Lucida Design 

A freelance designer easily streamlines collaboration with clients and contractors resulting in 40% fewer versions

“Clients can easily see that it's a much better system than what we were using in the past and it really has helped us to create more dynamic processes.” Lucinda Holland, Freelance Web and Graphic Designer, Lucida Design

Lucida Design is run by Lucinda Holland, a freelance web and graphic designer based in Europe. She provides a range of services including web development, social marketing promotions, branding, logos, print and offline advertising. Holland strives to deliver innovative and original work based on a full understanding of her client’s businesses. She delivers these projects using a network of trusted contractors she has built over many years.

Holland spent an excessive amount of time managing design feedback and passing comments back and forth between clients and her contractors. She relied almost entirely on email and would ask her clients to use Adobe Acrobat to mark-up PDFs. Unfortunately, many of them did not have Acrobat and had to explain their feedback in an email. Holland would then have to collate all of the feedback and create a Photoshop illustration to explain the changes required by her programmers. The process became very lengthy, confusing and complicated for everyone involved.		Holland needed a solution that was more streamlined and efficient, yet simple enough for non-computer savvy clients to use. She found ProofHQ’s tools for sharing and commenting on proofs so intuitive and easy to use, that it instantly became part Lucida Design’s daily process. It has been particularly helpful in working with multiple sub-contractors. ProofHQ allows each sub-contractor to log in and check the progress of a project instantly with the progress view. Once all contractors have reviewed a proof, Holland conducts a final review before uploading it as a new proof to the system and sending it to the client for final review.

The new seamless approach to proofing has significantly shortened Lucida Design’s review cycle, resulting in 40% fewer versions for each proof. The collaborative commenting feature has been especially useful for her international clients who can now log in to proofs easily and leave their comments, regardless of their location. “The reaction of my clients has been brilliant, astonished and very pleased" said Holland. “Even my sub-contractors are signing up for full ProofHQ accounts as they’ve been able to see the value that it adds.”