So many incredibly talented people forget to create a place where they can organise work and collaborate with others. Do this and thank yourself later.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
So how did we project manage the branding process for OG DOTA2, H2K, G2 and others? Which tool you use isn’t important. It’s all about how you use it. We chose Trello. Think of this as an organised online white board that gets updated by you, your team and your client each day you get closer to finishing work.
Project management sounds boring. I know. But remember, you’re building something to solve someone else challenge. Being organised in how you communicate and work with them will often be a difference maker that is so easy to put into place.
In the late-2015 beginning of Level99, I focused on finding and using the best cloud-based tools to organise, collaborate and archive everything we work on. These tools were so religiously enforced that in those early years, people stopped showing up to the office because we were able to manage all of our work flow remotely. Pre COVID-19 we did get back to the office.. just used it in a different way [another future topic].
In the last 5 years, I developed a friendship with failure and still change the way we organise today. Here’s two shots from the original Trello board that was created to launch the OG DOTA2 brand in 2015. Shared online for the first time:
WHATS A TRELLO BOARD?
Think of that cloud-based whiteboard analogy I mentioned earlier. Each board is dedicated to one client or one project (it’s up to you). I like to use each board for a project. For OG DOTA2, we’ve created a total of 3 boards throughout 2015-2019.
The first board [2015] was what we used to create the OG brand and launch it (titled OG DOTA2):
The second board [2017] was dedicated to the re-branding of OG alongside our new partner Red Bull (titled OG Red Bull Rebrand):
The third board [2018] was focused on the running of the organisation each day including social media, the website, content and reporting [primarily for sales]:
Trello is really easy to use if you just jump in and try things out. You create a board, add all the people you want from each side, decide on what you’ll call your lists and get going.
The way our early boards were structured was very simple but did the job. Over time we evolved these. Every time a board was revamped, we asked ourselves: does this make things easier for those involved to go in and just get it? With Trello, you need to keep two things in mind:
- Decide on what you call the categories of work that need to get done (Trello calls these lists)
- Show tasks that are being worked on in a clear way (Trello calls these cards), set deadlines and show how work is progressing to others (Trello allows you to create labels and set deadlines for each task)
Under each of the lists are cards (aka tasks). Each task involved different 99’ers who we added. Inside each card, you can add as many members to the board you want. In the case of creating the OG brand, we added the core 99 team and the founders of the team. Here’s a real shot of how easy it was for Johan (aka n0tail) to speak on his preferences alongside our early founder Elroy and Founder/Art Director Mateja.
As we evolved, we reduced the number of lists on each Trello board and instead of using an In progress or Completed list, we made better use of the labels that Trello provides. Labels can be applied to any card and once everyone knows what they mean, you can look at a board in an instant and know what’s in progress and what’s finished.
The original label structure we used for our early work with OG was set up like this:
For more recent branding projects, we generally use something like this:
So, putting that stuff up there all together… here’s what a tightly-packed (but lots of room to improve) project board would look like for a branding project:
Remember: Project managing your work ensures everything you do is easy to access, great for collaborating with others and archives the stuff you put down so you can review and learn from it. You’d be surprised how many HUGE companies over complicate project management. Find a structure that works for you.
Whilst there’s a fair bit in here, once you get a solid grip on project management, building out any project (especially branding) becomes a lot easier. In terms of setting up a board to work on branding, you could either:
A) Create one list. Each task is a card in that list and becomes one of the 9 items from the checklist I shared in Part 1 of this series. I’d recommend this for smaller projects on a very tight deadline.
B) Create 9 lists. Each list is then named as one of the items from the checklist. This is best for larger projects that involve more people.
Now that you’ve seen how projects can be managed, we’ll track back to OG DOTA2 and continue on with the Branding checklist. The next piece will take on the 3rd item in the list: IDENTITY.
