) in left-to-right languages. If you use a right-to-left language, then use right alignment.

PROXIMITY:

• The nearer two elements are on a page, the more likely that they’re related.

• You don’t have to shove elements into corners because they’re empty.

• Separation in space means different ideas. Proximity means related ideas.

The book is full of full-color picture examples illustrating all points.

The tips are simple and easy to follow. It’s straightforward to apply them to your own work. Applying them will take your design to the next level.

Setting Goals

For people who believe _____, who want ____, my work creates ______.

Seth Godin

Value Proposition

[company name] makes it easy for [target customer] to [thing that product does] so that [benefit of the product].

Tara Reed