Sheila Streetman, a graphic designer and brand strategist, began her Playbook journey through a Creative Market special, in which you signed up and received some gifts.
“That was a fun way to get in,” says Sheila.
She did sort of forget about Playbook until one of her creative friends sent an invite for Playbook’s 4TB free storage package for creatives.
Sheila explains, “I went back and I was like why haven’t I been using this? It was awesome to know that I don’t have to pay more for storage just because I have more collateral to share, work with, and use.”
Since then, Sheila’s workflow includes Playbook. Here’s her experience so far and what she loves about the platform.
What made you switch to Playbook? Where has it been helpful?
Before Playbook, I’d used Google Drive for years. I created all these folders for my clients and sent everything that way. But I like the way I can organize with Playbook — I’m a visual person, and it’s nice to see everything organized in such a visual way. You can pick different layouts and make them fit for you.
Because Playbook brings everything to life, I’m confident when I share files and published pages with people.
Also, in all the work we do as creatives, we want to be professional and make things as easy as possible for the client or the people we are collaborating with. However, with Google Drive, there are some problems. Like when you set up a folder, it’s easy to forget to click “Share” or give permissions, so you end up sending somebody a link that they can’t open, and you have to go back.
With Playbook’s publish option, I just click one little button and I’m all set. I don’t have a team, but if I had one, I’d love to just send one link and say here’s XYZ we need to sign off on before we send it over.
What do you love about Playbook?
My brand is fun and all about making it easy for clients to feel confident when they show up online. Being able to showcase all my digital assets the way I’ve been able to with Playbook is amazing.
Bringing all the pieces together helps me help my clients show up in a very confident way. For example, I would never create a webpage just to send stuff over to a client because that would take way too much time.
But with Playbook, it looks like I spent all this extra time making a website for a client because it shows up that way even though I didn’t have to lay anything out or create links — it’s intuitively there and all I have to do is click a button.
Playbook is fantastic and it makes me look really good. It’s also such a lovely way to share work with a client, who can then share it with their teams…it’s dreamy.
In addition, the platform makes my life easy since it accepts all the file types I use. I can’t think of a file type that I’ve had trouble with. Uploading is super smooth as well.
Playbook is also pretty intuitive. I’m the type of person who often skips steps when I’m setting things up, but it was still very straightforward to set up Playbook in a way that works for me.
How do you see Playbook integrating with the creative world?
Because Playbook is visual and it has all these great features, I think it’s a no-brainer for creatives.
Every time I use it, I discover things I didn’t know it could do. For example, I can have multiple workspaces; I can have workspaces set up for different clients, and within those, I can have folders.
I curated a folder just for logos. I also have similar folders for brand guidelines, full brand books, patterns, and elements. But instead of sharing a bunch of folders when the client asks to see my work, I can send just this one link. This is great for creatives when it comes to sharing files.
I also love the idea of using Playbook as a collaboration tool for creatives because everything is all in one place. For example, if you have a team of people you’re collaborating with, you can give them permission to see things and have all your client folders organized.
I’m a solopreneur and I usually work with just the client team. However, there are times when I’m helping with web design and we’re using an external copywriter. This brings another person into the mix, and with Playbook, we can all collaborate in one place.
If you had to pick one, what would you say is your favorite Playbook feature?
I love the Publish feature!
With one little click, I can choose a template (I have one that I like best), then select “publish to web,” and there’s all your fancy stuff ready to go.