Project management is an essential component of graphic design, and its corresponding fields, including marketing and communications as a whole. Throughout my career as a graphic designer, while working as a freelance, temp and full-time designer, I have had many opportunities to learn how to operate and utilize various project management applications. Over time, I have grown to understand the need for access to project management tools within the design world, especially when working on vast projects that may need to be broken down into smaller tasks and assignments. The project management applications in which I have become most familiar with are Trello and Basecamp. I have used both applications in different work experiences, as well as personally, and even made use of both services simultaneously.
My use of Trello began while working as a lead graphic designer for a non-profit organization. My team and I needed a way to keep track of design requests from the various departments within the organization and sought out a project management tool that we could integrate with our existing slack channels. Once we discovered that Trello was a forever free resource in which we could phase projects out, assign projects to specific team members, add deadlines, use slack, attach work to cards and more, we migrated all of our work to Trello and began to put it to use. We soon created a design request form that linked to Trello and created new Trello cards every time we received a new request. Once the request was received, Trello would push out an alter to our slack channel which notified us of the new request. From there, a designer would pick up a request and begin working, phasing the card of that specific project within Trello until the request was complete. Trello made organizing our work much simpler, as we no longer had to wonder who was working on which project, the current stage of each project, or the amount of new project requests we had. Our productivity as a team increased significantly and our work became much more efficient.
Once I understood how useful Trello could be, I began to use it personally. I created multiple boards to help keep my life and activities organized. One of my boards assisted me with planning and preparing for a three-country holiday trip. Another helped my boyfriend and I stay organized within our relationship, listing out all the things we needed to discuss and sort out as well as things we wanted to remind one another to do. A common board I made use of was a simple to-do list with a card for every random to-do that popped up in my head throughout the day, to help me write down my thoughts and refrain from being distracted from my current task. Additionally, I began using Trello to phase and sort through and freelance design work I received.
Trello also served as a large part of my work as a temp graphic designer. During one of my work experiences, I temped within the creative department of a Nuclear Energy organization in Washington, DC. I worked on large projects, such as guides, booklets and pdfs full of infographics alongside a team of three other people. Due to the fact that the creative department was overwhelmed with various design assignments, they utilized two project management applications at once: Trello and Basecamp. Our Trello board was an agile sprint board, set up to keep each assignment within sprints that automatically closed within a two-week time frame. We used the Trello board to ensure that we met our hard deadlines. Access to this board was only granted to people within the creative team. Alongside Trello, Basecamp was used to phase each project out even further. Additionally, people within other departments had access to our Basecamp projects, including the clients who created the requests for each project, the copy editor who made sure all the text read correctly, and other employees within the organization who were connected to the project.
Basecamp provided more depth, as my team broke up projects into to-dos. Within each main to-do, you can create multiple smaller to-dos. Each of these list items contains a discussion section, where employees and/or clients can comment back and forth, critiquing the work, editing the work, sharing content, asking questions, updating project versions, etc. Basecamp also provides sections within a project for messaging, scheduling items within the project, sharing documents and files needed to complete work, and more. It is very versatile and can host multiple file types, numerous projects, and the visibility of each project varies, as administrators have the capability of determining who has access to specific projects.
Today, in my full-time role within an audiovisual organization, I use Basecamp frequently, as all my projects are hosted on Basecamp. Basecamp has been a great tool, not only for project management, but also for collaboration between the creative team and the other members within the marketing and communication departments of my organization. Furthermore, I appreciate that Basecamp has a mobile and desktop app that I can use for notifications and tracking work on the go, as opposed to my email. I prefer Basecamp, however, I continue to make use of Trello personally for simpler tasks and projects.
Although I am a self-proclaimed mini project manager, the idea of using a project management tool for my schoolwork never crossed my mind. In completing this project, I found that making use of Basecamp for my grad school assignments will likely help me be significantly more organized and productive. Adding dates to my to-dos helped me balance my assignments and work through my tasks consistently as opposed to working sporadically. Moving forward, I plan to incorporate Trello and Basecamp into my everyday practices even more. Additionally, I may explore more project management tools that would be useful to me in hopes of improving my overall scheduling and keeping every task in place.
Sola's Thoughts 