What tasks or steps feel like obstacles to “designing”?
I have conducted much research and found that there are far more strategies leading to an improved workflow through automation than once thought. I want to talk about as many of the different tools that I should use to aid this smoother way of working for me. I have identified four aspects of my workflow that are main points which could do with being operated on.
Beginning with design tools and utilises. I have found myself in the past somewhat overwhelmed when it comes to choosing an effective colour pallet that effectively communicates what I am trying to convey through my design. “Sip,” is a colour picker that allows me to collect, organise, and share colours directly from the menu bar. Among other things that may be useful to me, it has a built-in contrast checker making my design more accessible by identifying and improving low-contrast text and background colours. “Sip” would massively help with my digital design process when thinking about creating brands, logos, apps etc. allowing me to make the right choice about colour, rather than a choice.
As someone who will admit to being a bit of a perfectionist, this makes simple tasks like measuring distance between objects take far longer than it should. “xScope” and “PixleSnap” are two tools that would speed this laborious task up considerably. Both software features allow me to measure, align, and inspect on-screen graphics and layouts. “PixelSnap” enables quick measurement of distances between object on my screen, encouraging precise design work. Digital design can be deceptive with the slightest of margins causing something to look unbalanced or out of place so for me this would really speed my overall process up hugely.
“RightFont” is a font manager that provides me with quick access to my font library, allowing me to preview and organise my fonts efficiently. As someone who is trying to become more expanded in typography, collecting fonts is something that I am keen to do. While I expand my collection, forgetting, or losing fonts would be a massive inconvenience when it eventually comes to designing or curating my work. This is a way I can hopefully prevent that and organise where and how I find my fonts for future use.
When going through a creative process, things can get messy both digitally and physically. I find myself after or throughout, going over my Mac making sure all files are where they are meant to be, making sure I haven’t lost any in the process. It can be stressful if something is not where I thought it should be. Next, we move onto productivity and system utilities, and I think “CleanMyMac” and “Hazel” almost go hand in hand together here. “CleanMyMac” is a comprehensive tool that scans for junk files, manages applications, and monitors system health to keep everything running smoothly. While I don’t tend to get many junk files nowadays, this could become useful in the future where projects get bigger, and things become more chaotic. With all these features, getting to grips with them early on will help me massively in the future for a consistent and smooth workflow. “Hazel” is similar and is an automation tool that organises my files based on rules I define, more sorting, and cleaning up files as needed. Again, making this process automatic saves me time organising and moving files around manually.
