Managing artwork approval projects can get challenging as the project scales up. Do you feel that your projects lack planning and organization halfway through the project? Do you find it to keep everyone involved on the same page? 

In our first part, we explored FAQs related to collaboration, industries, features, and more. 

Over the past year, we have worked with brands from different industries for artwork approval projects. Here is a list of questions that you might have about artwork management processes and Artwork Flow features.   

Artwork Project Management

Here are a few questions that will help you understand if you need the help of an artwork management platform to manage your projects.

1. How to gain visibility on the progress of a project?

An extremely common issue that managers face is the lack of visibility on the project. Often, they need to email collaborators repeatedly to understand the state of the project or why it is getting delayed. 

An artwork management software offers a projects dashboard that let’s project managers and collaborators get the whole view of different projects. Project manager’s can see the progress, view who’s reviewing, who’s done with feedback and more.  

2. How to revise artworks and make them error-free, or creating new ones?

Do you feel that there is a disconnect between the designers and the rest of the brand? Are you finding it difficult to show the designers what needs to be changed? Are reviewers overlooking errors in the artwork?

Getting proper feedback is difficult without the right tools. Artwork management platforms are integrated with feedback collection tools that allow managers to create checklists for reviewers. Reviewers can use different proofing tools to verify the accuracy  of the artwork and annotate the artwork to show the errors. 

This, eventually, reduces the number of revisions needed. 

3. How to collect feedback efficiently?

Usually, reviewers send in their feedback through different channels, such as phone calls, messages over Teams or Slack, or even emails. Managers waste valuable time collating all the feedback. Artwork management platforms help to automatically combine feedback from different reviewers through annotation and commenting features. 

4. How to manage projects without spreadsheets?

You may find that the simple workflow that you set up with spreadsheets is making it difficult to track the project as it progresses. Furthermore, basic to-do lists only support sequential workflows. You may find that the legal team is idle when the marketing team is reviewing the artwork when both can work in parallel. 

Artwork management platforms are essentially an extension of project management software that supports complex workflows,  that lets you choose between sequential and parallel elements. This improves the productivity of larger teams that involve numerous external collaborators.

5. How to distribute tasks easily to stakeholders?

Distributing tasks when you are using spreadsheets is likely done via emails. Artwork management platforms provide:

• Easy onboarding of external agencies via automated email invites. 
• Easy assignment of roles and tasks to stakeholders in multiple projects.
• Hassle-free addition and removal of members in a project.

6. How to meet deadlines?

Are you intentionally creating expedited deadlines to make up for unforeseen delays that plague nearly every project? Missing deadlines is common when your workflow has

• Inefficient planning and structure
• No visibility on the progress and possible bottlenecks
• Using sequential workflows when parallel workflows can be used
• Lack of communication and unnecessary revision cycles

Artwork management platforms provide a solution to all these issues and include project management tools for ensuring that you create an optimized workflow to meet all deadlines.

7. How to locate and share assets without hassle?

Do you need to sift through email attachments to find design assets? Do you stash everything on Google Drive or Dropbox? Do you forget who has access to which file? Have you lost files to accidental deletions or overwrites? Design assets are difficult to manage when there are a bunch of people working on them.

Artwork management platforms come with integrated cloud storage allowing you to store all your design assets in a central location. How is it different from your cloud storage account? With dedicated artwork management, you get:

• Role-based access to assets
• File versioning to compare old and new versions.
• Versioning also gives you the ability to revert any unwanted changes to files.  
• Audit trails that help you trace who made what changes, thereby increasing accountability.

8. Do you worry about the security of the design assets?

Do you have a way to revoke access to design assets once the design team has finished their work? When using emails, you have no way to revoke access once shared. If you shared a file with the wrong person, there is also no way to undo that. 

File security is built right into artwork management platforms. Artwork Flow uses secure HTTPS connections, with encrypted databases as well as backups that prevent data theft or data losses. 

9. Is it difficult to communicate with other collaborators?

Is your inbox flooded with messages with vague subject lines? Are you tired of too many Slack or Teams notifications? Artwork management platforms provide unified and contextual communication tools that speed up artwork development and revision. 

Artwork management platforms replace emails and messages with checklists and comprehensive, annotated feedback. 

10. Is it hard to collaborate with printers and external agencies?

You can easily collaborate with external design teams and printers using the artwork management platform. All you need to do is send an invite from the platform. The external team simply needs to sign up and accept the invite to join the project. 

Industry

Food, FMCG, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics or contract manufacturing, each industry has its own set of challenges. Often labeling and artwork play an important role in ensuring consumer safety or the effectiveness of the product. Here are some challenges that may be specific to your industry.

11. How do labeling errors affect your product? 

Labeling errors can be anything from misplaced graphics, shifted colors, or typos. For a brand that makes handmade scented candles, labeling errors may not be crucial, but for pharmaceutical brands, they can lead to lawsuits or recalls. 

Artwork management platforms come with the necessary proofing tools for preventing such errors. These tools include:

• Color checker to verify the HTML or Pantone color code
• Virtual ruler to check the size of text and images
• Font checker and spell checker
• A comparison tool to see changes between revisions

Not only do they prevent errors, but they also help prevent excessive revision cycles and reduce your time-to-market. 

12. How to avoid product recalls? 

Pharmaceutical products and food and beverage products have a high risk of recalls. 60% of recalls happen due to labeling errors. You can drastically reduce the risk of recalls by ensuring that your feedback collections and revisions are being done as effectively and efficiently as possible. Artwork management platforms have the tools for collecting and consolidating feedback in a way that would make sense to the design team.

13. Does packaging design require stringent verification processes? Are there regulatory requirements that must be met? 

This condition is true for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, and beverages. There are strict government regulations in place for the sake of public safety and brands must adhere to these regulations at all costs. 

With artwork management platforms, it is easier to meet regulatory compliance requirements. Design teams can start working with existing artworks that already meet the regulations. The management, marketing, quality control, and other teams can verify them in parallel and provide quick feedback.

14. Does your product packaging require regular updates? 

Packaging design may need to be updated to keep up with regulatory compliances or to reflect changes in the organization. For thriving brands that roll out products to various geographies, this scenario is quite common. An artwork management platform helps in making the changes without introducing errors while meeting deadlines. 

Bonus Read: Labeling Requirements In 2021 : Recent Changes By FDA & FSSAI 

15. Do you need to refresh the packaging design now and then?

Large brands often change their logo and product packaging to stay relevant in the market. For example, Cadbury recently changed their logo and updated the design of its Dairy Milk product lineup. All the updated packages should hit the shelves at the same time. Hence, brands are under immense pressure to release updated, error-free packaging.

If you have similar requirements, investing in an artwork management platform is a wise decision as it provides all the tools needed for managing large-scale design projects.

16. Does your product packaging require safety features/warning?

In the wake of the pandemic, customers are ordering takeaway or are getting food delivered to their doorstep. There is apprehension about how safe food packaging is at such trying times. Food and grocery delivery services are taking extra care to prevent the virus from spreading. 

Dominos and McDonald's are using sticker labels to seal their packaging and encourage people to stay at home. 

17. Are there multiple verification stages? 

You can speed up verifications using parallel workflows in artwork management software. You can have the legal team; marketing team and quality control verify different parts of the packaging independently.

18. Why is print and color accuracy crucial?

Pharmaceutical and cosmetic products often color-code their products. Checking for errors in colors need the right proofing tools that are already included in artwork management software. Also, managers can onboard the printing team to get their perspective and address any compatibility issues. 

19. Do you manage multiple SKUs of the product?

Food, beverage, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic products have multiple SKUs which share the same visual elements but have different layouts and differently sized elements. In such cases, you can give the design team access to templates to enable faster development. Managing artwork development for multiple SKUs is also simplified with automated workflow management and easy onboarding.

TLDR: an artwork management platform can really change the way you collaborate and speed up processes that take more time than necessary. 

📢 Have we missed anything? 

Have any questions that we haven’t covered here? Let us know in the comments below!

We want to keep this article as informative and helpful as possible. For this reason, we will constantly update it with new FAQs and fresh notes. If you have any questions or need us to add any information to this article, then drop a comment below.