Design Proofing with GoProof & Adobe Creative Cloud: How the Integration with Adobe Transforms Stakeholder Review and Approval for the Brewers Association

A streamlined workflow helps elevate creative deliverables that promote craft beer.

The Brewers Association is the major trade association for all types of craft brewers around the U.S., promoting and supporting — as well as protecting — all the small and independent breweries in the country.

In the past several years, those breweries have seen exponential growth and lots of excitement behind it. With all this expansion, brewery owners need new levels of support, and that’s what Brewers Association (BA) is there for. Support often comes in the form of providing information and resources for members, as well as marketing efforts to grow a vibrant and active community. Seamless creative workflows are critical as BA’s creative team supports creative across many channels. This includes events, print, web, video, and social, all of which all require routing creative to stakeholders for review, approval, and design proofing.

Today, an important part of this workflow is using GoProof, a proofing and collaboration tool, along with its Adobe Creative Cloud integration. We asked Jason Smith, BA’s art director who looks after its team of creatives, to share the story of how the software and GoProof extension for Adobe Creative Cloud has made their review and approval process much more efficient.

The Creative Cloud extension for GoProof lets creatives view projects and send proofs out to stakeholders for review and approval without ever having to leave their Creative Cloud apps, allowing them to stay in their creative flow. GoProof integrates with InDesign, InCopy, Illustrator, and Photoshop, as well as Premiere Pro to streamline workflows; creative and marketing teams are able to better collaborate together to meet deadlines and produce amazing work.

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Previously, the Brewers Association would print things out and pass around a folder to gather feedback.

How the extension streamlines design proofing

Prior to using GoProof for review and approval, BA would print things out and pass around a folder to gather feedback from team members. That folder would make its way around to everybody in the company who needed to review.

“Obviously there were downfalls to that as far as the timing of things, pages getting lost, people’s handwriting sometimes wasn’t so clear,” said Jason. BA would include a checklist with the folder, with instructions on exactly who should review and in what order.

This was problematic for the team. “What we would run into there is it would get dropped off at someone’s desk and not get followed up on,” said Jason. “That person may have been out of the office for the afternoon — possibly for multiple days!” BA’s creative department was then tasked with following the folder around and making sure it continued through the proofing process.

_“The amount of time it now takes us to do a review using GoProof for Adobe Creative Cloud is drastically less, which also allows us to be a little more nimble with our production timelines”. _Jason Smith, BA’s art director

With GoProof and Adobe, BA has seen a huge improvement in this workflow — the organization is now able to streamline their process and bring review time down, making it more nimble with production timelines.

Being able to directly @mention comment to somebody, using GoProof and Creative Cloud, and having them receive a notification instantly has made a huge difference for BA. It indicates that a team member needs to go and look at something and respond to a comment. Not only has his saved the organization a lot of time, but it has significantly added to the collaboration factor, as some employees are not on site in the office.

“GoProof is a time-saver, especially when you think about it on the back end when a review comes back with changes requested. To be able to use the GoProof extension for Adobe Creative Cloud to see directly where those comments are and to see them within context, is really huge,” said Jason. Here’s a video with Jason discussing this in detail.

To be able to use the GoProof extension for Adobe Creative Cloud to see directly where those comments are and to see them within context, is really huge.

Prior to using this integration, BA’s project management software would contain comments like ‘page 2, paragraph 4, line 2 — change these 3 words.’ With GoProof and the ability to just click on a comment and be brought to its location on that page.

This has saved BA a lot of time, especially given GoProof’s new functionality like the ability to sort through by page, reviewer, or comment. “So when we are able to export directly from say Adobe InDesign, have the review done, and then take all those comments back through within the design program, it’s been a game-changer for us,” said Jason.

Fostering collaboration in the review process

BA’s copy editors like to do proofing reviews via GoProof, since they’re able to see comments from all collaborators from around the company, no matter what role they have outside of the editorial process. It makes GoProof a very intuitive tool, and Jason says using it with Creative Cloud has caused a major culture shift in his organization to one that now embraces digital transformation to streamline their workflows.

The Brewers Association has more than 5,000 operating brewery members in the U.S.

“This has streamlined the process a ton, compared to when we had chicken scratch on paper proofs routing in the office. The designer has less error on their side trying to interpret it, retyping it. Now it’s just copy, paste and things are done!”

You can watch the full interview with Jason Smith_ and find out more about GoProof_ on the GoProof website, where you can get a free trial. If you already have GoProof, you can download and install the GoProof extension for Adobe Creative Cloud from the Adobe Exchange marketplace here.