Every designer knows the feeling. You’re staring at a blank canvas, the cursor blinking mockingly, while the deadline on your calendar screams for attention. In these moments, “designing faster” feels like an impossible dream, a choice between rushing and creating something you’re actually proud of.
But what if “faster” isn’t about rushing? What if it isn’t about cutting corners or being a faster clicker in Figma?
After years of managing complex software projects and designing systems from the ground up, I’ve learned that speed isn’t about raw velocity. It’s about efficiency. It’s about removing friction, eliminating wasted effort, and creating a deliberate process that allows your creativity to flow unimpeded.
You can dramatically speed up your design workflow without sacrificing quality. Here are seven ways to become a smarter, more efficient designer.
1. Stop Designing, Start Assembling (Use a System)
The slowest way to design is to create every single element from scratch, every single time. The fastest way is to build with components you’ve already perfected.
- The New Reality: Create your own personal UI kit or design system. Spend time building a robust set of reusable components: buttons in every state, form fields, typography styles, color palettes, and common layouts (like cards or headers). When you start a new project, you’re not starting from zero; you’re assembling a solution with high-quality, pre-built blocks. This is how developers build software, and it’s how designers should build layouts.
2. Embrace “Ugly” Wireframing
Getting bogged down in fonts and color choices at the beginning of a project is a massive time-sink. You can spend hours perfecting a visual style only to realize the fundamental layout is wrong.
- The New Reality: Force yourself to separate structure from style. Start every project in low-fidelity grayscale. Use simple boxes and placeholder text. The goal of this “ugly” phase is to solve the core layout and user flow problems without the distraction of aesthetics. Once the blueprint is solid, adding the visual layer is exponentially faster.
3. Use AI as Your Creative Intern
AI is not here to replace your creativity; it’s here to augment your efficiency. Stop seeing it as a threat and start treating it like a tireless, lightning-fast intern who can handle the grunt work.
- The New Reality: Delegate specific, time-consuming tasks to AI.
- Ideation: Ask it to generate 20 different mood board concepts in seconds.
- Content: Have it generate realistic placeholder text (
Lorem Ipsumis dead). - Assets: Use it to quickly generate placeholder images or explore hundreds of color palette variations.
- Let AI handle the quantity so you can focus on curating the quality.
4. Weaponize Your Workspace
Your design tool is your primary weapon. A cluttered, inefficient workspace will slow you down, while a streamlined one will make you feel like you have superpowers.
- The New Reality: Spend a few hours optimizing your software (like Figma or Adobe XD).
- Master Components: Learn how to use auto-layout, variants, and components like a pro.
- Install Plugins: Find plugins that automate repetitive tasks. There are plugins for everything: populating layouts with real data, checking color contrast for accessibility, organizing your layers, and much more.
- Learn Core Shortcuts: You don’t need to know every shortcut, but mastering the 20 you use most often will translate into hours saved every week.
5. Front-Load the Discovery Process
The single biggest time-waster in any design project is a confused client and an unclear brief. Endless cycles of vague feedback (“make it pop”) are a direct result of a poor discovery process.
- The New Reality: Be a detective at the beginning of the project. Have a mandatory, in-depth kickoff meeting. Use a detailed creative brief questionnaire to extract every piece of information you need before you open your design tool. An extra hour of asking pointed questions upfront will save you 10 hours of frustrating revisions later.
6. Design in Sprints, Not Marathons
The human brain can only maintain intense creative focus for a limited time. Trying to design for eight hours straight is counterproductive, leading to burnout and poor decisions.
- The New Reality: Use a structured time-management system like the Pomodoro Technique. Work in focused 25-minute sprints with zero distractions, then take a mandatory 5-minute break to step away from your screen. This rhythm keeps your mind fresh and your focus sharp, allowing you to produce higher-quality work in less total time.
7. Master the Art of the Template
Many parts of the design process are repeatable. If you find yourself creating the same type of document or file structure over and over again, you’re wasting valuable time.
- The New Reality: Create a template for everything.
- Project Folders: Have a master folder structure you can duplicate for every new project.
- Proposals & Contracts: Create a template you can quickly customize.
- Design Files: Start every project from a template file that already includes your favorite grid systems, typography styles, and basic wireframe components.
Becoming a faster designer isn’t about sacrificing your craft. It’s about respecting your time. By building systems, optimizing your process, and using your tools intelligently, you remove the roadblocks and free up your most valuable resource: the creative energy needed to do your best work.