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How designers and developers can work together  

Matt Gemmell has written two excellent articles recently, aiming to help developers and designers to work together:

Both are solid and worth reading. The key points for developers:

  • Know what you want
  • Examples are helpful
  • Trust your designer
  • A sketch goes a long way
  • Consider sample data
  • Present all the work up-front
  • Remember design constraints
  • Be responsive
  • Don't assume it's easy
  • Don't micro-manage
  • Use the same tools
  • Speak the same language
  • Allow use as a portfolio piece
  • Pay on time
  • Don't condone spec work
  • Understand the model
  • Source code is extra

And the key points for designers:

  • Use an intelligent method of version control
  • Keep your layers
  • Name all your layers meaningfully
  • Use groups, and do so sensibly
  • Prune unneeded layers
  • Use Layer Comps
  • Keep everything as vectors, and scaleable effects
  • Learn how to preserve rounded corners while resizing
  • Design at 72 ppi
  • Snap to whole pixels
  • Always use RGB mode
  • Asset-preparation is part of your job
  • Be careful with fonts
  • Mimic the platform's text-rendering (where possible)
  • Be sure of design dimensions
  • Use the platform's idioms
  • Design once for landscape, then design again for portrait
  • Design for each major screen-size, and their contexts
  • Use genuine or at least realistic content
  • Consider localisation
  • Respect the global light source
  • Make navigational or organisational constructs explicit
  • Export cut-ups without compression
  • Ask about shadows
  • Understand how buttons are constructed

Read, bookmark, and remember.

More from the library:
If you build it, they won't come
How do you intend to make money?
Sell the emotional benefits first