Selecting the greatest digital asset administration (DAM) software program to your design workforce isn’t nearly on the lookout for superior options to help inventive processes — the most important good thing about digital asset administration for designers is the freedom DAMs give different groups to make use of model property with out bothering designers. So a very helpful digital asset administration platform may have options to help your design workforce’s workflows AND allow different groups to (independently) use the model collateral the designers present for them within the DAM system.

Right here’s why:

Earlier than transitioning to DAM software program, many inventive groups use commonplace cloud storage drives like Google Drive or Dropbox to retailer and share model collateral. Nevertheless, these drives are actually restricted of their performance, and plenty of designers are nonetheless left losing time…

• Responding to asset requests each time any person is unable to discover a file (or hasn’t but been shared on a file)
• Attempting to maintain their asset library organized so everyone’s at all times engaged on the identical variations of property within the hopes that they aren’t left answering a billion questions on which model of an asset to make use of
• Modifying property — or creating new collateral — each time any person wants a graphic modified for a unique venture or audience
• Reviewing new property and your whole groups’ tasks earlier than they’re given the go-ahead to proceed

To not point out, many cloud storage drives don’t have collaboration instruments or integrations, so groups are left engaged on asset updates and digital tasks in different platforms (and doing the entire guide importing and downloading between software program). Your complete course of is simply clunky.

DAMs get everyone working extra productively, giving designers the time to truly concentrate on their very own design duties as a substitute of responding to and helping everyone else.

So on this put up, we’ll speak about how our digital asset administration system, Brandfolder, is ready as much as help your design workforce… and the entire groups they must help. Right here’s a sneak peek at what you are able to do with Brandfolder:

• Retailer your whole digital information in a single place, and maintain your library present and clear
• Share your whole model’s media information with the groups who want to make use of them
• Assist your whole groups work extra independently
• Collaborate with different workforce members
• Customise your DAM to help your groups’ workflows
• Use asset analytics to plan new digital content material

Keep an Up-to-Date, Robotically Organized Library

Brandfolder acts like cloud storage drives in the truth that it shops your whole model collateral (a.okay.a. your design workforce’s content material) in a single place. However it expands upon these drives in a number of key methods:

One, Brandfolder accepts all file varieties/codecs — so it accepts the everyday photos, paperwork, spreadsheets, PDFs, that cloud drives retailer, nevertheless it additionally helps you to retailer inventive property like colour HEX codes, fonts, templates, Photoshop and Illustrator tasks, and so forth. This makes it so that you solely want one storage drive for your whole model collateral. Plus, your whole customers and stakeholders are accessing the identical asset library.

Two, Brandfolder helps you to arrange your asset library in a approach that makes essentially the most sense to your finish customers. This makes your library simpler to navigate and improves the consumer expertise. Our workforce will assist you to map your whole library earlier than importing so you may set it up the best way that makes essentially the most sense for the way you employ it.

Three, Brandfolder has instruments to robotically maintain your asset library up to date so everyone is at all times viewing, utilizing, engaged on, and so forth. the identical variations of property — and no person has to wade by means of duplicate information or ask designers about asset variations.

A few of these options embody:

• Duplicate asset detection: This notifies customers after they’ve uploaded a file that already exists in Brandfolder and prompts them to both cancel the add or merge the asset with the prevailing file in an “Asset Container.” These are helpful if you wish to retailer completely different variations of an asset collectively — for instance, you may have merchandise that are available in a number of colours/variations and also you need to home sure product photographs collectively, or you may have branded content material like logos in numerous file varieties and don’t need a bunch of variations of your emblem cluttering your primary asset library. Duplicate asset detection can also be helpful as a result of it helps designers see what they have already got and what they should create.

• New asset critiques: You possibly can arrange Brandfolder to warn you — and every other consumer you add as a collaborator — each time a brand new asset is uploaded or an present asset is up to date, that approach you may overview and approve all property earlier than they’re out there for different customers to entry and obtain. This additionally offers you higher management over your asset library, typically.

• Read moreCreate, Customise and Scale Your Model With Templates

  Asset expirations: When you have sure property you’ll solely want for a restricted time, you may set them to run out on a selected date and stop others from accessing and utilizing outdated or outdated collateral. This makes it simpler for designers to regulate the complete asset lifecycle from creation to expiration.

Share Property With Everyone Who Wants Them

Storing model property and inventive collateral in Brandfolder improves its accessibility for each inside customers and exterior collaborators so designers can spend much less time sharing content material.

There are other ways to share digital property in Brandfolder, relying on who you’re sharing with:

• You possibly can share property with workforce members with consumer permissions. Simply select the asset(s) you need to share and add different customers to view, obtain, or edit them. When including customers to “Collections” (or different teams of property), they’ll have entry to all present property in that Assortment and any new collateral that’s uploaded sooner or later — designers can simply add information to Brandfolder with out having to share every particular person asset.

• You possibly can share property with exterior collaborators and stakeholders with customized share hyperlinks, and we provide limitless free visitor seats so you are able to do as a lot sharing as you want with out being charged further charges. Our share hyperlink function offers you higher management over exterior sharing and means that you can monitor your whole workforce’s share hyperlinks.

With customized share hyperlinks, you may:

• Change the identify of the hyperlink
• Set the hyperlink to run out
• Require finish customers to submit an electronic mail tackle to open the hyperlink
• Watermark shared property
• Disable downloading (a.okay.a share property in a “view solely” mode)
• Set real-time alerts for when finish customers open or obtain property
• Add or take away property to the hyperlink at any time

As we stated above, DAMs are actually helpful for inventive groups as a result of they liberate designers’ time: Along with making it attainable for others to search out and use the property they want with out requesting content material from designers, Brandfolder additionally has further options so customers with completely no graphic design expertise can repurpose inventive collateral for his or her particular person tasks.

First, our superior search function lets customers simply discover model property and uncover new inventive content material for his or her tasks. They don’t must know file names, and even precisely what they’re on the lookout for: They will kind absolutely anything into the principle search bar, and our proprietary AI — Model Intelligence — will get to work analyzing your model’s asset library and pulling the entire collateral that’s associated to the search. This lets customers see every part your designers have that’s related to their tasks, additionally making it clear if new content material must be added.

Subsequent, we’ve got “on-the-fly” conversion options so customers can modify property (file format, file dimension) for various on-line channels or digital tasks when pushing the asset from Brandfolder; this eliminates the necessity for an additional conversion software and prevents customers from creating duplicate variations of the file.

Our customized cropping performance additionally helps you to rapidly crop property earlier than publishing or printing. You possibly can create “customized crops” for any medium’s specs, however we’ve got presets for standard web sites like Fb, Twitter, and Instagram already out there. Being able to rapidly optimize property is useful for entrepreneurs who frequently publish social media property or work with a wide range of advertising and marketing supplies as a result of it helps them get content material in entrance of their audience sooner.

For extra particulars on utilizing digital asset administration software program for publishing, try our different put up.

To provide your different groups and stakeholders much more inventive freedom, Brandfolder has an non-compulsory templating function. Designers can add pre-approved templates for standard collateral varieties (i.e., gross sales collateral like brochures and enterprise playing cards, or advertising and marketing content material like electronic mail templates and headers), management precisely how customers customise these templates, then push these templates out for others to entry and use (and reuse) when they should create contemporary, distinctive content material for his or her tasks.

Templates maintain everyone on-brand, and since designers can management how customers personalize templates, “completed” templates don’t want an additional overview from creatives earlier than they are often downloaded and used. You can even learn extra about this function in our put up on advertising and marketing collateral templates.

All of those options are handy as a result of they let everyone who wants to make use of your property come into Brandfolder, discover the property they want, and instantly start utilizing them — as a result of they know the property they’re discovering are present and accepted. This not solely makes everyone extra environment friendly, nevertheless it additionally improves model consistency.

On that observe, Brandfolder additionally has a Brandguide function that many designers discover helpful. With Brandguide, you may arrange model tips proper in Brandfolder — your Brandguide is robotically accessible to anyone you share property with, so everyone who’s utilizing your property has detailed directions on how you can use them appropriately.

Along with the instruments to retailer and share property, and Brandfolder’s options to assist others use these property, our DAM resolution additionally has plenty of options to assist designers work extra effectively (collectively and individually). Let’s speak about a few of these.

Collaborate in Brandfolder

Designers can collaborate on asset updates and new tasks inside Brandfolder by way of the Workflow tab and our Workspaces function.

The Workflow tab (positioned proper inside the Asset Overview) is the place you may replace present property, and talk with workforce members on these asset updates. On this Workflow tab, you may:

• Remark backwards and forwards with different customers and think about the complete remark historical past
• Examine property out for updating (and push them over to their native software for edits)
• Examine property again in as soon as updates are full (and push them again into Brandfolder from the editor)
• Monitor the complete model historical past and the modifications that have been made throughout every replace
• Revert the asset again to a earlier model (or obtain earlier variations) if you want to backtrack

As soon as property are pushed again into Brandfolder post-editing, they continue to be in a pending standing till they are often reviewed and accepted. As soon as accepted, the asset robotically updates throughout the Brandfolder platform (and anywhere the asset’s hyperlink is embedded on-line — extra on that beneath) so everyone is at all times viewing essentially the most up-to-date and accepted variations of property.

Our Workspaces function is completely different from the Workflow tab as a result of it lets designers work on and handle new asset manufacturing and different “in-progress” digital tasks immediately in Brandfolder. It features as a built-in venture administration software, so designers can:

• Break up tasks into duties
• Assign duties to workforce members
• Add due dates for duties and alter their precedence
• Observe alongside on venture standing with real-time updates
• Present suggestions for different customers multi functional place

Workspaces is constructed so your inventive groups can deal with even the most important of design duties in a simplified atmosphere.

Customise Your Brandfolder to Work With Your Different Instruments

Brandfolder has dozens of out-of-the-box integrations and an open-source API so you may join it with any of the instruments your groups use of their workflows and seamlessly push property between platforms.

For starters, it integrates with graphic design and content material creation purposes like Adobe’s Inventive Cloud (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and so forth.), Canva, Sketch, and Figma.

Nevertheless, it additionally integrates with different software program varieties, like:

• Content material administration programs (CMS) like WordPress and Contentful
• CRM software program like Salesforce
• Marcom like Hootsuite and HubSpot
• Workspace instruments like Slack, Google Suite, and Microsoft365
• Undertaking administration software program like SmartSheet and Trello

Plus, it’s additionally constructed with a content material supply community (CDN) system, so you should utilize Brandfolder as a single supply of fact and publish property on-line by copying and pasting the asset’s hyperlink (as we talked about above).

The built-in CDN system is nice for eCommerce manufacturers who need to use DAM software program to energy their web site. Nevertheless, many advertising and marketing groups additionally like this function as a result of they’ll publish electronic mail advertising and marketing campaigns and different on-line content material immediately from Brandfolder and know that any updates made on the DAM stage will mirror in all of their tasks.

As well as, Brandfolder has a web-to-print integration so your groups can push collateral immediately from the DAM to the printer of their selection and pace up that course of.

Use Insights & Analytics to Plan Inventive Content material

Our DAM software program additionally has in-depth reporting capabilities so designers can take a look at how their inventive collateral is utilized by different workforce members and see how profitable it’s with goal audiences. Then, they’ll leverage that information to strategically gameplan content material creation.

With Brandfolder’s reporting function, designers can see:

• How usually every asset has been considered, downloaded, or shared
• Who’s viewing, downloading, and sharing your property
• The place an asset’s CDN hyperlink is embedded on-line
• Which customers work together together with your library essentially the most

Plus, our reporting dashboard is customizable so you may take a look at completely different metrics over completely different time frames and dig into any information that sparks your curiosity.

Get Began with a Free Demo of Brandfolder

When looking for a digital asset administration resolution to your design workforce, don’t simply take into consideration options for designers, reminiscent of collaborative instruments to work on digital tasks and integrations with inventive purposes. As a substitute, cease to consider your whole different groups that use your model collateral and what they should help their tasks. Optimizing your DAM for your whole groups is the important thing to actually reaping the advantages of this software program (and serving to your designers take pleasure in extra freedom to do their factor).

To make getting began in a DAM simpler, we’re right here to help with the transition. Our buyer expertise workforce is accessible to reply your whole questions, assist personalize our platform to your groups, and put collectively a plan to get your group switched to Brandfolder. Get in contact with our workforce to study extra about our DAM, pricing, and obtain a fere demo of Brandfolder.