Fresh

While much of the country is still reeling from the effects of massive winter-ness, PDX has had an untimely run-in with Spring for the last week or so. Our cabin fever has been relieved for the moment, and so our thoughts turn towards happy hour on the patio and unplanned use of vacation days.

Now, some of us have a not-so-healthy idea of fun (spring cleaning, anyone?). Of course, often it’s necessary to purge clutter and bad habits, and spring is as good a time to do that as any. In this spirit we wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the best practices we’ve found when working with your design files. Good habits can make the difference between a seamless development process and a complete nightmare, one that will try everyone’s patience and waste valuable time. We’ve even included a little treat at the end to help get you started. Ready to clean house?

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This Background was created using a Photoshop brush called “Fresh_Foliage_HighRes001″ from Designfruit . Many graphic designers create there own custom brushes and allow anyone to download, install and use these brushes as long as you follow some basic rule regarding the usage rights that the creator establishes. This artist specifically declares that these brushes aren’t to be used for designing work to be sold on stock photography sites. The idea behind this background I created (using this brush set) was to create an early evening sky with some graphics to frame the composition.