Collaborative tools on the rise for creative teams: our top picks
April 2024
8 mins
Every creative mind is unique. Whether you work with video, sound, motion graphics, or design, you have a strong sense of what you do and do not like, and that sensibility directly informs your practice.
How do you keep tabs on everything that inspires you while keeping up with deadlines? Have your Notes app files and email chains gotten unwieldy? Put differently, if you didn’t have to spend time thinking about the mechanics of project management, collaboration, and execution, what would you create next?
Creative workflow technology has come a long way in recent years, and just in time. Today, creative teams look different than they did in the past because they’re working together from all around the world. However, this shift presents teams with unique operational and workflow challenges.
Virtually any content creator will tell you that ensuring assets, file versions, and feedback are organized and accessible to whoever needs them are tasks that significantly prolong a project’s completion. And in media and entertainment, speed and excellence are top priorities. Utilizing the right creative tools and technology cuts down delays and minimizes human error, giving agile, creative teams more confidence as they work remotely.
Before taking a look at some of the tech tools, creatives know they can rely on, let’s think about the shift in how video, audio, and graphic designers are working today.
Creatives at large, complex organizations and small, punchy outfits alike are increasingly migrating their work into the cloud to bolster efficiency and quality at the same time. Therefore, we’ll focus on the tools that support complex creative workflows (regardless of scale) and allow the versatility of cloud access.
Top tech tools for high-performing creative teams
Project Management
Creatives who work for large organizations know that it is no small feat to complete a project that requires multiple teams’ input. What makes a good creative project management platform? We’ve chosen tools that support task management, workflow, and portfolio management while providing an intuitive user experience. Ultimately, “your team’s project complexity and collaboration needs” will determine the better fit.
Asana
Vox Media, Sony Music, and some 80% of the Fortune 100 companies trust Asana to help manage their marketing, operations, product, and leadership efforts.
Features:
Task, workflow, and portfolio management
Time tracking and scheduling
Main strength: Deeply detailed project breakdowns
Number of integrations: 200
Cloud-based? Yes
Monday.com
Major media and entertainment players, from Universal Music Group to Hulu and Lionsgate, use Monday.com to craft efficient workflows. According to one report, “The beauty of Monday.com lies in its flexibility — you can use it for any type of workflow, whether it’s project management, customer relationship management (CRM), software development, or creative projects.”
Features:
Task, workflow, and portfolio management
Time tracking and scheduling
Main strength: Complex cross-departmental collaboration
Number of integrations: 40
Cloud-based? Yes
Adobe Workfront
Adobe Workfront is a leader in enterprise work management. Adobe Workfront supports teams at every stage of planning and executing work, from start to finish, all in one collaborative platform.
Features:
Manage the complete lifecycle of work
Supports project management by automating and standardizing processes
Robust reports and dashboards
Main strength: Resource management and strategic planning
Number of integrations: 25+
Cloud-based? Yes
Communications & collaboration
Content creators gravitate toward different communication platforms for their various work modes. They may turn to one place for quiet, focused work toward a shared goal and another for high-touch projects that demand more regular updates and tracking.
Notion
Notion is like an open-plan office for virtual collaboration, best used as a hub or wiki for writing, monitoring projects, organizing information, and working together.
Features:
Share notes, documents, files, and more
Work on the same document simultaneously
Main strength: Knowledge sharing
Number of widgets available: Over 500,000
Cloud-based? Yes
Slack
Ranked the best business messaging app, Slack offers the speed, versatility, and low-pressure UX that helps creatives open up to close collaboration. That may be because it “creates a more spirited environment than many other business communication apps, and [allows organizations] to customize your app to a fine degree.”
Features:
Direct and group messaging through text, audio, and video
File sharing
Main strength: User experience and convenience
Number of app integrations available: 2,400
Cloud-based? Yes
Discord
Ranked #6 out of all social media apps in the Apple Store, and boasting over 100 million downloads from Google Play alone, Discord may be the most popular community-building platform on the market. It’s free to use, with the most expensive Nitro upgrade costing just $99/year. Some other perks include easy setup, large servers, and top-tier cybersecurity.
Features:
Direct and group messaging through text, audio sync, and video
File sharing (with limited file sizes)
Main strength: Affordability and user experience
Number of apps available: 3,000+
Cloud-based? Yes
Creative workflows tools
Creative professionals working in video, audio, and design need special tools that cater to their precise needs. While many tools offer comparable functionality, those with generative AI and cloud capabilities are looked at with a renewed enthusiasm driven by the need to foster and support remote working capabilities.
For video teams
DaVinci Resolve
Blackmagic promotes its DaVinci Resolve solution as your personal post-production studio in a single app.
Features:
Editing, color correction, visual effects, and motion graphics
DaVinci Neural Engine, a neural network, and machine learning tool, can handle repetitive tasks
Main strengths: Comprehensive and collaborative
Cloud-based: Yes
Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro is a video-editing software used by video editors and post-production teams. It’s equipped with powerful editing tools for content creators and filmmakers.
Features:
Responsive interface and keyframe integrity
Supports non-linear video editing
Supports Adobe Dynamic Link
Multi-cam editing
VR editing and auto-detection
Main strengths: Comprehensive and collaborative
Cloud-based: Yes, and works seamlessly with LucidLink
Frame.io
The one central hub that lets you share media, track feedback, and streamline your workflow, Vice, Google, Mercedes-Benz, and more trust Frame.io’s video collaboration software.
Features:
Import and edit video from standard-definition to 8K
Time-stamped comments and on-screen annotations
Camera to Cloud (C2C) functionality
Main strength: Collaboration
Cloud-based? Yes
Final Cut Pro
Apple bills its Final Cut Pro as the “revolutionary app for creating, editing, and producing the highest-quality video.”
Features:
Includes a 3-month trial
Import and edit video from standard-definition to 8K
Color correction 360-degree footage
Magnetic timeline
Main strength: Fast and well-organized
Cloud-based? No, but with LucidLink, teams can work in Final Cut Pro files from anywhere
For audio teams
Avid Pro Tools
Pro Tools is a Grammy award-winning digital audio workstation (DAW) producing high-quality audio ready for play on Apple Music, Spotify, and more.
Features:
Highest quality audio (24-bit/192 kHz)
Send audio to and from Pro Tools (via Aux I/O)
Mix surround and immersive sound, including Dolby Atmos
Main strength: Exceptional quality
Cloud-based: Yes
Cubase
The world’s top sound designers are creating with Cubase, a DAW developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging, and editing.
Features:
Collaborative music production capabilities
MIDI support and film scoring
Combines DAW features with analog components
Main strengths: Powerful and stable
Cloud-based: Yes
Audition
Audition is a comprehensive toolset that includes multitrack, waveform, and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing, and restoring audio content available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud
Features:
Record, edit, and integrate audio clips.
Batch processing
Adaptive Noise Reduction
The Essential Sound panel includes many preset values
Main strength: Accessibility, supports multiple formats
Cloud-based: Yes
For design teams
Adobe Creative Cloud
From Illustrator to After Effects, Adobe Creative Cloud includes over 20 apps to help design teams produce compelling, engaging content.
Features:
Applications include: Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, After Effects, and much more
Built-in templates
Native integrations between applications and dynamic linking (made possible via the cloud with LucidLink)
Main strength: Comprehensive
Cloud-based: Yes
Figma
Figma brings powerful design together with more intuitive workflows, allowing creatives to “spend more time iterating and less time moving things around.”
Features:
Create, iterate, and access libraries of graphic design content, mockups, and frameworks
Real-time simultaneous collaboration and feedback
Main strength: Collaboration
Cloud-based: Yes
Canva
Canva is where the design table meets the printing shop. With thousands of stock images and templates available, teams without in-house designers can produce visual content on the fly.
Features:
Create new graphics or iterate on thousands of canned images and templates
Real-time simultaneous collaboration and feedback
Main strengths: Ease of use and vast stock library
Cloud-based: Yes
Why cloud-based creative workflow tools are gaining traction
Notice anything interesting that most of these tools have in common? Nearly every tool on this list is cloud-based, and those that aren’t have adopted ways to integrate their products with cloud solutions. That’s because cloud-based tools give creatives the flexibility to collaborate remotely on large complex projects.
LucidLink is a collaborative workflow and storage solution that works seamlessly with many tools essential to creative teams. It ensures content creators and artists can edit, access, and work together on media files of any size or format and eliminates many of the challenges they experienced in the past when working from different locations.
Below are some of the benefits of using LucidLink with other creative workflow tools
Access creative projects in one place from anywhere.
Media files are available in real-time—no downloads and syncing.
Enables simultaneous workflows.
Works similar to a local drive, so there is no learning curve to get started.
How to choose the right creative workflow tools for your teams
If you are struggling to choose the right creative workflow tools that suit your work style and your organization’s needs, here are five Yes/No questions to ask yourself as you search:
You’re looking for a “yes” to all of the above.
Creative teams managing their workflows in the cloud rely on global reach and having quick and easy access to media and project files. Without these core features, adapting to adversity and market shifts would be virtually impossible.
How LucidLink helps creative teams
A creative mind doesn’t want to think about work in terms of tasks or complicated technology. To content teams, project management, collaboration, and execution are all part of a single goal: bringing an incredible idea — whether a film, music production, or marketing campaign — to life.
Creative teams want to spend less time worrying about whether their workflows are serving them well and more time on the ideas that matter. LucidLink enables creative teams to keep their workflows going smoothly, so they can always pick up where their colleagues left off in the essential tools they use daily.
Ready to create and collaborate on projects with confidence? Here’s your 14-day free trial.