Working in a flow state of mind is typically how creative people get work done. But achieving this in a vacuum is hard. All creative teams and roles, such as designers and marketers, need a structured creative workflow to systemize their projects, tap into their creative flow state, and achieve success.
The importance of doing so can’t be understated. According to McKinsey, 77% of company leaders recognize creativity as a crucial driver of business growth. Additionally, 68% of CMOs feel that the creative process will grow in importance over the next year.
So what are the success drivers behind effective creative workflows? What do creative teams need to manage it? And how can they keep it from going wayward?
Below, we’ll guide you through the creative workflow process, providing nine practical steps, best practices, and tools to make managing creative workflows a breeze.
A creative workflow process guides projects from start to finish using structured, repeatable steps. It helps teams assign roles and tasks, ensuring efficient and timely execution from concept to completion.
The 4 phases of creative workflow management
The four overarching phases of creative workflow processes are:
Whether you’re a team of graphic designers looking to streamline their ad creation or copywriters needing to write compelling copy, a properly managed creative workflow can help you overcome some of your most pressing challenges. According to Lytho, marketers and designers recognized these challenges to be highly significant:
The speed at which creative teams work (77%)
The volume of work (71%)
Strategic contribution (63%)
The increased variety of digital channels that require creative projects (55%)
Here’s how establishing creative workflow management processes can help you overcome these.
Handle multiple ongoing projects
Prioritizing is easy when you know what’s due, when, and by who. The best creative workflows help you quickly pivot toward urgent matters while assigning action items to the right owners, which, in turn, limits confusion, bottlenecks, and duplicate work.
Create more, faster
The trade-off between quality and quantity isn’t a fixed rule. Effective creative workflow management allows you to produce more and better work in less time. How? By removing time-consuming thoughts of “what’s next?”, automating repetitive tasks with adequate tools, and freeing up time for creative tasks instead of administrative deliberation.
Drive consistent branding across the board
Brand guidelines should be the centerpiece of your creative workflow. Your brand’s guidelines help maintain cohesion in your company’s messaging, tone, and designs across platforms. In turn, nurturing brand recognition—regardless of who’s creating assets or where these are published.
Manage and apply feedback on a rolling basis
With 83% of creative teams getting project approvals in five review rounds or less, it’s effective revision processes that help you turn drafts into final versions quickly. The systematic approaches for gathering and applying feedback outlined in creative workflow processes can stop you from getting stuck in a rut of changes, moving projects forward with a clear deadline in sight.
Improve time management
As creative workflow processes establish due dates for each project step, teams can reference these when creating their to-do lists. They can, therefore, break down tasks into manageable chunks ahead of time, saving themselves from burnout, last-minute rushes, and overdue tasks.
Collaborate cross-functionally with ease
Despite its name, creative workflow management isn't just for creative teams. If, for example, designers creating display ads need to factor in A/B test findings from data analysts, they can dig through their creative workflow to see how they’re meant to apply this data and when. Not only does this clarify expectations, but it also makes sure relevant contributions aren’t excluded.
9 steps to effective creative workflow management
Step 1: Define objectives
Step 2: Assign roles and responsibilities
Step 3: Set timelines and deliverables
Step 4: Brainstorm and develop ideas
Step 5: Create initial drafts and prototypes
Step 6: Gather feedback from relevant stakeholders
Step 7: Revise and refine based on feedback
Step 8: Launch assets and track metrics
Step 9: Evaluate success and plan future optimizations
Step 1: Define objectives
First thing first: Understand what you’re trying to achieve and why. A clear purpose and goal set the tone for the importance of the project, keeping everyone accountable and engaged from the start.
For example, if you’re working on a new ad campaign that aims to improve engagement and conversions, your project’s objectives may consist of these key performance indicators (KPIs):
Increase click-through rate (CTR) by 18%, indicating that the ad copy and visuals are compelling
Boost conversion rate by 15%, showing that the ad is effectively driving desired actions
You don’t have to start from a blank page when coming up with a goal for your creative project. You can always use your business’s North Star goals as a starting point. Start by ideating on how you can trickle these overarching goals downstream. Think of how your team can directly connect the creative project’s scope and broader business metrics. This keeps your project in lockstep with the business’s broader direction.
Note: Not all project objectives need to be quantitative. While not measurable, qualitative goals (e.g., improving brand recognition) can add nuance and provide a complete picture of your project’s success.
Step 2: Assign roles and responsibilities
Once you’ve set your goal, you need to know who’ll be helping you reach it. This means choosing team members and clarifying their roles will shape the project’s outcome.
Using our previous example focused on a new ad campaign, the roles and responsibilities may be:
Project manager: Making sure team members are progressively ticking off tasks as they should while staying closely aligned with the rest of the team.
Copywriter: Writing crisp, engaging ad copy that resonates with the target audience and fits into the ad designs created by the graphic designer.
Ad specialist: Managing ad platforms like Google and Facebook Ads to see which placements, targeting settings, and optimizations drive the most promising results.
Data analyst: Monitoring ad performance, tracking changes in CTR and conversion rates.
Quality Assurance (QA) tester: Testing the final ad assets to make sure they’re good to go across channels and devices.
Marketing manager: Aligning the ad campaign with broader marketing initiatives for consistency in messaging and identity.
Step 3: Set timelines and deliverables
Once you know who’s involved and how, you must underline what’s due and when. What’s expected from each contributor—tasks, deadlines, and deliverables—should be clearly documented to manage expectations and avoid delays.
For realistic timelines and deadlines, consider these factors when jotting down potential dates in your calendar:
Dependencies: What deliverables rely on the completion of other tasks? What cross-functional dependencies may cause delays?
Potential roadblocks: What challenges may slow down progress? What possible solutions do we have for these?
Buffer time: Do we have enough flexibility to accommodate delays? How much time can we allocate to last-minute issues or adjustments?
Availability: Can we complete tasks in due time without feeling overwhelmed? What other projects might impact our ability to meet deadlines?
Technical limitations: Can software or integration issues impact the project? Do we have the necessary creative tools to complete this project?
External factors: Do third parties, such as agencies, impact the project? If so, how? In case of a bottleneck, who’ll take ownership of critical tasks?
Step 4: Brainstorm and develop ideas
Now, for the fun part: creative ideation. In this creative workflow step, stakeholders collaborate to unleash their creativity, brainstorming ideas, directions, and angles for the project. For best results, team leaders should emphasize that there are no right or wrong ideas. This keeps ideas flowing without self-restraint on the contributors’ part.
As Giovanni Corazza, founder of the Marconi Institute of Creativity, puts it:
“We need to be open-minded. We need to be fluent. Look for alternatives, and not for the correct answer. Because when you think creatively, there's no single correct answer. There are many possible alternatives.”
Here are some viable brainstorming techniques you can use:
Mind mapping: Write your project’s main goal at the center of the page or whiteboard. Get everyone to contribute, branching out related ideas, concepts, topics, and solutions from this core objective.
Rapid ideation: Set a strict time limit for brainstorming, encouraging team members to generate as many ideas as possible—no filtering or judgments allowed.
Round robin: Each team member shares one idea, and the next person in line has to build on it. As their ideas are piled on top of each other, team members bond while forming complete creative concepts.
After agreeing on the project’s creative path, team members can implement it, ensuring they stick to the timelines and deadlines established in step three.
Depending on the type of creative project and the role of each person, this step may involve:
Establishing a work schedule for the entire project team to make sure everyone’s aligned with what’s happening
Scheduling frequent team meetings to discuss ongoing updates, setbacks, and changes
Creating status reports for progress visibility
Conducting competitor analysis to assess similar assets
After finalizing creative assets, you can send them for review—ideally to stakeholders across various departments. This helps you collect and apply feedback from different vantage points within the business.
When asking for feedback, be sure to:
Remind reviewers of your project’s scope and goals to ensure stakeholders review your work with these pieces of information in mind.
Clearly state how you’d like to receive feedback. Is it through annotations, tracked changes, or comments? This makes it easier for you to keep track of incoming feedback.
Emphasize and stick to feedback deadlines to keep your project on track.
Once you’ve received your feedback, you can refine your work. As mentioned earlier, several feedback loops may be required to reach the final version of your asset that everyone’s happy with. Therefore, steps six and seven often become cyclical until decision-makers finally sign off on these.
Step 8: Launch creative assets and track metrics
Now that you’ve got your green light, you can roll out final versions and track your relevant metrics. The metrics you track—and how you do so—differ based on your assets, channels, and goals. As such, this step may cover:
Coordinating cross-functional teams to ensure all channels are ready for launch
Setting up analytics dashboards to monitor metrics
Scheduling regular performance review meetings—weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly—to check if everything works as expected
Establishing A/B testing frameworks to create post-launch assessments and iterations
Step 9: Evaluate success and plan future project optimizations
Last but not least, determine how successful you were as a team. In this step, the definition of success is twofold:
A) How successful was your creative project in light of your objectives?
Assess your progress on your metrics and other pre-determined qualitative goals. Did you achieve them, or did you fall short? If you did struggle to meet your goals, what reasons contributed to this? Holding a team retrospective can help you improve on future projects with similar scopes.
B) How successful was your creative workflow process as a whole?
Next, discuss your creative workflow process as a whole. Ask team members: Did you meet your deadlines? How did you feel about communication during the project? What bottlenecks or obstacles did you experience? These conversations can pave the way for future optimizations, so document these answers and concerns.
Note: Don’t pressure your team to get creative workflows spot on from the get-go. If this is your team’s first time systemizing creative processes, know that some trial and error is expected. The feedback process at the end of each project can help you improve creative workflow management for future projects, with each iteration helping you reach the most suitable workflow for your company and teams.
Creative workflow management best practices
Strike the right balance between creativity and efficiency
It may be tempting to favor extreme order and efficiency over creative flare, but both are essential to the creative workflow process. While creativity is the heart and soul of your projects, it may lose focus and get muddy without structure. It’s the efficiency component that acts as a conduit linking creative inputs to real business outcomes.
Designate an in-house disruptor
An in-house disruptor pushes teams to consider other perspectives. The disruptor is in charge of questioning and poking holes in your team’s ideas while proposing alternative, riskier solutions. Considering these clashing perspectives stops your teams from settling on what’s comfortable or becoming complacent.
Have a mix of both fast and slow creative projects
Your creative workflow shouldn’t just guide long-term projects—you should also apply these processes to short-term creative initiatives. Fast projects drive momentum and keep energy levels high, while slower projects allow for deeper creative exploration. A healthy dose of both is what keeps teams engaged.
Implement creative automation for scalability
You can keep your creative workflow management smooth by removing manual, repeatable processes. Using creative automation tools frees you from tedious to-dos and allows you to focus on strategic and creative tasks. These tools can be especially handy when running ad campaigns or social media content, where you need to create multiple variations and formats at scale.
Tools for better creative workflow management
Creative workflow tools aren’t just a nice-to-have. Often, they’re major contributing factors that allow you to double down on your creativity. How?
Decision-makers are eager to invest in tools and software, with 75% of decision-makers keen to use these to meet increasing workloads and retain productivity.
Marketers and creative leaders are comfortable with the growth of generative AI, with 80% agreeing that AI-powered tools reduce the tedium of repetitive tasks.
Here’s a list of creative workflow tools we recommend:
Creative automation tools
Creative automation tools automate repetitive design and production tasks for faster, scalable, and branded content creation. At Creatopy, we empower users to automate their ad creation. With just one click, users can create different-sized ads, images, and ad copy alternatives across channels, formats, and target audiences.
Project and task management tools
Project and task management tools allow you to organize, prioritize, and track the progress of your tasks and projects from start to finish. They streamline creative workflow management by ensuring deadlines are met, resources are used efficiently, and everyone stays on top of their goals. Cloud-based tools such as ClickUp and Asana, for example, enable you to organize creative projects, keep teams’ attention fixed on main goals, and carry out tasks like file sharing, assigning responsibilities, and goal tracking.
Creative collaboration tools
Creative collaboration tools enable team members to work together in real time, exchanging ideas, feedback, and assets in a centralized location. These can come in many formats. For example, Miro enables users to collaborate on boards with mindmaps, diagrams, flowcharts, and wireframes using threaded discussions, comments, and tags. Conversely, Slack resembles a messaging platform. It focuses on real-time collaboration through direct messages, group chats, and channels, enabling additional information sharing, such as file sharing, polls, and emoji reactions.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools
Digital asset management tools like Imagekit and Bynder help you securely store, organize, and distribute creative assets. Teams can access and manage files such as images, videos, and documents while maintaining asset version control to locate and reuse assets, speeding up production.
Prototyping tools
Teams can use prototyping tools to create mockups for various designs—websites, apps, or other digital assets. These tools also enable early-stage testing and validation, error spotting, and collaboration between designers and developers. For example, Figma allows users to collaborate on all design mockups and prototypes. Its browser-based nature and countless integrations keep files synced to the latest versions, with everyone checking in on the most up-to-date design iterations.
Make the most of your creative workflows
A well-run and established creative workflow process helps you quickly and consistently turn concepts into reality. Applied across your creative projects, the nine steps mentioned in this article can create a process that channels your team’s creativity into desired outcomes. Beyond that, it can drive brand consistency and collaboration while simplifying how you manage your time, feedback, and tasks. If you want that extra competitive edge, tools such as Creatopy can give you that much-needed advantage, equipping you with the capabilities to match customers’ growing demands for creative assets.
