Tips to Improve Your Web Design Workflow

Doing more high quality stuffs in less time- that’s what separates the veteran web designers from the amateurs out there.

Ever wondered what makes professional web designers and graphic designers keep on delivering quality designs within a scheduled time? It is nothing but they have an improved workflow. If you are new to the game and want to maintain a professional profile within the design community, here are some ideas which can improve your web designing workflow.

Planning and Wire-framing

Every assignment commences with planning, especially, if it’s big. The more complex the project is, greater time should be invested in its planning! If you go without planning, it may lead to problems and adjustments at the end of the project. Know all the detailed information from your client to make an effective and efficient plan. Some of the details include goal of the project, targeted audiences, competitors, functionality of the site, a site map, budget, designing style, content, etc. Once you know them, you can design a wireframe and design a layout via Photoshop.

Graphic Design Workflow

You have many things to improvise in graphic designing workflow in Photoshop and Illustrator. You can customize your workspace, set color palettes, design, painting, 3D, photography and more. Check out the aligning elements and organize your layers! Make use of smart objects, layer comps, color swatches, UI packs and more.

Responsive frameworks

Most known CSS frameworks are Foundation 4 and Bootstrap 3 save your time. Frameworks helps in saving time and all you need to do is choose one and stick to it.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts make the work efficient without wasting much time. With shortcuts, you can design sites faster than anyone else. Auto hotkey allows quick scriptable desktop computerization with hot keys. You can create your own macros and apps. Emmet is a plug-in which enhances CSS and HTML workflow.

Select the right editor

Choosing a good editor for you is probably the most important thing. Selection of a right editor does work well, blazing fast, customizable and completely extensible. One can design their own shortcuts and install plug-ins, create snippets, code completion, key bindings, and multiple cursors. Sublime Text, Online code editors, IDE, JavaScript Code Editors is the best out of the list

Pre-processors

Web designers know a lot about CSS pre-processor such as LESS and Stylus, SASS with Compass, and languages such as Haml and Coffescript. The bigger your assignment gets, the more useful your pre-processor will get. If you don’t use the command line, the files can be complied via GruntJS, LiveReload, Scout, Compass App, CodeKit and Koala. GurntJS not only compiles your files, but als concatenate, liny, minifies them, thereby optimizing your images.

Browser Extensions

There are many useful browser extensions available, for instance, Chrome Extensions, Firefox Extensions and more.

The web design workflow can be enhanced always. Every year you have some amazing tools that make the life of web designers useful and easy. It helps in enhancing your workflow and saves you time, making your work efficient and effective than before. So, use the above mentioned tools and check out how your workflow for web design improved!