Hey!
I’m an Art Director and I work with a number of international Devs. Lately, we’ve been having trouble getting what is produced by the Devs to match what I, the Designer create in Photoshop. Aside from creating prototypes, doing coding myself, etc, if possible, I’m curious - What is the best way to hand off work to the Developers? I’ve done it a number of ways before at past jobs. I’ve sent them pngs of the layout, and then created each asset (images, custom buttons, etc) myself to go along with it, I’ve sent them a PSD with everything in it and just allowed them to create the assets themselves. I’ve also heard that Illustrator is a better way to design layouts. I’ve created layouts in both Photoshop and Illustrator, as I feel each have their strengths, but feel like if I were to pick one to use, it would be Photoshop. So basically, I’ve got conflicting viewpoints coming at me from different angles and I’d just like to find out what other Designers are doing and what they feel is the best way to hand off work to the Devs - what format, what programs, etc. (of course I’d stay in the loop with them after, so it’s not an absolute hand-off) I’ve tried to research this online, but keep running into the same things of “What’s the difference between a Designer & a Developer” - things like that that I already know, but not a lot of solid help otherwise. Anyway - Thoughts? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Ben
(warning that this question has been pasted to multiple forums around the web)
Yep, I’m aware - it’s not spam - I actually did that myself - hoping to get an answer on it. Thanks for pointing that out though - Appreciated!
Ben
I know! But my pseudo-duty as moderator here is not only to protect the question askers, but also the existing community of answerers here. It’s sort of like you’re ordering pizzas from 5 shops at once, and only paying the first one to deliver. Except in this case, some people ask 5+ forums at once and don’t notify the other 4+ forums when they get a good answer at one forum. You may be one of the few who’d post back saying you found a solution elsewhere (and post a link to it), but in my 10+ years at this forum, that’s super rare.
Anyway, to your question:
Have you seen Kirupa’s article related to this? Static Comps Are Simply Not Enough | kirupa.com
In general, if you’re expecting things of your developers which aren’t conveyed in a static comp… you’ll probably run into trouble. This applies to responsive design, animations, single-page apps, infovis, etc. If you’re only thinking in terms of static comps and your devs still aren’t meeting your standards, then you might want to consider switching the labor market you’re using.
Great - thanks for your help here - much appreciated!
Ben