Whether you work for a marketing agency, a digital publisher, a content studio, or a UX shop, today’s digital creative teams are expected to produce in a wide variety of formats on almost every project. 360 degree campaigns and experiences mean visual assets often end up scattered across multiple platforms – and so does internal and external feedback.
But the biggest problem?
None of these platforms are designed for granular visual feedback.
Summary
- Feedback on visual assets often ends up on platforms not designed for visuals.
- Visual feedback wants to be granular.
- Picter solves the visual feedback problem with annotations.
- Annotations save time wasted in verbal communication or screenshots.
- Getting started with annotations is easy and will make your team more efficient.
Five common feedback traps for visual assets:
Feedback trap #1: Cloud storage and file transfer platforms
Generic solutions for cloud storage are sub par places to give granular feedback on visuals. Your creative team deserves something designed with visual work in mind from the start, something minimal that puts images front and center, not a suite of productivity tools designed for managing documents.
Feedback trap #2: Project management software
Project management software is great for assigning tasks, managing deadlines, and keeping track of teamwork, but comments on visuals in these platforms get lost and dissociated from a visual experience.
Feedback trap #3: Slack
We all love the convenience and searchability of Slack but it’s rarely the right place to discuss visuals. Especially because it automatically compresses file uploads, making it an unreliable final source for assets that need external distribution.
Feedback trap #4: Email
Not only the most common and least efficient way of hosting a conversation about visual assets, but it’s the way that is most likely to produce a mess and team aggravation. If you’ve ever had an email attachment named something like “campaign_05_final_final.jpg” you know the problem.
Feedback trap #5: Collaborative design tools
While the new generation of collaborative design tools may support robust commenting features, making these tools the feedback framework for your entire team can be a flawed decision. Collaborative design tools can leave content open to edits from non-design team members. No wonder feedback tends to migrate out of these platforms onto Slack or email even if it’s possible to host it there; non-designers feel intimidated and don’t want to mess something up.
Why is visual feedback important? A picture is worth a thousand words.
Picter: Designed for visual communication.
When you want to give specific, visually oriented, granular feedback – both on internal assets and for client reviews – Picter is the place your visual assets should live.
Picter is a one of a kind visual tool. It enables login-free links for client review and freelancer receivables. At the same time, it hosts your visual assets in a system that allows deep linking to any level of a visual workflow.
Whether it’s a link to a project, a comment thread, a collection of images inside a project, a specific image, or even a comment on a particular part of an image using annotations, Picter has a feedback model that lets you be particular. With annotations you can:
• Highlight a typo in a piece of copy.
• Markup a fashion photo for retouching.
• Give feedback on a product photo.
Without annotations you would need to give your feedback plus the position in the image that your comment refers to, such as “left top corner, next to the eye there’s a blemish”. That’s a lot of extra text, and it’s nearly impossible to give this level of feedback via any of the typical feedback traps listed above.
WIth annotations, you can pinpoint your feedback. It’s simple and blazingly fast.
By commenting directly on the asset, you eliminate other platforms from the feedback and approval process. It becomes second nature. Just click on a certain spot on the image and add your feedback.
The alternative would be taking a screenshot, drawing onto the screenshot, and then saying, “Hey look, that’s what I’m talking about.” Again, many extra steps, tools, and platforms. Nevermind the clutter of screenshots from random projects littering your local computer.
Scale these inefficiencies to the daily routine of a visually focused business and you’re talking about some seriously disorganized workflow. Get started with your Free Trial today and see the difference it makes for your team’s visual communication.
Conclusion
Getting started with Annotations is simple and works for anybody working with images in their day to day. Annotations are available on all paid Picter plans. Get started today with a Free Trial and see the difference it makes when you rescue your visual assets from the common feedback traps and have them live all in one place designed for visual communication.
