In the freelancing world, time truly is money! The faster you produce high-quality designs for clients, the more projects you can handle, boosting your earning potential.
Yet, many freelancers still struggle with lengthy design processes, leading to stress, missed deadlines, and fewer opportunities. But it doesn't have to be this way.
With the right strategies, you can cut down your design time drastically while maintaining—and even enhancing—the quality of your work.
Our latest blog post shares practical tips and actionable strategies to help freelancers create stunning visuals five times faster. Whether you're a seasoned designer or just starting out, these insights will improve your efficiency, allowing you to focus more on what you love and less on the mundane.
1. Use Pre-made Templates
Start with high-quality templates that match your project’s style. There are alot of tools that offer thousands of pre-designed templates for everything from social media posts to presentations. These templates are fully customizable, allowing you to tweak colors, fonts, and images to suit your client’s brand. By starting with a template, you can save hours on layout and design, focusing instead on fine-tuning and adding your personal touch.
Customizable Smart Templates for Your Brand
designstripe provides a wide range of smart templates that you can fully customize to align with your brand in just a few clicks.
2. Master Keyboard Shortcuts
Learning and using keyboard shortcuts can drastically reduce the time you spend on repetitive tasks. In design software like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Figma, shortcuts can help you navigate tools, layers, and commands with speed and precision. Invest time in memorizing the most commonly used shortcuts or keep a cheat sheet handy.
Keyboard Shortcuts Examples:
- Photoshop: Pressing “B” to quickly select the brush tool, “Ctrl + T” to transform objects, or “Ctrl + Z” to undo actions.
- Illustrator: Use “A” to switch to the direct selection tool, “P” for the pen tool, and “Ctrl + G” to group objects.
- Figma: Shortcuts like “Ctrl + D” to duplicate objects and “Ctrl + Shift + K” to place images efficiently speed up your design process.
Getting the hang of those shortcuts saves seconds, which can really add up during a project. Those little bits of time can turn into hours saved each week.
Here are few useful resources for you if you are using Photoshop, Illustrator or Figma:
Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Guide: Speed up your Photoshop workflow with these essential shortcuts, perfect for freelance designers and marketers looking to save time and enhance productivity when designing.
Top Shortcuts for Figma: Optimize your Figma experience with these shortcuts, designed to help UX/UI freelance designers and developers work faster and collaborate more effectively.
Illustrator Shortcuts Guide: Improve your Illustrator skills with this list of shortcuts, helping graphic designers and artists complete tasks quickly.
Effortless Visual Assets for Your Marketing
With designstripe, you can quickly grab amazing visual assets that fit your marketing needs—no need to learn complicated keyboard shortcuts.
Just enter your website, blog post, or idea, and our AI will pick up on your brand’s unique style in just a few clicks.
Just sit back and relax as our smart platform creates impressive designs for you.
3. Create a Design Asset Library
Build a personal library of frequently used design elements, such as icons, fonts, and color schemes. Having these assets at your fingertips means you won’t have to search for them every time you start a new project. Organize your library in a way that makes it easy to find what you need quickly.
Save and Organize Your Favorite Designs
With designstripe's save feature, you can easily store all your selected templates and images for future use or further editing and customization. This makes it simple to keep your favorite designs organized and accessible, so you can quickly find them whenever you need them.
For freelance social media content creators, this feature is a real time-saver. It helps you stay consistent and keep all your stuff organized in one convenient place.
4. Use AI-Powered Tools
AI-powered tools are revolutionizing the design process by automating routine tasks and enhancing creativity. With features like background removal, image enhancement, and layout generation, these tools let you focus on the creative magic. Discover how AI empowers you to embrace the future of design and enhance the quality of your work.
Efficiency: Automation of mundane tasks frees up time for more critical aspects of the project.
Quality Enhancement: AI tools can perform tasks with high precision, ensuring consistent quality across all design elements.
Creative Freedom: By handling repetitive tasks, AI allows you to spend more time exploring creative ideas and refining your designs.
Get On-Brand Designs and Content Ideas with AI
If you're stuck with design or writing copy for your social media marketing, designstripe can suggest ideas and topics tailored to your business.
Simply click the "More Suggestions" button, and designstripe’s AI will become your personal idea generator. It offers suggestions tailored to your industry and brand, ensuring your content remains relevant and engaging for your audience.
Additionally, it generates captions that match your brand's voice in various styles.
That's not all—designstripe also makes it easy to download designs optimized for all your social media platforms without the need for manual resizing. Our auto-resize feature ensures your posts look perfect across every platform and in any social media post format.
That’s the power of AI!
5. Batch Similar Tasks Together
Batching is a handy productivity trick where you group similar tasks together and tackle them all at once. This approach lightens the mental load and cuts down on the time spent flipping between different tasks, letting you focus better and work more efficiently. Here's why it works so well:
- It Reduces Context Switching: Constantly shifting focus between different types of tasks can break concentration and slow down progress. Batching helps maintain focus on one task type at a time.
- It Increases Productivity: By completing similar tasks together, you gain momentum and reduce the overall time spent on projects.
- It Produces Higher Quality: Focused work reduces the likelihood of errors, ensuring that each task is completed with attention to detail.
You can do this by:
1. Listing Tasks: Break down your project into specific tasks.
2. Grouping by Type: Identify tasks that are similar in nature.
3. Allocating Time Blocks: Dedicate uninterrupted time slots to complete each group of tasks.
Create Months of Social Media Content
Skip daily content creation and batch your work with designstripe. Plan and produce content months in advance using AI-generated posts.
Describe your idea in simple terms, and designstripe's AI will create branded social media posts in seconds, complete with visuals and captions.
Paste a link to an article, blog post, or product page, and designstripe will generate engaging posts that maintain your brand’s consistency.
3. Create for All Platforms Simultaneously
Plus, you can create content for LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all at once. Our auto-resize feature ensures your posts look great on every platform. Simply download designs optimized for each one without manual resizing.
Whether you're new to social media or an expert, designstripe helps you effortlessly create captivating content that reflects your brand's essence.
6. Optimize Your Workspace
An optimized workspace, whether digital or physical, can really boost your productivity. Keeping things clutter-free cuts distractions, and an organized digital space makes finding and using your tools a breeze. Here’s why it's awesome:
- Less Distractions: A clean, organized workspace minimizes distractions, allowing you to stay focused on your design work.
- Faster Workflow: An intuitive digital setup, with frequently used tools and panels within easy reach, streamlines the design process. A tidy, organized workspace helps you stay focused on your design projects.
- Mental Clarity: A well-organized space can help reduce stress and mental clutter, promoting a more productive mindset.
Tips for Optimizing Your Workspace
1. Digital Organization - Create a structured folder system on your computer, with clearly labeled folders for different types of files (e.g., images, fonts, drafts). This setup makes it simple to locate files without wasting time searching through unorganized directories.
2. Ergonomic Setup - Ensure your desk setup is comfortable and conducive to long periods of work. Use a good chair, adjust your monitor height, and keep essential tools within arm’s reach.
3. Clean Desk Policy: Keep only the essentials on your desk—like your drawing tablet, notebook, and a cup of coffee. A clutter-free desk reduces visual distractions and helps maintain focus.
Organize Visual Assets in One Platform
designstripe’s Media Library makes it easy to manage marketing assets. Create folders, upload images, and use filters to organize files effectively.
Streamline your asset management with designstripe’s Media Library.
7. Automate Repetitive Tasks
Automation can be a powerful ally in speeding up your design process. Many design tools offer features to automate repetitive tasks, such as resizing images, applying filters, or exporting files. Setting up these automations can save you hours of manual work, allowing you to focus on more creative and strategic tasks.
Automate Social Media Content Creation with designstripe
Social media content creation is a repetitive task that you can automate with designstripe.
- Instantly access customizable templates for branded visuals.
- Use AI to generate posts from simple prompts or links.
- Generate captions in different ways you could imagine.
- Save and organize favorite designs for easy access.
- Create and schedule content months in advance.
- Effortlessly manage visual assets with a dedicated Media Library.
- Filter and sort files by type or date to stay organized.
- Save time with automated idea generation, design and content creation.
Let designstripe take care of your social media content creation—start automating today!
Your Turn…
Streamline your workflow with these seven strategies that cut down on time without sacrificing quality.
From organization and task management to leveraging technology, each tip targets a different part of the process, helping you boost productivity and take on more projects with ease.
Perfect for freelancers juggling multiple clients, these time-saving techniques are a game-changer, allowing you to create amazing visuals faster and enjoy a better work-life balance.
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