Design as well as the other spheres of art can be created by the teams of collaborators. Of course, creating designs solely might feel like having more control over your piece. But there is a trick: if you want to avoid a tunnel vision on your project, make it truly pixel-perfect, and not just have control, but give it partly to your team, here is our short guide on how to collaborate effectively with the other designers.

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Advice 1: Find a Tool

Design collaboration can be offline and online. Now we'll talk about the second one because dealing with offline collaboration will take the other tools. For creating a shared space for all the members of your design team, you'll have to pick a perfect site. Here are some tools for a collaborative design:

1. InVision is a web-based instrument for creating designs from scratch, prototyping, etc. There you will have a shared space, where you can leave comments on designs and a convenient to-do list for each member of your team.
2. Cage is an online collaboration instrument, which was created for designers. You can add assignments, get feedback on your works, and many more!
3. Asana is more for management collaboration, but also very popular among designers. There you and your team can share files, create understandable sitemaps, and leave comments on one another's assignments.
4. Figma is also a very popular tool for the collaborations of designers. There you and your team can work on the same project at the same time. Also, you can leave comments there and share projects!
5. Sketch is a seasoned instrument for teams. With its public Beta, you can manage your docs just inside your laptop. Downloading a doc or rolling it back is not a problem anymore. Sketch is an instrument mostly used by skilled designers, but if you're a beginner, try it as well.
6. Canva is a tool made mostly for beginners: it's very handy to create a template there to pass it on to the other colleague. Also, it's a nice instrument to start with: a clear and not overloaded toolbar will not distract you from learning design and collaboration.

Finding a perfect tool is a complicated task, so try more and before using any, think about how many people need to share space, your budget, and what kind of design you'll create.

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Advice 2: Get a Team with a Consistent Mindset

Getting a team is the hardest task, we think. Creating a team of designers is even harder: everyone has their own opinion, skills, mindset. Let's talk about the last feature, which is the most important while creating a team.

When you look in the same direction it's necessary to criticize one another, this way, and you'll help your designs, make them perfect. But where to find a team of designers who will understand your ideas?

• Dribbble is a perfect place to find a fellow designer: you can scroll their portfolios, see their mindset, and connect them.
• Behance is also a creative space full of sophisticated designer works. All you need when looking for a designer - is to know, what skills they have to possess.
• Fiverr / Upwork is the platform to hire freelancers of all kinds. There you can find designers too, it's handy that you'll know the price for the work before hiring a designer.

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Advice 3: Communicate Effectively

Communication is the key to everything. Find an appropriate way to deliver your messages to the team you work with. Here is some small piece of advice on how to do that:

• Check out the timezones: make sure that your calls and text will be delivered on time and will not disturb anyone.
• Learn the cultural context of your team members.
• Choose a form for daily communication: video calls, messages, comments in doc or mixed.
• Choose a tool of communication: Zoom, Telegram, Asana.

It's important that every designer on your team feels comfortable and concentrated to perform their tasks perfectly.

Advice 4: Establish Rules

To perform effectively, make sure that everyone knows what's appropriate and what's not. Articulate these things in from of the team to make sure everyone is ok with them:

• Deadlines
• Rules of communication
• The way critics are being expresses on the team (critique, not a person but work, etc.)
• The way of work and presenting the results – Kanban, Agile, Units, or many more ways to organize teamwork.

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Advice 5: Trust Your Team

This might be a difficult rule for the designers, who work mostly alone or quite sensitive about their vision. It's a crucial moment when you let go and trust your team members in the work they do. Anyways, teamwork is supposed to create the coolest thing out of possible ones, so, the main rules are to work on your problem sides:

1. Work out the way you express your thoughts, it should be clear
2. Work with your time management, so the whole team accomplishes the project on time
3. Learn new things! Design is about constant learning, share tutorials, courses with your team. Here are the top design courses that we've prepared for you!

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Bottom Line

Following these simple rules, you will find out what an efficient team looks like, so when making a collaborative design, remember, that the main thing here is collaboration. Not your single one opinion, but the opinions of every team member.