New designers often have a problem realizing there is a difference between art and production design. Many new designers spend a lot of time idolizing “cool” industrial design, while failing to realize their role online is likely going to be that of a production machine.New designers often have a problem realizing there is a difference between art and production design. Many new designers spend a lot of time idolizing “cool” industrial design, while failing to realize their role online is likely going to be that of a production machine. It can be expensive to deal with a designer who still maintains that their design is their art and their passion. The bottom line in any production environment is creating a functional, adequet website that fulfills a number of central goals.

So the first thing you can do to improve your efficiency and create more effective websites is to follow the money and save your art for more friendly climates. Don’t ask yourself if you like what you’re designing—ask yourself if it’s going to do the job. This is especially true in adult design. If you don’t like designing in an environment that asks for exacting performance over artistic principles, maybe it’s time to consider alternative careers.

Recognize a simple, effective concept, and don’t complicate it! One of the greatest enemies to a web designer is the “blind eye” to a successful design. When drafting concepts, you may naturally develop an intuitive, direct concept, but fail to realize it since you have yet to put in hours of agony. When you find yourself looking at your most recent concept, thinking to yourself, “Hrm, yes, it’s okay, but it needs something,” then you must immediately stop designing. Take it to your client, or try it out on groups of users. If it needs something, user testing and client comments will help you identify it. Quickly.

Boredom breeds unneccesary work – learn to identify and eliminate it! This is more about your design process. If you’re a jack-of-all-trades designer, meaning you take it from the drawing board to the HTML, you’re likely to encounter many boring tasks along the way. Some larger design firms have happy monkeys that do things like draft HTML, optimize GIFs and other nuts and bolts tasks. You are probably not so lucky. Lots of products make this task easier, notably the rather competent .PSD to HTML functions of Adobe ImageReady. Take advantage of them when you can. Still, your job is likely to have some drudgery.

The problem with these repetitious fundamentals is that they will encourage you to procrastinate, or even worse, go back to your graphic program and try to “spruce up” your design in order to avoid the inevitable tasks ahead.

Clear your head. Take a deep breath. Go outside. Come back in refreshed and blow through the tedium. The loathsome boring parts of your job are always going to be there for you. Don’t extend or complicate them; finish them.

Get efficient and blaze through the labor! Speeding up your process is one of the keys that will make you more money over time. It’s just like your grandfather turning off the light every time he leaves the room; what’s the crazy old coot doing? He’s going to be back in the room in 10 minutes! Take heed, grasshopper. The little things add up.

For example, learn your keyboard short-cuts. If you’re on a PC in Photoshop, you have an ungodly number of quick key combinations you can remember that will help you out. Using an HTML editor like HomeSite for your code? How many times a day do you type font tags? Bind your most frequently used tags to shortcut keys. This is especially useful if you are coding PHP and one missing semi-colon can bind you up for an extra few minutes every day.

Develop images in batches, then animate in batches. Don’t switch from Photoshop to your animation program for every banner you’re making. Make all the banners first, then open them all in your animation program and work on them at once. Opening and closing multiple programs multiple times can be tough on your time and your fragmented system memory. (Can you shake your Rebooty?)

Take time to organize before you work. If you’re in too much of a rush to spend 10 minutes making sure you’re organized for a project, you’re a fool. Simple organization can save you lots of time during the course of a project. Breaking your concentration to search for something can be expensive over the long haul.

Don’t waste time guessing what will work – design and test! Suppose you’ve finished a prototype design. No actual users have seen the design yet, but you’re going to have a meeting with your clients/bosses, engineers, and programmers about the design. So for about an hour, the most expensive group of people get together and speculate about the quality of a design. What a waste of money! Your team is not representative of your users, and consuming their time is expensive. Don’t argue until you get the facts. You need actual people to give feedback about the design. Don’t “guess”—test. If you can’t convince your team to test design, simply shut your mouth and follow their suggestions lovingly. Unless your paycheck is tied to the profitability of the site, let them shoot themselves in the foot.

Anticipate your client will give you plenty of revisions! Save your time for the inevitable revisions on the horizon. The beat poet-designer attitude of “first draft, best draft” will hurt you. Spending your time trying to convince your client that “you’re right” will only make them angry. Eventually they’ll resent the fact that they’re paying you and you won’t give them what they want.

Whip through your designs; be responsible and do your best, but don’t extend your deadlines and constantly revise your own work. If it’s a personal project, by all means indulge yourself, but if you’re in the arena of business, anticipate the revisions, and save most of your time for client and user comment-based revision.

That’s it. Pick up on these tips, and you’re ahead of the curve!