How to Effectively Work on Ad Design as a Team

Individualistic artists, packed together to work on a single artwork that has to serve business, art-unrelated goals and needs to be delivered for tomorrow. Honestly, what can go wrong?

According to the data collected by Skillademia, up to 93% of all modern communication is visual, based on images. People can remember 65% of the visual content they ingested for three days, while for the written content, the recall rate drops to 10%.

Being seen and remembered is one of the key goals of modern marketing - and that’s why design teams have so much work today.

Design teams challenges

Designers are one of the core creatives working in marketing teams (with writers being a second group). Effective work on the intersection between creativity, art, business goals, and ruthless metrics can be extremely challenging. Common pitfalls when working together include:

Lack of full understanding among team members

If there is more than one designer on the team, working on shared projects may become tricky. Even the brightest and most skilled designer cannot read minds - or at least it is extremely uncommon to find such an individual. Thus, even when all details are shared and the project is seen, the vision regarding the finished project may differ.

Also, designers can fall prey to typical human communication pitfalls, with one individual not understanding words or sentences in the same way as another. This may create confusion or even conflicts when the team discusses the "finished project" or "draft," thinking about different stages of work completed.

Lack of understanding within the organization

Depending on the type of organization, companies employ specialists from various backgrounds - coders, engineers, accountants, etc. These individuals are experts in their respective fields but may face challenges when communicating their needs or feedback to the design team. The same works in the opposite direction - the design team may miscommunicate its needs or the state of the work to the rest of the company, creating confusion regarding the work or the resources needed.

Lack of teamwork skills

Last but not least, the majority of design work is solitary. Specialists simply sit with their chosen tool of trade and prepare images. That’s one of the reasons why design work is so conducive to freelancing.

Switching from the lone champion to a part of the team can be challenging - it requires communication skills, empathy, the ability to see problems from a new angle, and a multitude of other, sometimes unusual skills - small talk near the coffee machine may be as welcome as being a Photoshop ninja.

How to effectively work as a design team

Overcoming the challenges listed above is hard - but not impossible. Having a team that can see the drawbacks of bad teamwork and is willing to put effort into improving the situation is the great first step to take. The rest should include:

Communicate clearly with each other and with stakeholders

First and foremost, the team needs to work on communication skills. Sometimes it may be necessary to take a step back and check definitions. Some companies go so far as to have dictionaries of definitions used in the process, so no one confuses "draft" with "outline" or "finished job."

A good way to ensure clear communication, at least in the beginning, is paraphrasing. One needs to say in their own words to ensure mutual understanding. This may be tiring at first but brings great results in the long term.

Embrace project management

Project management is an art in itself, with skilled professionals being in high demand in nearly every industry. The ability to connect individuals into a team and make their work effective is a great asset - and a great side skill to embrace when working as a designer.

Set goals

Arguably the most important principle of project management is to set goals. One needs to know why the work is necessary and what work needs to be done. Without that, day-to-day tasks turn into an endless blob of repeatable tasks. Goals set the point when something bigger is or is not done. According to 50% of surveyed workers, clear goals boost their motivation and sense of purpose.

For a design team, the easiest way to see the goal is whether the project was delivered or not.

Use task managers and internal deadlines

Having a goal set, it is way easier to split it into phases and separate tasks - ideation, sketch, draft, first feedback session, etc. Having these tasks enlisted is also a great opportunity to set a timeframe for them. For example, the detail polishing phase can take ages for a perfectionist designer - something that may produce an artwork, but is overkill for a flyer.

Allocate tasks, and make team accountable

Last but not least, the team members need to feel responsibility and have an impact on the final effect of the work. This applies to everyone - starting with the team leader, ending with the trainee. And what’s most important - applies also to the stakeholders who need to respect the design team's skills and trust in their expertise.

Create knowledge bases

A design team benefits from having a clear directory where all the assets can be found - this includes editable versions of previous projects, logos, visualizations, photos, etc. A clearly organized “knowledge base” saves a lot of time and effort when one needs to find a particular element to reuse.

Embrace the “lessons learned” approach

Having all the feedback and experience codified enables the team to deliver future projects in a shorter time. This includes, for example, the reasoning behind particular design or aesthetic choices. The need to re-talk and re-establish the same choices repeatedly with every project is a huge waste of time if done with nearly every project.

On the other hand, if retrospectives are done together with the marketing team, sweet spots for creativity can be found, where the team can experiment in alignment with marketing goals.

Be conscious about using (or rejecting) technology

In the age of generative AI, automation possibilities are immense - yet overwhelming. Creative individuals express their fears about losing their jobs due to AI, whether generative or traditional.

This leads to situations where numerous teams reject AI-based tools to "not feed the beast." Indeed, AI-powered tools have limitations, but they can bring great time and effort savings. Currently, 45% of the US population uses generative AI at work, so the clash with this technology is inevitable.

The same goes for nearly every other technology that can be used by the company or design team - Cropink for automating ad creation, Zapier to automate tedious tasks related to switching between tools, or various other tools that can reduce the amount of daily work. The key is to try them, learn them, and make decisions about using or rejecting them based on data and experience, not gut feelings.

Summary

Effective teamwork in design teams can be challenging, with strong, independent creatives having to cooperate not only with like-minded peers but also the rest of the company. When dealing with sometimes mutually-exclusive goals and tight deadlines, teamwork can be even harder. But on the other hand, it is the only good way to deliver excellent work in a troubled environment.