Friday Design Tip: Reusing Designs

Happy Friday, dear readers! I know it’s been a bit quiet around her lately. It’s not that I haven’t been doing graphic design work for my library or even that I haven’t thought about blogging. It’s that I’ve been exhausted and there never seems to be enough hours in the day for everything. I’m sure many of you can understand and relate to that. 2020 has been a rough year in so many ways, but there is light at the end of the tunnel (and it isn’t an oncoming train!) and I wanted to share a bit before the end of the year (and hopefully will be able to blog more consistently in the new year).

Today, I wanted to remind us all (let’s be honest, remind myself, too), that reusing things is not just about saving the environment by reusing items instead of recycling or throwing them away, but for design work as well. If you’ve made something wonderful, why not reuse it again?

Well, you may be thinking to yourself, isn’t that cheating? Shouldn’t we always design from scratch?

My answer: No! Reusing your designs or parts of your designs is a smart, efficient way to be able to get all your work done, especially now when we’re all juggling a lot more than usual. I know, sometimes we can feel guilty about reusing something (or maybe that’s just me), but it really is a great way to be able to get your projects out the door, especially on short timelines.

Does anyone else seem to be getting last minute projects and hella short deadlines, too? Or is it just me? I don’t think it’s just me from my talks with friends. But short deadlines always make me nervous, especially when I have other projects I’m working on, which is why reusing designs saves my work so many times.

Example is this handout that I designed for a new student orientation. I was told about this a day before it was due, but luckily I had already created a handout for the summer student orientation. So I pulled up that InDesign file, updated the information for our services and resources, proofed it, exported it to a PDF, double-checked the links, and submitted it by the deadline.

Handout for Fall Orientation:

Fall handout detailing library resources and services

Handout from Summer Orientation:

summer orientation handout for library services and resources

There was no way I would have been able to do that if I had decided I needed to rework the entire thing from scratch. Also, there was no point since the design already worked, most of the information was the same, and I only needed to do some updating.

So give yourself the permission to reuse your designs—in whole or in part—and make those ridiculous deadlines without feeling like you want to throw your laptop through the window!

I hope that you have a lovely weekend planned, some time off to relax, and some time to recharge your creative juices. Thank you, dear readers, for being here and reading. I appreciate you. Until next time, allons-y friends!