How Asana uses Asana: Tips for designing standout creative

Asana loves creative teams, and creative teams love Asana!

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that our designers manage all of their creative work in Asana. Together, this lean team of 10 completes more than 70 projects a month for teammates across product marketing, sales, internal branding, and events.

How do they deliver standout creative work, at volume, so successfully? There are lots of ways, but we’ve compiled their top six favorite features and tips below.

Hannah Swann, Brand Designer

“I think My Tasks is one of the most underrated Asana tools for organizing your day. Like many creatives, I can sometimes get distracted by all the noise coming from Slack, meetings, and email but I can always count on My Tasks to bring me back to my goals for the day. I like to keep everything but the “Today” view collapsed so that I only see the work that’s immediately relevant.”

Devin Jacoviello, Brand Designer

“My favorite feature has to be proofing since it’s nearly impossible to track feedback on complex layouts without it. When I’m collaborating on campaign landing pages or new components, proofing makes it easy for us to zero-in on specific areas and add feedback directly to the image. It keeps everything clear and actionable.”

Amanda Buzard, Brand Designer

“I use the dependencies feature a lot! It’s a great way to signal to my collaborators (and our creative producer) that my work is blocked and I’m waiting for more information. Also I love that when I look through My Tasks, Asana flags the tasks that aren’t ready to be started yet using the dependency icon. It’s a great visual cue for what I can skip for now versus what’s ready to get started.”

Ariel Ross, Creative Producer

“As a creative producer, I really strive to be process-driven enough to keep all of our projects moving forward, but flexible enough to take on ad-hoc requests as needed. Workload helps me see what the team is working on at any given time so I can determine their bandwidth to take on additional work. When high priority tasks come up, I can easily shift work around between designers in the Workload view and reprioritize deadlines and timing.”

Anna Hurley, Brand Designer

“I love start dates! Before this was a feature, it was hard for me to prioritize everything in My Tasks. I’d have to read through each task everyday and figure out what to do, and if the list was long then it could take me all morning! Now I only look at tasks in the relevant date range. This keeps me from feeling overwhelmed.”

Greg Elzerman, Motion Graphic Designer

My favorite feature is boards. Working with video all day long, it’s nice to have the entire production process laid in a clear and visual way. I have my projects set up so that each board column represents a different phase of work, from pre-production to post. This allows me to see where every video and animation is at a glance.”

Maya Ealey, Brand Designer

“My favorite feature is a combination of My Tasks and Sections. I love being able to keep all my work organized by the project via Sections. I can go to my task list, and clearly see what work is associated with which projects. This is extremely helpful when I’m working on multiple projects at a time. ”

These are just a few of the ways our design team uses Asana to reduce the work about work and let their creativity shine. You can learn more about how Asana empowers Marketing and Creative teams to produce amazing work here.

We’d also love to hear your favorite tip in the comments below.