In Design Efficiency Booster - 5 Tips on How to Increase In Design Speed

Slow down at the start - Slowing down might sound strange because this article is about speed increasing. Still, taking some time at the beginning of a design task is absolutely crucial for an effective fast paced design session. Set your priorities straight and get all the design tools you are planning to use near you. Make sure you focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking is absolutely counter-effective. If you are really close to a deadline I highly recommend closing your telephone, e-mail applications and other distracting elements! One small distraction can cause a complete loss of focus.

Set up a good grid system - A well designed grid keeps the chances of text problems and design flaws at a minimum. I also recommend some font testing. What will the size of the average text be and how tall will the line-spaces be? These questions are the perfect basics for setting up a good grid system. Don't forget to link all your type onto the grid system for the grid guidance system to work properly!

Master all pages - Mastering your pages will prevent offsets in the design content. All master pages serve as a guidance layouts for the rest of the document. Use master pages to position elements such as paragraphs, headers and page numbering positions at a preferred position in the layout. Newly created pages will have the master design layout automatically applied. Any changes to the master page will now affect the whole document.

Create character styles with short keys - I recommend using paragraph styles for paragraphs and character styles for individual typographic elements (elements such as headers and sub headers). By doing so, all elements in your document get assigned to a certain style. This makes the whole document related. Now it's possible to change the looks of the entire document with just a few clicks.

Effectively divide your time - Make sure to work in blocks no longer then 1.5 hour. Take a break for at least 15 minutes after each block. I recommend doing something not related to your design activities. It's amazing how effective it can be to take a little break. A short break of 15 minutes often leads to a fresh look on what you have done so far! It's much easier to spot flaws you did not notice before.