Design file maintenance
Maintaining a well organized and clean source file from the design to delivery phase must be an essential part of a designer’s practice.
#1. Establishing text and container styles
A defined container and text styles ensure consistency across all designs. Besides, the process of updating a specific style becomes automated, in other words, simply change the style properties and all elements linked to the same revises instantly.
#2. Building a library, or using symbols or components
The decision to build a library greatly depends on the scale of the project. Therefore, it is highly recommended to build a library for projects that need multiple designers and files. On contrary, a project which only exists in a single file can be managed using an internal symbol or component system. Additionally, this practice makes it easier to update an element and propagate the change across the design files.
#3. Using pages to organise sections
Segregate designs into pages based on their use-case, product segmentation, breakpoint, etc. Distributing contents across pages in a logical manner (based on responsive sizes, flows, or use-cases) makes it easier for other team members to navigate and find instances with much ease.
#4. Naming, grouping, ordering, and arrangement
Always make sure to maintain a naming convention to differentiate artboards and layer as Layer Copy Copy 23 or Artboard Copy 128 is not a pretty sight. Moreover, remember to maintain the artboard order in the sidebar.
#5. Design with precision
Precision is an expected quality for a visual designer. To illustrate, having elements with the size “32.56px” at an X position of “15.98px” and a Y position of “28.12px” is never a pretty sight. Therefore, be detail-oriented at all times and maintain a clean design file throughout the design process.
#6. Remove all unused styles and hidden elements
Spare no effort at this step, remove all unused styles, inactive properties, and hidden elements. This helps in reducing the file size and prepares a polished ready-for-handover file.
#7. Setting export values to artboards
Set export values to artboards and use slashes ( / ) to name exportable assets as most design tools convert slashes into folders while exporting. Remember to select or deselect “Trim transparent edges” based on the asset requirements.
#8. File nomenclature
Define and maintain a discernable file nomenclature, and this system helps everyone understand information such as project, channel type, the designer who worked on it, and the latest file name. Furthermore, following this system develops a sense of discipline in the team.
#9. Using plugins
Installing software plugins increases the overall efficiency of the work as these systems can automate functions such as maintaining artboard order and structure, artboard and layer naming, clearing unused layers, spell check etc.
Conclusion
Working in a big team with massive design workflows bottlenecks productivity. By employing basic design file maintenance guidelines we can overcome many of these setbacks.
