Design Work-flow

We thought we’d write a blog about how we produce some of our work. The only reason we thought we’d do this is not to show off, but because our design work-flow may differ to most! Although we work very similar to others, using a Photoshop .PSD file to create a sliced image to code in HTML, using one of the 960 Grid System variations depending on project requirements. We also begin initially by hand sketching the preliminary layouts, we then develop this in AutoCAD. For those of you unfamiliar with AutoCAD, it is a technical drawing program, which is ideal for working out, to the pixel (in a far less laborious and more accurate way than using Photoshop itself), the exact layout, taking into account the padding and margins etc.

Getting it Right

Once we have set out our design here, we then translate all that into Photoshop. We find it advantageous because it is far easier (we believe) to play around with the layout while it is quite simply lines and boxes. Only when we are completely satisfied that the design looks good and meets the requirements of the brief do we progress the design in Photoshop. This eradicates any unforeseen coding issues with sizes and layouts, and when we are manually slicing the image, we can be sure we are exporting each element exactly as it should be, eradicating any problems that may occur further on in the development due to incorrect sizes and other such issues.

This ‘precision’ web design allows us to work and develop as a team, knowing exactly what is expected from each of us, not only in a work and labour sense, but in the context of sliced images etc. This allows projects to run much more smoothly and we can turn projects around much quicker, as we are encountering far less problems using this method. The techniques we develop (and continue to develop) are not only beneficial to us, but we can charge our customer’s less as we are not spending so many hours on projects as before, this makes us a very competitive design company, without compromising on quality, and the customer will have a live website sooner than they think!

In today’s highly competitive market, we are striving to keep ahead of our competitors, and it can only help us as both our skills, techniques and methods are improved as we experiment with each new project! Just check out our portfolio for our diverse range of techniques and applied skills used on previous projects!