Productivity | Webdesigner Depot

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18 Aug
Self-Motivating Through Creative Blocks
Creativity, How to, Productivity
18

As designers, we need to be creative in order to be successful at our jobs.
Coming up with ideas and creative solutions to problems is what we do on a daily basis. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to do so.
Sometimes we get blocked creatively, and it seems like no matter how hard we try, we just can’t come up with a creative solution to anything.
The good news is that there are plenty of things you can do that can help you overcome a block in your creativity. First you’ll need to understand why you’re blocked, and then try some simple techniques to get over that blockage.
In this article, we’ll also cover a few ideas for finding motivation when your lack of desire to work is the root of your creativity problems. Read more
20 May
The One-Hour Block Technique
Design, How to, Productivity
38

Being a designer is great. You get to spend all day being creative—that is, of course, if you have all day to spend and are feeling inspired.
Unfortunately, sometimes you’re completely devoid of ideas, which can be demoralizing, especially when it affects your profit and stress levels.
Many designers I’ve met suffer from this problem occasionally. In such circumstances, some creatives choose to push on and just create something.
This is a poor use of your time, though, because it won’t lead to your best work. Others decide to take the day off, but this isn’t always viable. I, on the other hand, use a clever technique, one that I find so effective that I use it all the time now: working in a one-hour time frame. Read more
29 Apr
Setting Up the Optimal Work Environment
How to, Productivity, Web Designers
42

How much time do you waste on the average day looking for things buried somewhere on your desk? Or getting up to get something on the other side of your office? Or otherwise retrieving the things you need to do your job?
If you added up all those wasted seconds and minutes, you might be surprised at the percentage of your day that it takes up.
Taking the time to set up an optimal workspace can save you hours or even days over the course of a year.
It’s worth taking a day or two to set up your desk and work area to better suit the way you work to save time later on. And the process isn’t difficult.
It just takes a lot of planning and delving into how you work best, and then setting up both your physical and virtual workspaces to better cater to your work methods. Read more
9 Apr
Book Review: Making Ideas Happen
Books, Productivity, Review
16

Most creative professionals have no problem coming up with ideas.
In fact, too many ideas is more often the problem rather than too few. Where we usually run into issues, though, is in the follow-through.
How do we take the brilliant ideas that we come up with on a daily basis and see them through to completed projects?
That’s exactly what the book Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky (the founder of Behance) aims to teach us.
He’s spent years studying the habits and methods of successful creatives who have a knack for following through on their great ideas and bringing them to fruition. He presents this information in a way that is both easy to understand and easy to implement. Read more
6 Apr
The Ups and Downs of Being a Perfectionist
Business, Clients, Productivity
42

Almost everyone out there knows someone who’s a perfectionist, if they aren’t one themselves.
Some people are perfectionists in only one aspect of their life (such as school or work) while others apply their perfectionist tendencies to every aspect of their lives.
Perfectionism is often looked at by those who don’t share the same obsession as a negative personality trait. In reality, perfectionism has both positive and negative impacts.
Learning to work within the constraints of being a perfectionist can lead to much higher productivity, but not working with those traits can lead to much lower productivity. Read more
18 Mar
How to Scan, Absorb and Process Information
How to, Information, Productivity
26

Learning new information quickly is very important to both designers and developers.
That being said, regardless of your profession and whether it’s for school, work, or personal improvement, being able to retain the information without the need to spend hours studying is an incredibly useful skill.
One of the best methods for learning new information quickly is to use the scan-absorb process method.
This consists of scanning content quickly, absorbing the important points, and then processing it so you can apply it to your own projects.
Read on for more details on each step… Read more
11 Feb
Using a Pre-Launch Checklist for your Website
How to, Productivity, Web Design
56

Accounting for every aspect of a new website isn’t easy, especially at the last minute.
The problems aren’t the details themselves, but rather the process of making sure that seemingly minor details don’t add up to sloppy work.
The best solution is to write it all down.
The worst solution is to not take a pre-launch checklist as seriously as the planning stage itself.
With the hundreds of details that go into building or redesigning a website, overlooking minor points is easy, especially as deadlines loom—or pass. But missing details detract from the quality of a website.
Read more
2 Feb
A Showcase of Minimalist Workstations
Design, Inspiration, Productivity
166

No matter what your personal work style, an uncluttered and attractive workspace will improve the quality and efficiency of your work.
Getting rid of paper, digitizing your business cards, minimizing your office supplies are just some of the measures you can take to declutter your workspace and redesign your work life.
Working in an aesthetically pleasing and minimalist workspace enhances your creativity and focus.
Eliminate anything you don’t need, and you’ll have less of a visual distraction. We have enough online distractions; shouldn’t we be limiting the physical ones as well?
The minimalist zen like work spaces that we’ve collected below can inspire you to create a clean design for your environment that meshes with the beautiful work that you do online.
Read more
10 Sep
How to Use the FAT-P System to Streamline Your Workflow
Creativity, Design, Productivity
28

Often, when faced with a looming project, we forget the simple things. The size and depth of the project overwhelms leading to creative block.
Once blocked, the frustration builds leading to even more block, procrastination, missed deadlines and a wealth of other problems.
If you’re in any creative field, chances are, you’ve been there.
As a former high school writing teacher, I found that just the prospect of writing was enough to leave students floundering.
This became an even bigger problem when students were faced with the timed writing of state required tests. Enter the FAT-P.
Read more
17 Aug
How to Effectively Organize your Photoshop Layers
How to, Photoshop, Productivity
102

We designers tend to get frustrated with developers when they take liberties with our work.
But we have to understand they’re not entirely at fault.
Put yourself in their shoes: imagine what it’s like opening a Photoshop file (PSD), only to find a jumble of poorly labeled layers and folders, plus a heap of unchecked hidden layers and other half-baked ideas that didn’t make it to fruition.
The following tutorial outlines how to create organized, designer and developer friendly PSD files.
This is in no way the only solution, but hopefully it will encourage better practice in the web design world. Read more
11 May
Advantages and Disadvantages of Working with Multiple Screens
Productivity, Technology, Web Designers
67

Two characteristics that represent most web designers are a need for productivity and a love for technology.
This desire for increased efficiency and productivity leads many designers to look to technology for methods that will improve their work flow.
One common approach for designers (and others who want to improve productivity) is to use multiple monitors. Using two or more monitors can bring a number of significant advantages to designers.
In this article we’ll present some basic pros and cons of using multiple monitors, general instructions for setting them up, as well as a showcase of workstations that feature multiple monitors. Read more