Brand & Document Management Help!

[andyshaffer]

I re-branded our organization a couple years ago and created what I thought were very "easy to use" Word templates for things like letterhead, forms, and long documents. As well intentioned as my co-workers may be, they're not very Word savvy and/or think they are creative geniuses and usually end up destroying the very brand and style guide I worked so hard to create. I've tried locking down Word but it's pretty quirky and caused too much of a headache for people to turn Show/Hide on or learn how Word styles work. I've also tried proactively training people on how to use Word the "right" way but its just not working out. In a perfect world I would have all documents come through my office where I could ensure their design before going to the public, but that's just not possible here.

Can anyone suggest the best way to go about protecting our brand and still allowing co-workers to author their own documents? Different software, workflow, anything???

Thanks!

[LostSense]

It's pretty impossible to protect branding if you're the only one voicing for it. I would suggest you try to get upper management involved if possible as they will hold more weight than you on the matter (*** you are not upper management). It's fairly hard to keep branding spot on if there are multiple people involved. Even within graphic design employees it's hard pressed to ensure they are using proper branding all the time if management isn't strictly enforcing it.

[graham77]

I was facing the same sort of complications over document management, during my research I found these two squidoo articles about document binders & on office equipments. Believe me, it will change the way you look on office management.