Digital asset management for designers

Designers, take a bow. You bring the abstract ideas of marketers to life. You’re full of creative ideas and you don’t complain when you’re asked for an updated version of the brand logo (again). 😇

But hold up. Being bothered by your marketing team to send over the latest graphics is definitely not a good use of your time. What if there was a better way?

What if your colleagues could go to an image library and search for those designs themselves? What if you no longer had to rely on Google Drive or Dropbox to share your work?

Luckily, that’s what digital asset management is for. ✨

What’s digital asset management?

Digital asset management (DAM) is a tool that gives a home to your visual content. It's the single source of truth for all of your digital assets. That’s images, videos, graphics, brand guidelines, logos — the list goes on. It makes searching your content easy.

We see lots of different brands and teams sign up for our digital asset management software. After all, Dash is a tool that your entire company can benefit from. And that includes designers, like yourself. 🧑‍🎨

Why do designers need digital asset management?

When you’re stuck in your creative flow, the last thing you want is your Marketing Manager hassling you for a graphic you definitely sent them a few months ago. You’ll need a DAM to help you field off all those requests so you can get back to your work.

But it doesn’t end there. Here are 6 ways designers need a digital asset management system.

Search and organise your digital assets

As a designer, no doubt you work with loads of creative files. Perhaps you finish up an Adobe CC project by downloading it and saving it on your network drive or Dropbox. But what happens when you have multiple iterations of the same logo? Things get muddy and sifting through them takes far too much time.

DAM software (like Dash) will give you a home for all those files. You can search by keyword or use features such as tags and custom fields to get to a digital file quickly.

For example, search ‘logo’ in Dash and then sort by file format to get that SVG version of your brand’s logo.

Once you’ve found it, you can even use custom crop sizes to get the right size for web banners, blog posts or anything in your content management system.

In Dash, you can also select from a series of predefined custom crops for social media. Perfect whenever your marketing teams need to update brand profile pics.

Integrate with your design tools

Most DAMs offer integrations with popular tools. Dash is no exception. With all the following integrations, you’ll be able to drag and drop images from Dash into your projects with a few clicks of a button. Check out Dash’s integrations for designers:

Adobe Creative Suite - Using the CI HUB connector, you connect Dash up with Adobe tools including Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Check out the full list in our help centre. What’s more, if you update an image in Photoshop that’s already in Dash, you can choose to make those changes visible in Dash.

Figma and Sketch - Dash connects up these two popular design tools, letting you pull in your gorgeous brand graphics without having to leave the software. Not sure which one to pick? Check out Ben’s article Figma vs Sketch to help with your decision. 🤔

Canva - We love Canva here at Dash! It’s used by our marketing teams (including me) so we just had to create an integration for it. Check out my blog post that contains some Canva design tips if you fancy!

Collaborate with different teams

We’ve mentioned it a few times already, but a DAM will make sure all your teams have access to your brand graphics. Whether that’s branding teams who need font files for the brand guidelines or sales teams who need to update customer emails —they won’t need to hassle you anymore.

What’s more, if you’re designing something for your marketing team, you can upload your first draft into Dash. They’ll be able to approve or reject your design, saving you all that back and forth over email.

Give users the latest versions of your designs

Leading on from my last point, not only will your teams have access to the files they need, but they’ll only see the most up-to-date versions.

Say you’re updating a website graphic.

If you were to update the images in this design and then uploaded it into Dash, everyone who has downloaded the previous version will get an email notification. This makes sure that no out-of-date graphics go out into the wild. This protects your brand and will get everyone on the same page.

Share large files, quickly

Sick of that pesky Gmail notification ‘You can’t send files larger than 25MB?’ Tired of your teams not opening your WeTransfers on time? We’ve got you.

Digital asset management for designers is perfect for sharing large files. There are a few ways you can do this in Dash.

Send to email
Select your file and send it directly to an email address. If you’re sending multiple files, Dash will consolidate it all into a handy .zip folder. And there’s no need to worry about big files because your recipient will get a link that sends them straight back to Dash. They can then click download and enjoy your lovely designs.

Generate URL
Select some images, generate a link and paste it into an email chain, Slack group or wherever you chat with your colleagues and external teams. You can choose to let the link expire in 7, 14 or 30 days.

Collections
Another way to share your designs in Dash is to collate a selection of assets and add your team to a Collection.

This is handy when you want people to download a specific set of assets.

Portals
Finally, if you work with freelancers or agencies, you can create public portals (with or without a passcode) that allow people to access content in your Dash without a login. You can add a welcome message, control the assets that are visible and let people search through the content — just like a regular Dash account.

Check out the distributor portal for our fake brand, Planto. 🌱

Which digital asset management tool is best for design teams?

There are loads of DAM vendors out there, so you’ll want to pick the right one for your teams.
Download our free DAM comparison worksheet to help you with your research. 🤓

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Resource

The Digital Asset Management Comparison Worksheet

Whittle down your choices and pick the right digital asset management tool for your brand

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Considering us? We know loads of designers who are using Dash right now. Take a look at some of their reviews on G2:

Theo — Graphic Designer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Useful app for sharing work assets, great customer service team too"

Greta M - Graphic Designer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Managing company-wide assets becomes easy with Dash; a simple set-up without a massive learning curve.”

David - Graphic Designer from Forthglade ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“It's ease of use is one of the things I like most about Dash. Both the front and back end are intuitive and easy to navigate which makes sharing and managing assets with others inside and outside of the business a doddle.”

David talks more about why he moved from SharePoint to Dash in his customer story. ✨

Fancy trying Dash for yourself? It’s an easy-to-use platform that’s super quick to get started with. Pricing starts at just $59 / £49 a month, so it won’t break the bank!

Sign up for a 14-day free trial below. ✨👇