Dmitry Verovski, a graphic designer with over 10 years of experience, shared some tips on how to minimize the corrections and improvements that arise at the stage of the work delivery.

As long as there are designs and clients, as long as there are design approvals and fixes. Over the years, I’ve learned to keep these fixes to a minimum. But it was not always so. I used to make a lot of corrections until I realized that half of them can be easily cut off with a layout statement.

Design is not about emotion. If your idea of ​​design is shaped by the movie 99 Francs, I have to upset. Everything is a little different. It is at the stage of the birth of an idea that you can be furiously creative and invent motley nonsense. But frantic creativity and “sudden impulses” are not about design.

What is design?

Design is the skin for the layout. Once upon a time, the WinAmp music player was alive, and users en masse changed its “skins” (eng. leather). And there are many designs, but WinAmp is one and easily recognizable. The foundation of recognition was the layout, which was stretched across various designs.

Show a rough layout

The right design starts with the right planning. And planning starts with a layout. The layout lays down the structure and shape of the design, plans the elements, determines the location. Any graphic design begins with a layout, be it digital, print or illustration. Even icons start with a layout, especially the tricky ones.

In the course of working on the layout, the details may change, but this is no longer important.

Author: Julia Verovski

This approach is true for any area of ​​design. Illustration? Where decent budgets are spinning, the concept and style are not left to chance. The concept comes up with an advertising agency. To get a clear result, an illustrator is selected who draws in the desired style. The illustrator creates the sketch, the sketch is approved and overgrown with details.

Doing photo manipulation? There is no difference, at first we roughly throw in the concept of suitable objects, we assert, we bring it to the end.

Designer: Dmitry Verovski

Both in the renovation of an apartment, tiles are planned on the floor, and in digital, the functionality and location of the elements are planned in advance. Undoubtedly, in some situations (especially in digital) interface prototyping is a separate and voluminous work.

Designer: Dmitry Verovski

The example above is a language learning app. With the project manager, we immediately decided that all sections should be on one screen. At the layout level, I came up with an idea with a tree. Each section is tied to an invisible tree. At that time, I had no idea how to display this tree in the design, but it showed a good sequence of lessons. When I got my hands on the design, I displayed the tree as segments. The more lessons the user takes, the more the segment is filled with the color of the lesson.

In the layout, we laid the foundation for all subsequent ideas. I didn’t know how exactly I would implement all these ideas, but the layout was a good foundation for visualizing ideas into a specific design.

First, we approve the layout

Layouts for websites and applications, of course, stand apart from other types of sketches. Unlike sketches and drafts for illustrations and posters, they are a separate product and work separate from design. First, the layout is approved, then the design is approved.

Novice designers confuse layout with design. And clients do not know what it is at all. When these guys find each other, it turns out a vinaigrette. The designer rushes ahead of the mare to sculpt a picture, and then famous stories begin with the rearrangement of buttons. These flaws could have been avoided at the planning stage, but they decided not to plan.

Designing anything without sketches and layouts is like entrusting builders to build a house to their liking. We’ll have to re-glue not only the wallpaper, but also rebuild the whole house.

How can I avoid edits? Make them when they are done easily and simply. It is easier to understand that it is better for a girl with a book to do without a cat before this cat is drawn. Replacing the men on the poster is easiest during the draft phase. The easiest way to change the layout and organization of the menu is on the layout.

Therefore, all of your sketches, drafts and layouts must be approved before they take on a living design embodiment. Otherwise, in the finished design, you will have to redo not only the style, but also the edits that could be corrected at the stage of the layout.