If you're producing a design that needs to exist as multiple color variants and multiple file formats — say, three colorways each needed as both SVG and high-res transparent PNG — doing this one export at a time adds up to real, avoidable time loss across a growing catalog.
In Illustrator, Photoshop, and several free alternatives, batch export tools exist specifically for this and are underused by a lot of solo designers who don't realize the feature is there. Illustrator's "Export for Screens" panel, for instance, lets you queue up multiple artboards and export all of them at once in multiple formats and scales simultaneously, rather than manually repeating File > Export for each individual variant.
For color variants specifically, setting up your design with a clearly organized color system (using named swatches rather than arbitrarily picked colors scattered throughout the file) makes swapping an entire palette a matter of a few clicks rather than manually reselecting and recoloring each individual element per variant. This is a case where the earlier investment in clean file structure (see our piece on SVG layering and grouping) pays off directly in export efficiency later.
For genuinely repetitive batch tasks — say, needing the same resize-and-export operation applied to dozens of existing files — free tools like GIMP support basic scripting (Script-Fu) for batch processing, and there are also free standalone batch image processing tools that can resize, convert format, and rename large numbers of files in one pass, without needing to open each file individually at all.
A simpler, lower-tech habit that still saves real time: build a personal checklist or template file with your standard export settings already configured (correct color mode, transparency settings, resolution) so you're never re-deciding those settings from scratch for each new design — just duplicating a known-good export setup and swapping in the new artwork.
None of this needs to be a big technical project — even just learning your specific software's batch export feature (most modern design tools have one, even if it's not obviously labeled) is usually a bigger time-saver than any other single workflow change a solo designer can make once their catalog grows past a handful of designs.