To-Do List of Every Designer
We all have a list of things we need to do in our lives. Some of us want to write a book, some wish to travel around the world, some want to attend their favorite singer’s concert and some dream to be professionally successful and for our fantasies to come true, we work tirelessly every day, but apart from these life goals, there is a list of things in our daily schedule to achieve these life goals and to nurture and grow. If you are a writer, your to-do list may include reading at least a small paragraph every day, singers may practice on the musical instrument for an hour every morning, artists may draw and chefs may cook more than often to stay in touch with their passion. These little things sharpen our skills, keep us motivated, teach us new things and make us better at what we do and also help us manage our tight deadlines and loads of work.
Every designer can relate to piles of project files, tons of work, client demands, payment issues, lost sleep, work proposals and missed deadlines. You might sometimes wonder if you are a procrastinator or all designers are covered with layers of work and mismanaged schedule, but let this article introduce you to some of the tips and tricks to manage your things and to get better at your job.
Practice Your Designs Every Day
No matter how good you are at your job, you lose the grip once you lose the contact. Whether it is your digital canvas or your pencil and paper, take out some time of the day and practice your designs every day. It doesn’t have to be hours and hours of practice, but may be 20 minutes playing with shades, texture and design, to make sure that your brain is able to comprehend and move with the cues, your understanding is deep and your abilities to produce creative designs improves with time. Although you may be working at a number of projects and believe that you are in practice, but believe me, creating and practicing designs ‘just like that’ helps you deliver better, because there are no obligations or pressure and chances are that unconsciously you would come up with a design for your next assignment, even if you weren’t willing to produce it.
You can practice your designs while having your morning coffee, teaching your child to solve his Math problems or while your wife watches her favorite movie. Remember, the idea is to stay in touch and get better with innovation, speeds and skills of designing.
Keep Your Portfolio Updated
Whether it is Linked In or any other platform displaying your portfolio, include it in your to-do list to update it, as per your recent credentials and performance. Your portfolio defines your progress, helps clients find you and also serves as a report to track where you started from and where you stand today, motivating you to continue your hard work and commitment. When clients are looking for designers, they want current information and want to see what you’ve been doing lately and if your information is of months ago, you would be perceived as a procrastinator and a lazy person or as someone who is not into work or else why wouldn’t he update the world about it? Clients and hiring agencies want to see your projects and what are your goals, your recent progress, your future assignments, your newly developed interests, your work partners and everything and they want all the information ‘as updated yesterday’.
Make sure you update your portfolio after every project you complete, to ensure that you don’t forget to include any project and that the clients can readily find you and love the fact that you are all drowned into work. Tell them you are designing and designing really well!
Answer all Your Emails at the End of the Day
Like me, you too would’ve imagined to be so successful and rich that you’d hire a personal assistant for yourself, who would manage all your work, from receiving calls to answering emails, from ordering breakfast coffee to reminding you of what is next in your plate, but for now, you need to do all this for yourself. How about you assign thirty minutes of the day for interacting with your clients and fellow designers through email? When a client sends you an email, he wants a response even sooner than possible and delays can lead to disappointed and frustrated clients, which you wouldn’t want. Also delayed replies give a perception that you’d delay the delivery of work as well. Therefore, you need to be quick and vigilant.
Before going to bed, log in to your email account and respond to the messages, following the ‘First in, first out’ approach and do it every day, every single day and make sure your response time is not more than 24 hours.
Create a Backup for Your Files
It is one of the very obvious things you should be doing as a designer, but due to loads of work, you may forget to do it almost all the time. Have a sophisticated backup system for your files and other important work, so you may not completely lose it in case of any problem or error in your technological system. You may be at the middle of completing an important project and in your mind you might be so proud of the piece of art in the making and, and, the window crashes and all your data gets lost or you forget your paper work at the coffee store and its gone forever.
Keep a check on your backup system every now and then and keep looking for the most effective ways to keep a copy of your projects. If you’ve made some designs on the paper, scan them and keep a record in your drive. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to lose hours of hard work in any case.
Keep designing and rocking. Cheers!
