If you’ve ever attended an event or hosted one yourself, you’ll know that Eventbrite is no stranger to the game. Eventbrite is a self-service ticketing platform that started in 2006 and has served as host to a vibrant collection of live experiences. From local concerts and charity events to global conferences and hackathons, Eventbrite is the best place to go when you’re in need of a social fix.
In 2015, Eventbrite brought on David Scott, Creative Director, to modernize and refresh its brand. David documented the entire evolution and is currently leading the brand team as they explore new ways of telling Eventbrite’s visual story, and while doing so — improving their design process.
“The end result of design is only the tip of the iceberg, but it’s in the process where design really happens,” David said. “We often remember when projects are kicked off and when we see the end result, making it tempting to associate design with that end result. But where design really happens is between those two points.”
David sat down with us to discuss how the design team has evolved and how Wake has played an important role in their success.
A growing global team leads to visibility challenges
Shortly after David had started, Eventbrite’s brand design team had expanded, bringing on new designers in Argentina. It was an exciting time for the team, but they had difficulty grasping the same level of visibility they had when they were small. Design reviews had been a way to combat this, but they often required the coordination of several schedules.
“Honestly there wasn’t anything out there. Besides reviews, that was it. The tools we tried didn’t provide the scale we needed, making it impossible to know what other people were working on.”
Between the global expansion of their team and the additional work that needed to be shared, David and his team needed a solution that would allow them to share their designs more regularly.
“Sharing work early is something all designers know they have to do, but it doesn’t always mean it’s easy. It sounds like such a small thing, but it’s an incredibly important discipline for designers to have.”
As a designer tries to solve the problems of a specific project, sharing work early while ideas are still being developed is a critical time in which to get feedback.
“It’s tempting for designers to feel like they need to solve it before they share it, but having more people help you with your problem, the better,” David said. “So it behooves designers to share work as early as possible even if it’s not where they want it to be or they haven’t cracked the problem.”
Frictionless sharing — the key to a unified design team
After trying various tools, David and his team turned to Wake. Wake’s simple design collaboration app makes it easy for designers to share work directly from their design tools without interrupting their workflow. They could upload work and give feedback from anywhere at any time.
“Wake removes the friction in sharing work with one another.”
For David’s team, as with many design teams, the less work, the better. Even if it’s something as small as exporting their art boards into a folder and uploading it to an asset management system, it adds up to quite a bit of work over time. Wake provided a way for the designers to review work instead of a specific time to do so.
The other key value for David and his team was that it didn’t replace reviews or discourage in-person design discussions, but rather it created an online space that resembled that of a more organic conversation around the work they were creating.
“It’s not like it decreased the in-person interaction at all. The behavior and habits and interactions that existed just continued. Wake’s value was in being able to mimic those interactions online, for our remote designers.”
“Wake opened up this new way of sharing. It is this persistent way for everyone to see and absorb each other’s work. Sharing in progress work became amplified and ambient.”
With Wake, Eventbrite’s brand team was able to access a new way of sharing incomplete work, allowing for better communication and a more unified visual consciousness. Work was shared earlier, more often, and brought the team together.
If you’re looking for an easier way to share design work and bring your team together, give Wake a try! It was designed to fit seamlessly into you workflow to encourage fast and frequent sharing throughout the entire design process.
