Graphic Designing is a forte that requires as much creativity as possible. A remote design team integrates skills and ideas from a diverse set of people. Therefore, the design in question will be exemplary. However, the number of disadvantages of having a remote team of designers is almost par with the benefits.
Managing remote graphic designers is a challenging task. It makes communication and conveyance of design ideas and expectations extremely difficult. If you are handling a remote graphic design team and could benefit from some help, you have come to the right place. This article will give you a few tips that will help you effectively manage remote graphic designers.
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Issues Faced While Working with Remote Graphic Designers
Understanding the problem is the first step to coming up with a solution for it. While working with remote graphic designers, the biggest issue you will face is managing creative ideas and conveying them effectively.
While many business or science-related jobs require a person to run certain steps to get the result; however, when it comes to graphic designing, there is a lot more needed by the job. Since art is very subjective, teamwork might not be the most straightforward task to do.
Another issue that you might face is that each designer has specific software they are comfortable working with. Therefore, two of your designers use different software, making them come in sync might not be easy. However, there is a solution to all these problems, and they are discussed further in the article.
Working Efficiently with Graphic Designers Remotely
A team of graphic designers is possibly the most difficult team to handle remotely. However, it is possible to make designers collaborate and work effectively remotely with the right management methods. Below are some tips that will help you effectively manage a remote team of graphic designers.
Prioritize Communication
When working remotely, no matter the kind of team, communicating should be a prioritized thing. There is no such thing as overcommunication in terms of remote management. Communication is essential to make teams work together and to build connections. Ensure finding the best Microsoft Teams apps for team building for your employees to know each other beyond work as well.
Things such as voice calls and video conferences make remote communication more comfortable using voip. Familiarizing the team members with each other’s voices and faces makes it easy for members to relate with one another.
It would be best if you created a protocol of how and when communication occurs. Create a designated platform to communicate and develop formal events and meeting schedules to keep regular communication going.
You can pre-decide the tone of communication you prefer within the team. You can choose to use formal, semi-formal, or informal tonality within the organization. Make sure that the communication style and protocol is reflective of your organization as a whole. Lastly, if your team prefers phone calls, use softphone solutions for seamless and effective communication.
Promote Efficiency
While you might have a team of the best designers globally, it is possible that the team will not work efficiently. Even though the members are experienced in their fields and willing to work, improper management can cause severe damage efficiency.
To improve efficiency within the group, make sure that each designer is acquainted with the team’s common goals. Adding an element of teamwork allows designers to self-collaborate with one another. In fact, having a fully fledged employee goal tracking platform in place is another way to enhance collaboration, foster motivation and keep everyone attuned to their roles and responsibilities.
Adding proper flexibility, diversity, leadership, and communication to the team is crucial to increase efficiency by addressing tech issues, uncertainties, and other obstacles. Along with that, proper conflict resolution methods within the team help form healthy relations between all members, directly influencing work efficiency.
Organize Your Requirements
Most graphic designers who will be working for you remotely would probably be the experts in their fields. Their vast knowledge allows them to take care of designing from their home. However, no matter the expertise level, no designer can read your mind. They cannot know the tasks you need to get done first and how you want them to be executed.
When working with a remote team of graphic designers, make sure that your requirements are well organized. If you are working with remote graphic designers who have no idea what is expected of them, you will be in deep trouble. Therefore, it is important to make sure that your priorities are well organized and communicated to them.
Envisioning
As established earlier. Remote graphic designers could be the best at what they do, but they cannot read your mind. Every organization has a unique vision and visual aesthetic to follow. The graphic designer will have to get acquainted with your idea and requirement to ensure better results.
Envision the design you want in your mind before communicating it with the team. Ensure that you know how big you want it to be, how extensive and detailed a design is okay and then communicate the same to your team. Try to give them as much detail as possible so that they can envision your idea in their mind too.
Show More, Tell Less
(Source : Google Images)
It is important to note that you are working with a team of creative workers. Their working requirements are much more than simply giving them instructions and expecting them to produce the work you require. It is very frustrating for any graphic designer to explain a visual concept in standard, non-descriptive words.
Try to communicate your idea so well that it leaves no doubt in the designer’s mind. The best way to do that is to use technical terms and jargon. However, if you are not familiar with graphic designing jargon, try to be as visual in your explanation as you can.
Showing designers samples that inspired your idea or look similar to your requirement helps them achieve the desired result quicker and easier. Even if words of examples cannot do the trick, you can use an object that evokes similar feelings to associate something substantial to the design.
Work According to Their Expertise
There’s a reason why people work with teams of graphic designers and no individual designers at a time. The field of graphic design is vast, and it is not practical for each graphic designer to master each field. Therefore, it is important to note your designers’ forte and assign them to work according to what they’re the best at.
If you already have an idea in your mind, allow the graphic designer some expertise breathing space. Allow them to bring your idea to life by adding their own experience and expertise into the equation. While allowing the designer to change your vision completely is not alright, giving them space to be creative is vital.
Be a Good Leader
A previous point mentions that each team should have proper leadership to work efficiently. An effective leader can make teamwork together towards the common goals of the company. However, an inefficient leader will let the designers work without order and bring an organization into the company.
A good leader can motivate the team and push them to take that extra step to perfection. The purpose of a leader is to perfect the working aspect of the team and look after each member on a personal level.
Each member’s well-being is important to ensure that they are in the right state to ensure their top-quality results. With the help of good leadership, general well-being in the organization is properly maintained.
Add Flexibility to the Team
While working remotely, flexibility is the one thing that makes a huge difference in the working environment. While working remotely, you can allow the graphic designers to be flexible with the working hours, schedule, conditions, environment, and even collaborative tools.
When a team is inflexible, bringing about natural changes within the organization becomes a tedious task. Moreover, adapting to the different requirements of several clients might also become a problem.
You mustn’t attach a specific way of going about certain designs and let them choose their working path. Flexibility is the key to keeping your graphic designers from losing creativity and staying efficient over an extended period.
Working on this is one of the ways that we’re able to offer such competitive pricing for graphic design while maintaining high standards.
Getting stuck in a state of creative block is frustrating not only for the graphic designer but also for you. Therefore, you must do some things that can help your designers get out of their creative blocks whenever they get into one.
(Source : Google Images)
The most important thing you can do is to encourage them to take a breather. With some rest and change of space, the graphic designers might retain their creative abilities.
Working in front of the computer can be monotonous and can be the reason for creative blocks. Therefore, you can also get them off their screens and allow them to do something that requires them to work with their hands rather than on their screens.
There is no way in which either you or the graphic designer can’t force creativity. However, you can help your employee by letting them get whatever they need to get their creative juices flowing again. As a creative team manager, ensure that you never make an employee work so hard that they cannot reach the depths of their abilities.
Endnotes
Graphic Designing, much like other creative fields, requires a lot of communication and subjectivity. Therefore, it is not the ideal thing to handle remotely. However, a remote team of designers allows you to add diversity to the group.
With the help of some effective team management methods, you can manage a team of designers as well. All you need to make sure of is respecting their creativity and maintaining constant communication for effective results.
