3 Ways to be More Productive as a Designer
- By Cheow Yu Yuan
- Published 08/3/2011
- Web Design
- Unrated
If you design a lot of websites for clients or for your own purposes, you are probably always on the lookout for ways to save a bit of time. After all, time is money in this business. Following are just three great ideas to become a lot more productive in your design career:
#1: Never throw anything away.
Most designers end up with scraps of designs, outdated designs that are no longer being used, and other things that typically end up trashed. This is a bit mistake. You can use these things as inspiration for other websites and some pieces of old or discarded design can be used directly to create a new website in much less time than it would take to design the site from scratch.
Rather than throwing things away, save them to special flash drives. This essentially creates a scrap pile which is worth more than a million dollars. It is worth tons and tons of time when you have a lot of sites to design and not a lot of time to get it all done in. Rather than designing everything from scratch you can just use some of those scraps and bits of design to create new sites.
Even if you don't use anything from the scrap pile directly, it can serve as a database of ideas when you feel stuck. You can get some very fresh ideas from looking at old scraps and even outdated sites. You never know what will come to mind when you start looking through these odd design tidbits. Some can even be blended together to create something
very unique.
#2: Know the point of your design before you start designing.
The better you know the client and the purpose of the website, the fewer mistakes you are likely to make during the design process. Sometimes a lot of time is wasted by designers doing things that aren't going to please the client or which won't serve the ultimate purpose of the website.
Just by making sure you understand what the site is about and what the owner of the space wants it to do, you can eliminate a lot of mistakes that would have to be fixed or redesigned later on.
Ask lots of questions. Know what you are doing before you even get started.
#3: Use a CMS whenever possible.
Finally, you can save time by designing with a content management system that does a lot of the basic designing and coding for you. This is not the way to go if you want to come up with a very unique website that is highly creative, but it works if you need to put a nice website together in a very short period of time.
You can even make the use of predesigned themes for WordPress highly original by modifying them. Again, it won't be as unique or original as a site you designed completely from scratch on your own, but it can get the job done with satisfying results when you are really in a pinch.
When using any of these suggestions you have to make sure you are designing what your client is paying you to design. If they want something entirely unique and are willing to pay for it, you should ditch the CMS and just go freestyle.
#1: Never throw anything away.
Most designers end up with scraps of designs, outdated designs that are no longer being used, and other things that typically end up trashed. This is a bit mistake. You can use these things as inspiration for other websites and some pieces of old or discarded design can be used directly to create a new website in much less time than it would take to design the site from scratch.
Rather than throwing things away, save them to special flash drives. This essentially creates a scrap pile which is worth more than a million dollars. It is worth tons and tons of time when you have a lot of sites to design and not a lot of time to get it all done in. Rather than designing everything from scratch you can just use some of those scraps and bits of design to create new sites.
Even if you don't use anything from the scrap pile directly, it can serve as a database of ideas when you feel stuck. You can get some very fresh ideas from looking at old scraps and even outdated sites. You never know what will come to mind when you start looking through these odd design tidbits. Some can even be blended together to create something
#2: Know the point of your design before you start designing.
The better you know the client and the purpose of the website, the fewer mistakes you are likely to make during the design process. Sometimes a lot of time is wasted by designers doing things that aren't going to please the client or which won't serve the ultimate purpose of the website.
Just by making sure you understand what the site is about and what the owner of the space wants it to do, you can eliminate a lot of mistakes that would have to be fixed or redesigned later on.
Ask lots of questions. Know what you are doing before you even get started.
#3: Use a CMS whenever possible.
Finally, you can save time by designing with a content management system that does a lot of the basic designing and coding for you. This is not the way to go if you want to come up with a very unique website that is highly creative, but it works if you need to put a nice website together in a very short period of time.
You can even make the use of predesigned themes for WordPress highly original by modifying them. Again, it won't be as unique or original as a site you designed completely from scratch on your own, but it can get the job done with satisfying results when you are really in a pinch.
When using any of these suggestions you have to make sure you are designing what your client is paying you to design. If they want something entirely unique and are willing to pay for it, you should ditch the CMS and just go freestyle.
Cheow Yu Yuan
# 1 leading cms website design agency in Singapore. Check out our content management system (CMS) portfolio here.
View all articles by Cheow Yu Yuan