As a general rule, designers and developers should avoid trying to be clever, and should concentrate on working smart. First thing to do is use your time wisely. For example, I like to remember the 90/90 rule when creating almost anything. The principle is: To make something 90% perfect takes 90% of the time; To do the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time!!!
Second thing to remember is that "The perfect is the enemy of the good”. Sometimes trying to get something perfect can be detrimental to your project, and you can risk not even ending up with a good result.
K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple, stupid: In web design, there are always opportunities to do something a bit nicer, a bit cuter, a bit flashier, a bit more impressive, a bit more robust, a bit quicker to download, or a bit more compliant. Very often, these things can take you into "being clever" territory, and falling into the 90/90 rule, where that little bit of extra work takes just as long as it took to build the basic site to begin with. The material point is that you almost always won't get 90% more benefit (for your client or yourself) by going the extra mile.
Being clever usually introduces complexity, which in turn introduces risk. The more fiddly and complex your visual design, the harder it will be to produce, the more files will be created, the longer it will take to download, and the most costly it will be to maintain. Working smart means honestly justify any additional complexity before you plough on and do it.
Sometimes, sure, it's worth it. If it's really important to you that your site should validate to a certain HTML standard, or if you've committed to keep the homepage size fewer than 70KB, or if you promised the client that some client-side script will work in a certain way, then maybe you have to do it.
My advice is to think carefully before you act, and consider whether the benefit is worth the cost. For example:
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Are there any prizes for getting a page size down by 10% if it takes you a whole day's work, and the page is fit-for-purpose at the slightly heavier weight?
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Do you really have to re-code your scripts to be object-oriented, extensible or reusable if they're only destined for this particular application?
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What do you really get out of churning out 5 example designs to show your client, when the first one you did was great? (Just give them the good one, and rave about it!)
Smart Resources - One of the best ways to save time and money is to get all your quality images from one place, without any copyright hassles, or in other words, to subscribe to a royalty-free image library. These give you unlimited free access to huge collections of photos, and sometimes clip art and icons etc. The best ones have really smart tools to help you search, like searching for photos that feature a certain key colour, or ones with similar keywords to another photo. Normally, you can sign up for a week, a month or a year. It gets cheaper the longer you sign up for.
Do you spend hours trawling Google Images or Yahoo! Image Search to find the right photo to use on a client's site? It can be painful pulling up pages and pages of images that are too small, watermarked, and poor quality or just not good enough. And then, you have the background stress of always wondering whether you've infringed someone else's copyright. If you're a full-time web designer, get an annual subscription to something like Photos.com, PhotoObjects.net, and/or AbleStock.com without delay!
After the subscription, make it work for you, use it! Whole site designs can be built around one really great image, so get to know your resource, learn how to get the best out of the search tools, and milk it for all it's worth!
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