Lesson 1: Save Time By Automating Spec Prep

“Using Zeplin has created more time for our team to experiment with designs, as opposed to manually creating design spec documents.
Our engineers prefer not having paper or PDF spec documents, instead they can reference designs on-screen.”​ ​​–Jason Stoff, Sr. Designer at Starbucks

You’ll want to save time preparing specs by automating as much of the speccing, redlining, and asset preparation processes as possible. This is where a design handoff tool comes in.

Before handoff tools existed, designers would print their designs on paper, draw redlines with a pen, and hand the paper to their engineer. The good news is you don’t have to do that anymore. 😅

Now, redlines, specs, and code snippets can be automatically generated using Zeplin by uploading your file from Sketch, Photoshop, Adobe XD CC, and Figma.

Zeplin automatically redlines your file and converts your specs to the right format for your developer’s platform. When you mouse over your file in Zeplin, you can see redlines, asset sizes, and easily export assets with accompanying code snippets.

Traditionally, handoff tasks like preparing specifications, converting assets to the right format, version control, and communicating updates to the rest of your team took a lot of time and back-and-forth. The more you can automate handoff, the more you can focus on design.