It's not only that you need to explain your reasoning...it's also that you operate in a vacuum. The constraints of actual designers are rarely "you get a shittily designed page, do WHATEVER you want with it." (Not saying the current YC pages are shittily designed, in fact while some of them are not aesthetically pleasing they all look reasonably well thought out).

I think all OP is saying is "beware, you're only getting the aesthetic practice, and in design it turns out thats really a very minor part of what's important."

I was about to post something similar, but saw this, and it's close enough to what I was going to say, so I'll piggyback.

First, let me start by saying that I think that in every case, Kyro's redesign has been superior to the original page in the broad sense.

Most of what I'm seeing as complaints have to do more with copy and content than the design, which for a designer should be a good thing, right? Maybe.

In my opinion, content and design are interlinked so heavily that it's impossible to separate the two. Good design accentuates the copy, and good copy accentuates the design. The design should visually reinforce the message at every step.

While I think these redesigns are great exercises, and are sure to benefit Kyro more than not, I think what they're missing is the key to good design, which is interacting with the product team, learning the message, figuring out how to surface hints of that message at every turn, but without beating users over the head with it.

The only other complaint is that yeah, these designs look a little stock. There's nothing to stop me from coopting this design as a WP theme and selling it to 100 other companies looking for a good product page. Nothing wrong with that, but a great design is unique, and can only work for the product it's for.

http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com/ is a good example. There's almost nothing else that page could exist for. Nobody can steal that design because it's way too close to the product.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound like I'm coming down on anybody -- I think these designs are good, but since Kyro specifically mentioned that he's trying to improve, thought I'd offer some of what I consider to be important in design that isn't just aesthetic.

I really don't think you can fairly characterise this as pure aesthetics - "an eye, but what an eye!". Clearly producing a new home page without knowing a company and with a superficial understanding of their products and requirements is quite a shallow exercise which does not encapsulate the totality of design practice. I'm sure the poster is well aware of that, but that doesn't mean it does not involve thinking about the products and requirements, and only focussing on aesthetics.

This is not design in the holistic sense, but that does not mean it is not a useful short exercise and potentially a useful collection of user feedback for non-designer founders who have neither the time, the money, nor the inclination to hire a designer - perhaps seeing a redesign will prompt them to think further on the designs they have, which probably grew organically with the sites.

In short it is only dangerous if you mistake this sort of exercise for a complete design process. No designers would, and no clients I'd want to work for would either. I think it's an interesting and useful thought experiment, though obviously limited in scope, and the designs so far have had some useful hints for the site concerned - I particularly liked the wave one, which humanised the product and neatly summarised it in one image.

On the Internet it is easy to criticise or run things down. This sort of exercise brings back constructive criticism which is so hard to do well - the sort of thing that starts conversations, not arguments. If you see it as only the start of a process (one of many possible starting points) perhaps it will come to seem less dangerous and more fruitful.

Kyro - I think it's ridiculous that people are so possessive of free design concepts, but one cool blog post to take a look at is Metalab's theoretical redesign of the Zappos homepage few year's back: http://metalabdesign.com/zappos/

They do a pretty nice job of explaining why and what they did - might be a nice framework if you're planning on justifying your decisions.

I personally find these designs more "fun to look at" than anything - it's always cool to see what and how someone who isn't a part of the day to day sees a product as. To me, these designs are just a super detailed pieces of user feedback. Keep going at it!

That page does mention some good design principles, then proceeds to just throw a couple gradients and Gotham on a Photoshop mockup. The HN thread about it discussed at length why it's a weak redesign.