From pulling approved graphics, to distributing updated brochures, a designer’s day can be filled with constant uploading, downloading and sharing, even with a DAMS in place. This is where an Adobe Creative Cloud Connector becomes essential to a designer’s technology stack – but don’t take our word for it! We figured who better to tell you about how this integration helps designers than…well….a designer?
Meet Simona – one of our designers.
At MediaValet, Simona handles all things design, including t-shirts for tradeshows, landing pages, brochures, planning & coordinating photoshoots, and other design projects. In any given day, she takes her inspiration from various artists interested in hand letterings, such as Lauren Hom, Jessica Hische and Mary Kate McDevitt, or online resources, such as 99U, Behance, Dribble, Instagram and the Chrome extension, Panda.
Simona has always been interested in the creative side of the business, but she has an interesting back story that brought her to the world of design:
I come from a European background, so my dad was always very opinionated about education. Getting ready to graduate from high school, I knew that I wanted to do something creative, and my very first option was to be a photographer. Though, of course, my Eastern European father had a different idea for me – he wanted me to be a doctor, so then my next option was graphic design (that’s pretty much a doctor for bad designs, right? You’re welcome, dad).
I’ve always loved creating things since I was little, making hand-made birthday cards for everyone and so on.
I decided to take an advertising program which is when I truly fell in love with graphic design. After the advertising program, I was very curious about the coding side of things, so I decided to move to British Columbia and take the New Media Web Design and Development program at BCIT. Even though development didn’t turn out to be my favourite, I loved knowing how everything works, and I decided to move forward with fully pursuing graphic design.
So what does a typical day of design look like at MediaValet?
Every morning starts with coffee – very important! Then I usually go and check all of my emails. I’m a 0 new messages in your inbox kind of person. Next, I evaluate all of the design requests and plan the day accordingly.
A large portion of design work at MediaValet occurs within the Adobe Suite. What challenges did you face before using the Adobe CC connector?
Before I came to MediaValet, I had two big challenges: 1) searching and trying to find images or graphics that are fully approved and 2) sharing my completed work. Distributing assets to co-workers sometimes would take the longest. For example, if I was out on holiday, and someone needed a brochure, they would just have to wait for me to send it to them. Worst case scenario, a few people started emailing everyone in the office trying to see if anyone else had it. The process was time consuming and sent people on scavenger hunts for materials. Now I finish whatever product I’m working on and instantly upload it to MediaValet where everyone in the company can quickly and easily find it whether I’m here or not. It’s a win-win!
What do you love about the Adobe-MediaValet integration?
It’s an easy integration to pick up and use. What I really love is that I can just save items right into the DAM solution, and it appears very quickly. Anyone who needs it has incredibly fast access to it. No more receiving dozens of requests per day for items attached to an old email I sent out when I finished the project. This integration really speeds up the whole search process, and this is especially true when the materials are appropriately tagged and keyworded.
And as for the production process, Simona tells us that there are also several benefits.
Creating a multiple page document (for example an e-book) gives you an option of linking or embedding assets to the InDesign document. Embedding artwork means that the asset is copied to the document at full resolution, which not only results in a larger document size, but usually also slows down the speed at which you are able to work on the InDesign file. In contrast, when assets are LINKED to an InDesign file, they are connected to the document, but remain independent of it. This results in a smaller file size for the document and an overall smoother process of working with the InDesign file.
A huge benefit of the Adobe CC Connector is that you can drag and drop cloud-based assets from the MediaValet directly into your InDesign file, which automatically creates direct links. This allows you to seamlessly add approved assets while keeping the document sizes down.
An easier way of explaining this would be that essentially, the MediaValet Adobe Connector packages the file for you so you never have to worry about sending the file to someone without properly linked or missing assets.
Putting it all together
Essentially, there are 3 primary benefits of the MediaValet Adobe Connector:
- You will spend less time searching for assets and reduce the risk of losing them.
- You will spend less time swapping between programs because of the ability to edit files directly from the DAMS (edited assets will automatically be uploaded in MediaValet and they will be updated on their own as versions).
- You don’t need to worry about backing up your files anymore. Saving and working on a document with DAMS means that it will always be automatically saved and tracked.
As far as final thoughts and advice, Simona offered this:
I honestly think that an integration like this empowers designers and helps everyone in the long run, providing self-serve items needed to complete a document, or even final documents to be able to share with potential customers.
And then there’s that forever-looming question of budget. What teams out there need to realize is that there are actually tools out there that are going to increase your efficiency so much that you can get all the work done that you need done, and you can do it within budget! I know, it’s an almost unbelievable idea in the design world, but with a central location for all of your team’s assets – from raw images to final products – the collaborative and creative workflow is going to actually FLOW. When that happens, your teams will waste less on logistics like “searching” and be able to really spend their time doing what they were trained to, which is design.
To learn more about how MediaValet's Adobe CC Connector can increase your creative team’s productivity, we're always happy to take you through a live demo! Or, if you'd rather check it out yourself, here's a short video on the basics of our Adobe CC Connector.
