More and more companies are turning to cloud services for storage of email, documents, spreadsheets and presentations. But as far as collaborating with a team on image-based projects, what are the tools you can use that combine the collaborative ease of Google Docs for teams and the beautiful presentation and inviting interface of Pinterest, while maintaining efficiency?
When it comes to collaboration of visual assets and images, only some sites have the capacity and responsiveness to beautifully display, store, and share portfolios in a tidy interface. Here are some sites that I have perused where the images are neatly organized and it's easy to socially collaborate with others to share or review media for your business.
1. Dropr: At first blush, dropr has a very well-designed and customizable interface. Dropr is not just a place for sharing your own content, inspiration and images, but it is also a browsing experience to explore other users' portfolios and projects. Dropr is more about creating a page for your personal style or for your brand, as opposed to sharing specific boards of inspiration with coworkers. You can neatly post all your media in one place: images, audio files, video, text and interactive flash or HTML5 artwork. Once logged in, you can truly see why Dropr claims they are "like an iceberg." On the outside, each personal web page is tidy and unadorned with frilly features, but once you have your own page to customize, there are hundreds of features and tools to edit according to the visual aesthetic you want. At the end of the day, Dropr appears to be a social network to share your artwork. It is a beautiful way to lay out, organize, and share all types of your media to inspire your fellow co-workers or to show your fans.
2. Conceptboard - With Conceptboard, you can create mood boards, mind maps or conceptual sketches. Although I'm not 100 percent sure what all of those tools are, it does appear to be creative platform where team members can collaborate in real-time about drawings and wireframes. Once an image is uploaded (or hand drawn with their tools) it is really easy to add precise comments, scribble notes with various types of writing utensils, create mockups, share with specific people and more. See below for all you can do with this interface.
3. ShareSquare - Sharesquare may seem like Pinterest, but these two visual pinboards are completely different. It is a social tool for designers, marketers, event planners, among other professionals, to "work as visually as they think," according to their website. It is like Pinterest in that there are many boards for users to gather and organize images based on category however there are distinctive features like a zooming tool to annotate and arrange pins by folders, drag 'n' drop tool, and even real-time collaboration where users can video conference and simultaneously view the same boards for discussion.
4. ConceptShare - Yes, this does have a very similar name as number 2 and 3 - you're not going crazy - but they are three very different tools. ConceptShare is a hub for creative professionals to discuss, debate and decide on visual aspects of their business like print, web and even video mockups. There are some simple tools like highlighters, pen and croppers but there are strategic comment strings that are attached to specific parts of the visual. Companies like Disney Interactive Studios, HBO, and Macy's all use ConceptShare to communicate and share their creative work. There are a lot of features - check it out yourself if you are a serious creative editor in need of a workspace for your team.
Jen Eisenberg, a rising junior at the University of Michigan, is a product marketing intern at Grovo.com, an online Internet training platform with educational videos for everything from Google Docs help to Evernote tutorial lessons. Jen loves the NYC tech startup scene and immerses herself in it on a daily basis