How Designers Can Help Developers - from Matt Gemmell

For iOS developers who hire designers to help them create their beautiful applications, here is a list of things they should communicate to the designers to get him started and know about your expectations. Many of these items maybe already be known to the designer. But, don't take anything for granted.

• Use an intelligent method of version-control
• Keep your layers
• Name all your layers meaningfully
• Use groups, and do so sensibly
• Prune unneeded layers
• Use Layer Comps
• Keep everything as vectors, and scaleable effects
• Learn how to preserve rounded corners while resizing
• Design at 72 ppi
• Snap to whole pixels
• Always use RGB mode
• Asset-preparation is part of your job
• Be careful with fonts
• Mimic the platform’s text-rendering (where possible)
• Be sure of design dimension
• Use the platform’s idioms
• Design once for landscape, then design again for portrait
• Design for each major screen-size, and their contexts
• Use genuine or at least realistic content
• Consider localization
• Respect the global light source
• Make navigational or organisational constructs explicit
• Export cut-ups without compression
• Ask about shadows
• Understand how buttons are constructed

This list is a excerpt from the excellent article from Matt Gemmell.