You have your dream job: graphic designer. You work in marketing. Your daily responsibilities include creating print and digital assets for everything from advertising campaigns to web sites – maybe for different brands within your organization’s product portfolio, maybe for different companies within your agency’s client portfolio. You have a handle on where to find your design files and you can easily retrieve them from the folders you’ve created on your Mac or in your inbox. If someone were to ask you, “Do you have a filing system?” you’d say, “Yep!” Maybe even with a note of self-congratulation.
Your work moves at a pretty rapid pace and you routinely meet your deadlines – up until the moment where the one design file you need right now goes missing. Suddenly, your work grinds to a standstill because without that file, you can’t move forward. So much for a productive day at the office!
Admit it. It happens. Files go missing. Or maybe you forgot to save the latest version because you were called away from your desk. You might spend hours googling “restore file on Mac” and searching through temp folders trying to undo what has been done, but the hard truth is that your work is gone – work which cost you time and effort. Best of luck asking your manager for more time to complete your project or telling your spouse you need to re-schedule date night – again. That sorry looking soul in the mirror? Yeah. It’s you.
But let’s ease up on the panic. There are strategies to avoiding this scenario, including having an organized filing system that isn’t on your laptop and that actually works. Yes, this really exists, and we call it a Digital Asset Manager. A Digital Asset Manager is designed to enable easy, fast, and collaborative filing. It optimizes file archiving and design workflow, which gives you more time to do what you love doing – design! Some of our favorite features are listed below.
Easily search for files. Chances are, you’ll know where to find your files, but if you don’t, it’s easy to locate them by simply typing in a few keywords and letting the Digital Asset Manager go to work.
Your design assets are housed in the same place. Yes, we know, they were in one place when they were stored on your hard drive, but realistically, how many large bandwidth files can you save on your laptop? A Digital Asset Manager is scalable, which means it can store more files than you ever thought possible, and with room to grow.
Quickly share design files. You, the copywriter, the brand manager, the product manager, and your peers can all access the same files. No more email threads. No more file transfers via Dropbox or WeTransfer.
Control access to your files. You can set permissions for who can view, download, and edit files. You can also track version changes, and so can outside parties such as clients, agencies, and printers.
And if you want to get really fancy… you can combine your Digital Asset Manager with online proofing functionality. Wouldn’t it be nice if the people approving your designs could just make comments right on the file for you to review? We thought so.
And the goodness doesn’t stop there. To learn more about the BLUE Digital Asset Manager and our Marketing Project Management technology, download our e-book:
