5 Time Management Tips for Graphic Designers
As a graphic
designer, time management skills are paramount to completing tasks on deadline. 
5 Time Management Tips
for Graphic Designers

As a graphic designer,
time management skills are paramount to completing tasks on deadline. Whether
you work as a freelance designer, for a specialty graphics firm or for a
newspaper, the ability to produce professional graphics to your clients’
specifications is key to building your career. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
the graphic design industry is highly competitive; so if you want to establish
yourself as a go-to graphic designer that is dependable and efficient, try the
time-management techniques below. 
1.     Establish
your own boundaries 
As a graphic designer,
you may be working independently, so determining limits for production time versus
social interactions is important. Know when to extricate yourself from an
endless meeting by pleading deadlines, and know your personal workload limits.

If you overextend
yourself by promising to deliver too many projects in too little time, you are
doing your clients and yourself a disservice. Instead, take on only what you
can reasonably accomplish in the time allowed, and you won’t find yourself
cutting corners or doing substandard work that detracts from your professional
reputation. 
2.     Chunk
it 
A classic time management
strategy is breaking a large, unwieldy job into manageable chunks. You can
group these chunks by category, for example resizing images or inserting text,
and take care of them all at once. Chunking also allows you to prioritize pieces
in order of importance, and if you happen to head the graphic design
department, you can delegate the less important tasks to your employees. 
3.     Put
yourself under pressure
 If you are like many
creative people, you work best under pressure, whether brought to bear by a
looming deadline or by an impatient boss. By setting some optimistic goals,
generate positive energy and boost productivity.

One way to manufacture
pressure is to allot less time to a task than it would normally take. For
example, challenge yourself to deliver projects a day or two before they are
due. Promise to turn in the artwork for an ad as soon as you can possibly
manage. Accept an extra task or two. 
4.     Train
yourself 
Train yourself to work
quicker with the prospect of rewards. When you anticipate a mocha latte as a
treat for completing a complicated design, you are likely to work harder and
more efficiently. The reward does not have to be food or a beverage; it could
be a new article of clothing or tickets to a baseball game. The most important
thing is that you want it enough to work harder for it. Before long, you will
become accustomed to working at a faster, more efficient pace. That does not
mean you should stop rewarding yourself, though.
 5.     Create
creative shortcuts
 Determine which tasks you
perform several times each work day. Then, create shortcuts that reduce the
time you spend on each task. For example, you could change the defaults on the
graphics software you are using to streamline and standardize routine work.
Selecting fonts, ruler guides, text styles and graphic standards for each page
in advance shaves precious production time and boosts your creative output. You
could customize templates for daily design tasks that you only have to update
with new content. You can also create a step-by-step checklist to follow each
time you perform the same routine work.

With good time management
strategies, your work will benefit and so will your career. Establishing
boundaries, chunking large projects, applying pressure on your own terms, rewarding
yourself and creating shortcuts all contribute to the quality and quantity of
the graphics you produce,
giving you the boost you need to improve your career prospects.