Skip the PSD design

How important are PSD’s these days? To me, they’ve lost a lot of there luster and importance. If only clients could see things the same way. Is it possible to design without having that key PSD layout completed before you start coding? You bet.

The Dying Art Form

A couple years ago I would never believe these statements I said above, but now I easily believe them. My work process used to be: 1) sketch out design concepts, 2) make a complete homepage mock / psd, 3) show it to the client and if accepted 4) make additional mockups / psds for subpages. Finally with step 5 I would get to code. If it seemed like an awfully long and draw out process – it was. You could end up doing all four steps only to get to the point where the client says, “You know what we decided not to go ahead with this”. You get stuck with just your down payment, a bunch of PSDs, and a whole lot of wasted time. Having a PSD does have one significant benefit in a situation like this though – the resell value.

But why is the community so stuck on the importance of PSD’s?

About a year ago my design process started changing drastically. After all the Devlounge redesigns when I must have had 10 different fully completed PSD’s along with subpages for each possible Devlounge version (I redesigned DL just about every other day it seemed) I decided I couldn’t do this anymore. I was at the point where I could code fast enough and well enough that I didn’t need a full out visual every time I wanted to go to the drawing board.

From that point on, the process was different.

All of a sudden I had a much shorter, more compact design process. I would still sketch out my initial concept on paper (it’s amazing what you can do with a pen and pencil), but from there I would go right into the code. I could get the entire layout structure of a single page done in an hour or two tops – meaning the skeleton was already done and all that was left was adding graphics and tweaking. Now I could spend minimal time in Photoshop churning out the necessary graphics. Before you knew it, the site was done. Not only had the client still be able to visualize exactly how the site was going to look, but the usually separate process of designing and coding was merged into one – saving time and energy for both you and the client.

My suggestion? If you have a client who can handle not getting a PSD (and really, why would they need it that badly since they obviously can’t do anything with it if they asked you to design a site in the first place?) then don’t give them one. PSD’s and layered documents still have their place, for example in logos (because it is a necessary for an element that will appear in advertisements, business cards, etc), but in the web world? They are just a dying art form that few realize yet.