Working in a multi-designer studio environment is a great way of developing a good set of working practices that make the studio run like clockwork and ensure work is easy to hand over to lower-level team members.

The responsibility for setting up these key workflows is that of the Studio Director or most senior designer. These processes work to the benefit of the studio and the end-client. The studio has a set of guidelines and an artwork 'toolkit' that they can quickly re-use and distribute amongst all the collateral required. Getting things like this in place is good for others in the studio to learn from. The result of these processes should mean that the client saves money and time, because artwork is not having to be re-purposed, or, worst case scenario, completely redrawn due to result of quality and resolution issues that are solely down to the poor management of collateral in the studio. The spanner-in-the-works of maintaining and developing these workflows is when corners start getting cut by way of a lack of knowledge. This can manifest itself in the belief that getting something done fastest on the first attempt is the best way. It isn't. Consider the situation. A multi-format ad campaign needs to be done, there are various sized ads and potentially a number of non-standard deliverables that require matching artwork. The quickest way of getting an ad done for the first deadline would be to do the artwork in something like Photoshop. Type tools are available, things are easy to cut out quickly and you can layer up everything you need in one document. A proof is off to the client in record time, and they're none the wiser. All fine and dandy, right? Now, you need to hand this onto another team member who needs to develop the remaining deliverables. They only have the artwork at the size the original ad has been created, there are no stylesheets to carry across and the elements that need to be scaled up/down are in a pixel-based format that won't play nicely when it comes to scaling. Bad times. Doing the initial groundwork would have saved considerable time (and stop a junior designer bugging you every 30 seconds). What would have possibly a few more minutes at the start could save hours in the long run, especially if the campaign is extensive. The introduction of workflow tools like Adobe Bridge have made the creation of workflows and artwork control much easier. As a client, it's worth checking with your agency what workflows they have in place. At the end of the day, you don't want to have to be shelling out for poor production practices that are not your responsibility. Here are a few pointers on setting up studio workflows.

1. Know the pure purpose of each application. Yes you can typeset in Photoshop and add photos to Illustrator, but you need to understand the pure purpose of each application and how they fit into a studio workflow.
2. Assign responsibility. Make sure there are people with key roles in for the management of each workflow in the studio, with one senior studio member over-seeing the entire process.
3. Streamline, modify and improve. Regularly review the workflow process in the studio, ensure that people are maintaining their role and try to find ways of saving time during each stage (without cutting corners)
4. Introduce project management tools. Workflow problems can sometimes come when communication fails between the account managers and the studio. Take a look at things like Traffic or the 37Signals suite of project management tools.
5. Keep learning. You can never completely master a software suite, but by ensuring you always set aside time to learn key methods of a production process, you can strengthen your studio workflow.

James Kindred is co-founder and Art Director of Condiment, a design and creative communications agency in the centre of Ipswich, Suffolk. Pic: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.