Graphic Design Agency - Case Study

Many design and engineering related businesses need to exchange large files with their clients. In this case study, an innovative design agency uses Lockbox to share large files and to keep clients coming back to its website.

Identity Creative

Identity Creative is a graphic design studio with customers in most major industries. In the process of graphic design, web design and photography, large files tend fly to back and forth between designer, clients and third party publishing organisations.

Challenges

Zip drives, tape drives, DAT tapes, CDs, USBs and FTP sites; in the twenty years Identity Creative’s Craig Edwards has been a graphic designer, he has seen a lot of changes in the speed and cost of sharing files and of the creative workflow.

“Only as far back as three years ago, when a magazine house or a printer needed a file too big to email the graphic designer had to burn it to a CD, package and label it and put it in the post or on a courier’s bike. The file would take hours or days to arrive at its destination and it could take weeks to finalise a design if lots of changes were required.”

On a weekly basis, Identity Creative produces everything from logos to collateral to websites to online catalogues, all requiring ongoing feedback and input from clients on files anywhere between two and 200MBs. Said Edwards,

“In the last couple of years, publicly hosted electronic file sharing sites have made things a little easier, but as we’re constantly juggling various deadline-driven projects, we keep a look out for tools that will enhance the way we do business and work with our clients.”

Solution

When the Lockbox team approached Identity Creative to become a trial user of the online collaboration and sharing solution, Craig Edwards signed on and hasn’t looked back.

Identity Creative now uses Lockbox to send and receive large files securely. Files are uploaded to Lockbox at Identity Creative’s website. The files are then compressed and encrypted and stored in the Lockbox server; so secure that even Lockbox staff can’t access them without being provided a password or pass phrase by Identity Creative.

Lockbox Benefits

The simplicity of Lockbox appeals to Edwards because he can share high resolution designs and images quickly and easily.

“Lockbox is a lot easier to use than the electronic file transfer sites out there. I can actually drag and drop files into Lockbox.”

Lockbox’s unique capability is that it can be embedded into Identity Creative’s website; a big selling point for Edwards.

“Every time a client sends or receives a file from me, they come back to my website and so not only does it reinforce the Identity Creative brand, it reminds them of all the services we offer.”

Craig strongly rates the highest level of encryption Lockbox provides, but not because of the threat of virus or privacy invasion.

“As a designer, I love the level of encryption because sometimes when you transfer files electronically, design elements such as fonts can become corrupted. Lockbox has a protective shell that ensures that never happens. Lockbox is continually tweaked so the design and backend just keeps getting better and better. It simply makes online sharing easy, saves a lot of time and hassle and, to top it off, our clients have been very positive about Lockbox.”