High Altitude Marketeering

We’re a design studio. Staffed by designers (and others) who take pride in personal creativity and working with their hands. That said, we work very differently than we did 10 years ago. The difference isn’t a new philosophy or a new way of approaching design or branding. It’s a difference in how we step design concepts out into finished pieces that serve our clients.

In the past 10 years—even in the past 5—the opportunities for automating the production of creative projects have blossomed. Using web applications (like Skubedo), plug-ins for Adobe products and better data management, scripting integration and publishing media, small (but smart) creative teams can produce big and complicated documents, sites, packaging programs and more.

But while these opportunities are available to both inside creative teams and outside agencies, we’re always amazed at how many of our peers still do things the old fashioned way, copying and pasting text and individually prepping and placing images.

Incorporating automation doesn’t just save on production costs, it changes the very way a creative team approaches projects. We’ve found that reducing the production window often buys more time to get the design right and that starting the production phase of a catalog or website later can be a huge advantage when you’re waiting on tardy data from product developers. Doing it right once beats the heck out of creating draft after draft full of incorrect or incomplete product data.

So if your creative team isn’t automating, you’re wasting resources and weighing down staff with uninspiring, repetitive tasks. One of the biggest reasons for turnover in in-house creative departments is good designers getting bored at having to design the same old pieces month after month. Automation takes away a lot of the tedium and frees up creative staff to focus on being creative.