Let’s be honest: “lazy” isn’t a dirty word. In the design world, it’s often a synonym for “efficient,” “smart,” and “sanity-preserved.” The most brilliant creative minds aren’t the ones manually resizing 100 images for a social media kit or painstakingly updating the same footer text across 50 mockups. They’re the ones who found a way to not do that work in the first place.
Automation isn’t about cutting corners on quality; it’s about cutting the cruft so you can focus on what truly matters: the creative, strategic, and fun parts of design. It’s about working smarter, not harder.
Ready to embrace your inner lazy genius? Here’s your guide to automating the tedious stuff.
1. Master Your Macros: The Magic of Actions & Scripts
If you do a task more than twice, it’s a candidate for a macro. Both Photoshop and Illustrator have powerful built-in tools for this.
- Photoshop Actions: This is automation 101. Record a series of steps—like resizing an image, applying a specific filter, and saving it in a new format—and play it back with a single click.
- Lazy Win: Create actions for generating social media graphics in different aspect ratios, applying your signature photo-editing preset, or batch-watermarking a client gallery.
- Illustrator Scripts: For the slightly more advanced lazy designer, scripts can handle complex, repetitive tasks that actions can’t. Illustrator comes with built-in scripts for things like placing multiple images into selected frames or deleting all unused swatches.
- Lazy Win: Use a script to batch-rename layers, convert type to outlines across multiple artboards, or generate a series of business cards from a CSV file.
2. Tame Your Assets: Libraries & Style Guides
Stop searching through old project files for that exact hex code or trying to remember which font weight you used for body copy. Systematize your assets.
- Creative Cloud Libraries: Save your frequently used colors, character styles, graphics, and logos to a CC Library. They sync across your apps and are available to your entire team, ensuring brutal consistency and saving you hours of hunting.
- Shared Styles & Components (Figma/Sketch): If you’re in UI/UX design, this is non-negotiable. Define your buttons, input fields, and color styles as “master” components. When you update the main component, every instance across your entire file updates automatically. It’s the holy grail of lazy (and efficient) design.
3. Conquer the Keyboard: Learn the Shortcuts
This is the lowest-hanging fruit. Every time you reach for the mouse to navigate a menu, you’re adding precious seconds to your task. Multiply that by 100 times a day, and it adds up.
- Go Beyond the Basics: You know Ctrl+C/Cmd+C. But do you know the shortcuts for:
- Paste in Place (Illustrator/Photoshop/Figma)?
- Hide/Show Layers?
- Zoom to Fit?
- Select Same (Fill Color, Stroke Weight, etc.)?
- Pro Tip: Create your own custom keyboard shortcuts for the actions you use most frequently but don’t have a default one.
4. Automate the Boring Stuff: Batch Processing & Naming
This is where you level up from lazy to legendary.
- Batch Image Processing: Need to convert a folder of 300 TIFFs to JPEGs and resize them? Don’t open a single file. Use Photoshop’s Image Processor or the built-in Batch function with an Action. Set it up, hit go, and grab a coffee while your computer does the grunt work.
- Batch Renaming: A messy folder of
IMG_0234.jpg,screenshot_1.png, andfinal-final-v7.aiis a nightmare. Use a free tool like Advanced Renamer (for Windows) or built-in Automator (for Mac) to rename hundreds of files in a structured, logical way in seconds.
5. Connect Your Tools: The Power of Zapier & IFTTT
When your design apps start talking to your other apps, magic happens. Platforms like Zapier and IFTTT (If This, Then That) create “Zaps” or “Applets” that automate workflows across the web.
- Lazy Workflow Ideas:
- When a new design file is added to a specific Dropbox folder, automatically post a preview to a Slack channel for your team to see.
- When you save a new blog post graphic to a Google Drive folder, automatically create a social media post draft in Buffer or Hootsuite.
- Automatically back up every email attachment from a client to a specific Google Drive folder.
Your “Lazy” Starter Kit
Feeling inspired? Don’t try to automate everything at once. Start here:
- Pick One Annoying Task: What did you dread doing this week? Resizing social media images? Updating a client’s logo across multiple files? Start there.
- Spend 15 Minutes Researching: Can it be solved with an Action? A Script? A Batch Process? A quick web search for “[Your Task] + [Your Software] + automation” will usually yield a tutorial.
- Build and Save: Create the Action, save it with a clear name, and assign it a keyboard shortcut if possible.
- Celebrate Your Laziness: The next time you complete that task in two clicks instead of twenty minutes, take a moment to appreciate your newfound genius.
By automating the repetitive, you’re not being lazy. You’re being a strategic designer who values their time and creative energy. You’re freeing up mental RAM to focus on the big picture, the nuanced details, and the next great idea.
Now go on, be lazy. Your best design work is waiting for the space you’re about to create.