5 Design Practices to Improve Efficiency in Photoshop

Posted on 04. Oct, 2009 by Taiyab in Tips and Tricks

There are times in a designer’s life where they just spend hours in front of a blank canvas in Photoshop, trying to conjure up ideas and inspiration for their project that needs doing the same night. Well, there are ways of getting out of this situation and get things done when you’re spending time in Photoshop, and I’ll show you how.

1. Wireframe/sketch

Whenever you get a design job for a template for a web page or a logo, it’s always a good idea to start out by cultivating your ideas by creating what we call a wireframe in the web design business. A wireframe is a rough outline of the template that you’re looking to design in Photoshop, and co-ordinates positions of  features such as navigation and main content areas. It helps you map out your template in a logical and effective way before doing anything in Photoshop.

If you’re designing a logo, you need to be sketching out concepts for the logo. This will help you establish patterns, styles and colors for the finished piece. Your sketches should include dimensions, and any other details that you may need when it comes to opening up Illustrator.

2. Outline objectives

Too many times designers go into their design software without a clear, concise idea of what they’re trying to achieve. Usually, clients have specific requirements and needs when it comes to designing for their website. You need to optimize the site to cater for its objectives. For example, if you’re designing for an e-commerce website, the main objective of the website is to make sales. Your design needs to cater for this by presenting products at the forefront of view.

So, you need to list out the aims and objectives of the design your creating. Let’s say you’re creating a logo though, for instance, you need to have a clear idea in your head of what kind of image you’re trying to portray by the creation of that logo. If you’re looking to create a professional image, then you need to establish this in your mind, and create the logo accordingly (i.e. use more standard fonts, stay away from vibrant colors).

3. Build structure first

This is purely dependent on the designer’s preference, but I find that when developing a template in particular, that creating the structure of the website first is the best way to handle the initial design process. Basically, there are two general ways people go about designing templates. One is where you pick an area of a design and concentrate wholly on that one area, improving and upgrading the section until you think it works. Then you move on to the rest of the design and do the same. The other way is to build up a general structure first, then build on that, fine-tuning each section to your tastes.

Personally, I think building up the structure first is better and more efficient because you actually now have something on the canvas that you can build on thus nullifying the common scenario of completely trashing the work done and starting from scratch again.

4. Close all applications

Quite frankly I find that when people do design work, they’re multi-tasking way too much and aren’t focusing and concentrating on the work they’re producing. They’ll have a messenger client open, a browser, a media player, and other miscellaneous applications open on their computer, and be distracted for most of the time that they spend “designing”. Close all those applications, and just have that one piece of design software open and really try to focus on what you’re doing. You’ll produce tremendously better results.

5. Have a clear vision

Before venturing into Photoshop, you need to have a visual picture in your own mind of how the website is going to look. Usually, designers tend to visualize a vivid but workable idea of how the website is going to look during a moment of inspiration. Work on that, and really try to recreate what you have in mind.

Conclusion

Designing is all about creativity and being different. The process isn’t laborious and so shouldn’t be taking you days upon days to create for instance a website template. Instead, it should be a focused, enlightening and almost rapid process, where you get your ideas down and aptly represent them on your canvas.

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