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Project Management for Designers: How to Improve Your Day‑to‑Day Operations
20 January 2022     2442

Project Management for Designers: How to Improve Your Day‑to‑Day Operations

Email is full of customer folders and incoming messages. Slack channel full of one-time requests and slight feedback. Several messages and calls written on a piece of paper with information related to the meeting. This may be your usual type of organization and management as a designer.

You have used this approach whenever possible, but you probably already think that this method is insufficiently effective and safe.


What alternatives are there?

You may have heard of project management - or used a few sets - but thought that things like this were more for people with a different mindset (business, tech-savvy, left-minded). Project management has not always been helpful to designers, given that creative elements (such as collaborative functions and asset storage) were not featured. However, all this is changing very quickly and many platforms are already taking creative users seriously - sometimes even giving them an advantage altogether.

Lets take a closer look at the most important project management features for designers and find out how you can digitally transform your processes.

Project Management, Emails, Design, Designer, Collaboration, Projects, Organizing, Creative, Creative, Management, Sorting


Frequent problems for designers

Designers often face the same problems in the design process. For Sparxoo, for example, the most problematic part of designing is deciphering the details in advance.

When Im not involved from the very first meeting with a client, its hard sometimes to help my designers when they need feedback, says Janel Gancena, Artistic Director at Sparxoo. At first, I did not have a wasted space where I could sort and find details of similar briefings together, so I had to spend time with my designers figuring out what context and initial information was being discussed before going directly to help.

When the initial briefing is successful, then there is less need to revisit anything, says Lindsey Chapman, Sparxoos chief studio designer.

Kaeli Hammer, Sparxoos new studio designer, thinks the same thing because I do not have much experience in this field due to my age, therefore I do not know the exact principles by which I lead the process, I do not know exactly how to approach the case; All this is simplified when the information is saved and the briefing details are displayed.

Leaving aside the well-kept briefing information, organizing feedback was quite a big problem for Sparxoo designers. "We mostly relied on Slack chats and emails, which meant messages were easily lost," says Kaeli.

Because he chose different ways of communicating, information was also collected in different places, Lindsey says. Which caused problems with resolving reciprocal feedback from the user.


Project Management, Emails, Design, Designer, Collaboration, Projects, Organizing, Creative, Creative, Management, Sorting


Essential functions of project management for designers

With these problems in mind, PM platforms have also been developed in this regard to find a solution. Designer-oriented platforms sort incoming and outgoing information, allowing clients to get directly involved in the project and offer feedback on specific files in a single space.

There are several functions that play a key role in the success of creative projects, but lets highlight the most effective ones.


Project Proposal Templates

With the quote feature, users can submit detailed briefings on projects and requirements, which greatly helps designers complete a project successfully. The function of creating your own project and requesting templates gives you more freedom in requesting information so that you do not miss any crucial details in the brief. This will standardize the process, with strictly written principles allowing you to better organize project details, making the latter more accessible.


Consent

Another very important function is the consent function. This makes the feedback process more precisely directed and bypasses the sending of continuous emails back and forth. Designers are allowed to upload a sketch of their potential products directly to the platform, allowing the user to specify exactly which specific detail they want to change. This also helps the team to imprint project development details in the memory, which makes it more mobilized since each member has an idea about the issue.


Brand Proprietary Library


Brand Proprietary Library allows designers to customize brand colors, fonts, logos, and similar features for easy access and authentication. With the right organization of the folder, you can store all the user information in one place.


Project Management, Emails, Design, Designer, Collaboration, Projects, Organizing, Creative, Creative, Management, Sorting


Use a project management tool designed for designers

Designers like to spend time finding creative inspiration and collaborating with teammates for new ideas. No one likes to spend half an hour on the back of an email because of a feedback problem. Added to this is the fact that project management is also good for business - it increases team productivity by 20-25% and creative agencies by 252%. Using tools tailored to project management collaboration will reduce confusion in you team, account managers and users. Spend time on what you like - design.
When creative and marketing groups are asked about project management systems, the names of well-known platforms like Asana are often found. To help creative groups develop, CROW has published Asanas top 10 alternatives for project management. Once you find the right platform for collaboration, you take one big step towards the success of the project.

Ika

Ika