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We’re excited to share two GraphicsFlow features that will improve your and your design team’s use of colors across projects. 

• Custom Color Palettes help maintain brand consistency while streamlining production workflows from mockup to production. 
• Art Approval Version Control makes it easier to organize multiple versions of a customer’s design, so you can easily pull the latest iteration or an earlier version without confusion. 

How They Work 

Custom Color Palettes enable you to create, customize, and manage color palettes specific to a customer’s brand or preset ink configurations. 

These presets within the Stock Art Customizer make it simpler for your team to customize a design based on your customer’s needs and then build out an Art Approval. 

Here’s a closer look at how it works:

Meanwhile, Art Approval Version Control eliminates the confusion often involved with managing multiple iterations of a customer design. If you’ve ever had to rifle through multiple emails to find the latest version of a design, you know how challenging this scenario can be and how it can often lead to accidentally redoing a design that’s already been completed. 

Here’s how this feature works:

Key Benefits of These Features

Custom Color Palettes remove the guesswork that often comes with color matching a customer’s artwork request. Now, every customer design will match their branding standards, building more long-term customer relationships. 

Art Approval Version Control complements those palettes since it’ll simplify the approval process, even if the customer requests changes to their branded design. You’ll have the added benefits of: 

• Easy Version Management: Upload, track, and compare different versions of your customer’s artwork on a single approval instead of juggling emails, texts, or subfolders. 
• Automatic Notifications: Customers receive a notification every time you’ve uploaded a new design version, so they know it’s ready for review. 
• Version History: Version control gives you a “paper trail” so all changes and approvals are documented, eliminating any friction or confusion with the customer at the end of the transaction. 
• Flexible Approval: Customers can approve an earlier version of the design without you having to re-upload the previous iteration. 

Real-World Applications

If you’re working with a customer who has strict brand guidelines, you can now create a dedicated palette with their brand colors instead of manually checking each individual color, ensuring consistency across all projects.

Plus, if your shop has a small ink inventory and needs to conserve resources, these custom palettes ensure your design team only uses available colors. This removes unnecessary slowdowns caused by designing customer artwork with a color ink for which you’ll have to place a special order. 

Better Collaboration

If your team works from the same shared palette, that minimizes misprints or miscommunication. Reducing bottlenecks means faster production and faster filling of customer orders. 

Using only specified color palettes can also reduce production headaches and costly mistakes caused by incorrect color choices. 

Art Approval Version Control also helps streamline communication across your team since you’ll have a centralized version of your customer’s design that everyone can see. 

Versatile Color Management

GraphicsFlow’s Custom Color Palettes support RGB/HEX and CMYK color profiles, allowing you to optimize palettes for different production styles. Whether you’re producing sublimated, heat-pressed, or screen-printed products, you can use the color profile that best serves your production output. 

Remote Access 

Custom Color Palettes work on desktop and mobile devices, allowing you to work on your customer projects in the shop and on the go. 

Getting Started

To set up your Custom Palettes: 

1. Navigate to the color palette section under “Account settings.”  
2. Here, you can create new palettes, customize colors using the Color Picker, and organize them according to your needs.

For Art Approval Version Control (NOTE: Version Control isn’t available until an Admin or Client rejects a design): 

1. Upload your initial artwork for client approval
2. Use the “Share” function and enter the customer’s email, setting permissions to “Comment and Approve.”  
3. If rejected by the client, Version Control is activated 
4. Admin will be notified via email of the rejection and can view the updated approval through the “View Art Approval” button. 
5. An Admin can add a new design by clicking the  “+ New Version” button. 
6. Clients can approve either the current version of the updated design or a previous version in the version history. (NOTE: Only one version of the design can be approved at a time)
7. A complete history tracks all changes and communications. 

Watch the videos above for a more detailed walkthrough on how to set up both features. 

Not a customer yet? Sign up today for a discovery call to see how GraphicsFlow can help you and your team modernize how you create, manage, and finalize customer artwork.