- <name>Know Your Tools
- Design with a Goal in Mind
- Speed Is a Priority
- Design for Ease of Use
- Employ Good Production Practices
- Continually Test and Explore Other Solutions
- Choose Between Flexibility and Rigidity
Continually Test and Explore Other Solutions
While constructing a template, incrementally test your work as you go. Although you’ll be conducting a final test upon completion of the template, don’t wait until the very end to examine your work. You could miss out on a valuable opportunity to improve each solution as you build it.
Testing gives you firsthand experience of what it will be like to produce a document with your template. As you test, decipher where improvements can be made and explore other options and solutions. You’ll find that testing helps to transform the solutions you’ve come up with into better and more productive results.
Experienced designers spend a significant amount of time fine-tuning their templates, because they know their efforts will be more than repaid in time saved later, and in the final appearance of a finished publication.