An old but good article from Signal V. Noise, the blog from the Basecamp folks. While Jason Fried singles out Photoshop, this clearly applies to the design tools that I’ve seen recommended a lot recently: Sketch 3 and Balsamiq. Both of these apps look really great at what they do and I’m sure there are lots of really fantastic uses for them.

The main point I take from Jason’s article is that wireframes are useful, but creating them digitally without using HTML + CSS creates extra work for you later and doesn’t allow for rapid sharing of evolving designs in teams. Most importantly, wireframes don’t allow for user interaction. While I’m new to designing websites and apps, I tend to agree with his perspective.

I’ve put my money where my mouth is on this one: for my upcoming projects (and for the design of this blog), I’ve wireframed on paper first, and then started plugging away in HTML and CSS. This has really helped me learn HTML and CSS better, and I imagine I’ll only get faster as I practice more.