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.
If you read this far, you should follow me on twitter here.
