I don't mean amazing as in a design I really love, or something challenging but solid, though those are pretty great too. I'm talking about well put together, well organized, ready to slice Photoshop files. When I open those babies up with full colour coordination, labelled layers, vectored type and a notation layer, my heart sings. There's a few things that can be done, and that are eventually done to files to make them extremely exciting for your web developer and I'm going to outline them here today, because I think it will lift my germy spirits.

Importing from Illustrator

I know there are a lot of designers that use Illustrator as their primary application when it comes to web design. That's totally cool as I do as well. It makes moving things around quick and easy, type is 100% easier to manage and resizing elements is a breeze. Luckily for us there's a pretty solid "Export to Photoshop" option under the "Export" menu. That's the first thing that'll make me happy. I will do all my slicing and all my reference work from Photoshop. Illustrator has not quite gotten there as far as web stuff goes and that's fine because Photoshop does it very well. Everything ends up in Photoshop in the end ( with the exception of Flash elements). I'll end up doing this myself on occasion which is fine, it's relatively quick but this brings us to another side effect of using Illustrator : everything becomes a layer.

Layers : Quantity

Layers are great and I am not down on layers but there definitely is something as too many layers. Too many layers will make the file almost unworkable because of it's size. Even if the file is below 10mb it can act like a 60mb file in no time if it has too many layers. This is something that Illustrator does well when exporting, it makes everything a layer. Every piece, every logo section, it'll make it a layer. Something that seems simple and light in Illustrator can blow up in Photoshop super fast. Once someone has exported to Photoshop they will be my best friend if they go through the layers and start merging when necessary. I don't need all 80 pieces of the logo, just the logo itself. This makes the file efficient and workable for me but also helps you in keeping your work and your production files organized and easy to reference and change when you need to. If I find that a file is too much for me to work with efficiently I'll usually go through and split it up into pages and get rid of anything I don't need. This is inefficient and can possibly result in missed pieces if something is hidden.

Layers : Labels

I love me a good label. Labeling your layers, styles, and master sheets is great practice in any aspect of design. It allows you to hand off your files if you need to for a coworker, a printshop, a studio or your favorite web developer without creating a lot of time consuming confusion. The less time I have to spend figuring things out, and usually labeling them myself, is less time I have to bill to the client and less time before I can get into the meat of what I do. I enjoy meat. The labeling process is also a good way to go through your files to make sure that everything that you need is in the file and everything you don't is tossed away. It's good housekeeping and makes me very happy. Fun fact : you can colour coordinate layers in Photoshop. This is like the candy roses on a cake for me and will make my day. It doesn't happen often but wow is it beautiful when it does.

Fonts, stock, Quark, Oh my!

La pièce de résistance, the support files. Quark and inDesign have it right here. Exporting everything into little separate, organized folders would be a welcome function for me in Illustrator. You don't link to files quite as often but it still happens and I especially have trouble chasing down fonts. Everything in neat, organized folders with all your fonts present? That makes me happy. Especially when dealing with our CMS font files, they become very important when it's well integrated into your design. It's also really important to me that fonts aren't outlined in Illustrator or Photoshop, that they remain vector. Why? That way I can grab exact sizes, line-heights, letter-spacing and all that other fun typesetting stuff you put so much time into. I trust your design judgement so I will definitely happily take all the information I need from the still vector text. The difference between me and a printshop is that the printshop is using your file but I will be using it for bits and pieces and reference, essentially recreating it on screen.

The notes

This is also a nice little bonus. It really shows the designer cares. Like flowers for no reason or a surprise pick up at the ferry terminal, it brings a smile to my face and a warmth to my heart. Notes. One layer, on top of everything, full of notes. This has included margins, widths, other measurements, font sizes, letter spacing, colours, all at my fingertips. It does require some extra effort on the designers part so while I don't expect it'll certainly set my heart aflutter and I might call my mother, telling her that I found the one.

My head feels a little less congested now. Whether that's my positive thoughts or the cold medication that just kicked in, we may never know. I'm going to crawl into bed now and dream of amazing production files and beautiful websites.