Creative Director Crystal Goade and Social Media Manager Hannah Dron
Here at PicMonkey’s Seattle HQ our various departments sit side-by-side in an open office. Team members from engineering, product, editorial, user experience designers, visual designers, social media and even the C-suite collaborate across teams every day—it’s part of our culture. We know that collaborating on projects is essential to the success of all because we each have unique ideas to contribute.
Perhaps that’s why adding collaboration features to our photo editing and design platform that allow anyone, anywhere, to create together, felt like a no-brainer. Our collaboration tools allow multiple people can design together on the same files, at the same time, share access from anywhere, leave comments, and store files in one centralized space.
Our social media marketing team and our design team use the tools daily. Check out this video to see “collab” in action!
Do everything in one location
Two or more people can edit & design simultaneously in the PicMonkey editor
With the addition of collaboration features, the PicMonkey editor is even more powerful and convenient. Not only can you create pro-looking designs in PicMonkey with all our design tools, you can store them in PicMonkey, and you can share and edit those files in real time in PicMonkey. One more thing! You can also comment on those designs, too.
PicMonkey’s Creative Director Crystal Goade says that the real-time collaboration features have been “a game changer” for her team of visual designers. “They’ve enabled an environment where we can get feedback and make edits in a single application instead of bouncing around to multiple places.” Beyond creating designs with her team, the collaboration features have enabled greater efficiency for multiple teams working together. “Real-time collaboration has really changed how we work for the better. When we need to move quickly on something we can have someone from design, from social media, and from editorial all working together simultaneously.”
Creating better together with Shared Spaces
Hannah designs collaboratively from her desk at PicMonkey HQ
The collaboration features in PicMonkey have empowered our creative teams to seamlessly interact on creating assets for social media. One team member can create a rough design, invite others to their Shared Space to take a look, leave feedback comments, or even design simultaneously in real time.
“It’s so much more organized to have all our files in one place where everyone on both the social and design teams can easily access them,” says Social Media Manager Hannah Dron. In addition to easily collaborating across teams, our social media pros also remarked that their creativity and productivity soared because, as Hannah put it: “We could react quickly to social trends by taking an idea from rough to polished in Shared Spaces together.” Like!
Shared access makes time zones obsolete
Leave comments directly on designs for your collaborators
Like much of the workforce today, PicMonkey has distributed teams (from Maine to Ireland!) and employees working remote throughout the week. With Shared Spaces, we can share image files without the hassle of uploading, downloading, or emailing. We don’t have to wait for someone to be at their desk in Dublin during the working hours to send feedback or pass off a file, because with Shared Spaces we can access files in Seattle at any time, and vice versa.
“My team is all over the country. Different time zones and tons of fast-paced projects means reviewing our work while staying on schedule can be a challenge,” comments east coast-based Jenn Reiner, PicMonkey’s director of channel strategy. “Now, I can instantly pop in to Shared Spaces and provide feedback so my team can post on time, or I can leave early morning comments for them to see when they begin their work day on the opposite coast.”
