What Designers Hate About Google Drive and How to Fix It

It happens with product photos, fonts, and videos too. Research shows about one in six workers rebuild assets that already exist. And a 2021 survey found marketers lose three weeks a year searching for files. That is time stolen from creative work, and it can result in burnout of your design teams, too.

Why Google Drive Fails Creative Teams

Simply put, Google Drive was not designed for creative operations. It works for documents, but fails when handling design workflows.

Great for documents, not for design ops

Google Drive is strong for office work like spreadsheets and Google Docs, or even writing the draft of this blog post. But design teams deserve more. They need previews, brand rules, and workflows tied to assets, and frankly, so do non-designers. 

As much as we all love our anonymous elephants in our Google Docs, or merging data in a Google Sheet, Google Drive was simply not created to handle the demands of creative asset management.

Folder systems don’t scale

Folders can work when you have a few files, but as assets grow, they collapse into clutter. Brand assets get lost in Google Drive.

Deep folder paths like BrandAssets > Old > Final > Final2 becomes the norm over time and can easily be mistaken in a rush. And in larger teams, everyone organizes differently. A senior designer might know an icon lives in “Assets > UI > 2022 > Icons.” A new hire will not. And a naming convention for an asset file might be nice to establish, but we all know it won’t always be followed, resulting in images that can’t be found by name.

No asset governance

Google Drive does not protect brands from off-brand work. It cannot flag outdated files or mark approved ones, which means anyone can grab an old logo and use it. 

77% of brands admit to producing off-brand content. Brand managers end up as “brand police,” sending constant reminders to use the right assets. And it’s not their job, nor is it their fault. 

Many creative teams are forced to do more with less, which often means sacrificing the proper software to communicate brand assets at scale. Google Drive was never an end-all, be-all solution for asset management; unfortunately, we have just shoehorned them into this position and wonder why brands go rogue.

A Visual-First Way to Store and Share Assets

Design teams need a tool built for how they work. A visual-first system like Lingo solves what Google Drive cannot.

Previews, instructions, and galleries

In Lingo, you see thumbnails for every file. Each asset can carry notes or usage rules, like “use this logo only on light backgrounds.” Galleries make it easy to display assets in a clean, visual layout that anyone can browse.

Plus, Lingo solves for the pesky duplication of files and folders. Built on a Digital Asset Management library, a single asset can appear in multiple Kits or Portals at any time. Make a change to your file, or need to archive an older version? No problem! It all updates in real-time. 

Kits and portals for various use cases

Lingo’s Kits group assets with their context, and Portals allow you to group multiple Kits into one linked portal. For example, a university brand may have Kits for:

• Brand Elements - Brand guidelines, fonts, icons, logos, color palettes, and more
• Brand Templates - Presentations and letterheads
• Campaigns - Graphics and brand marks created for university campaigns and initiatives
• Press and Media - Approved content, images, and positioning about the school
• Photography
• Football
• Tennis - Kit’s for Men’s and Women’s
• Baseball
• Softball
• Basketball - Kit’s for Men’s and Women’s

These Kits can be mixed and matched into different Portals depending on the needs of the end audience. For example:

• Executive Messaging Portal: This Portal may contain the Kit for brand elements, Brand Templates, and some private Kit related to strategy and roadmaps.
• Press & Media Portal: They, too, need access to the brand elements but their Portal may contain the Press & Media Kit along with the Photography Kit.
• Athletics Portal: This Portal also needs to have the Kit for Brand Elements, but also would contain the kits associated with sports teams like football, basketball, baseball, softball, and tennis.

Lingo is very flexible, meaning the Kits and Portals are structured to how you do business. While this example is familiar to our colleges and universities, our cannabis customers break their Portals into states and Kits into brands, so each state portal can tweak content in the kits without causing confusion for other brands in other states.

Easier access for non-designers

Marketers, sales teams, and agencies often struggle in Google Drive with sharing, permissioning, and bulk sending of multiple files. Unless you are using a file sharing service, everything is exchanged via a link to an individual file or folder, or over email, and both can be hard to find when you need them again. 

Lingo makes it simple to share Kits or Portals, even for people without accounts, just like Reddit does with their brand foundation system. Public Kits, like this one, can be open to everyone, shared to a select few, or even password protected. And they’re easy to navigate, search, filter, and download exactly what you need. 

Lingo can also convert file formats automatically, like exporting an SVG as a PNG, to keep you from spending time making easy adjustments to assets and disrupting your time.

The Emotional Cost of File Chaos

Messy files do more than waste time, they wear people down. 

Designers lose focus and energy when every task starts with a file hunt. Surveys show 30% of the workday can be lost to searching for information and it can take up to 8 searches to find the right document or information. And it’s even worse for workers in agencies, with only 28% of pros spending most of their time on creative work.

This creates stress and burnout. Designers joke about being “digital librarians,” but the problem is real. A visual system can restore calm. 

Teams must know where to find creative assets and trust they are current. When they do, that confidence improves morale, reduces errors, and frees more time for creative work. In fact, more than 55% of marketers believe better asset tools improve efficiency, improving their workflows too by not having to ask, and wait, for files they need.

Q&A: Why Do Designers Struggle with Google Drive?

Why do designers struggle with Google Drive?
Because it lacks visual tools, search, and version control. It's hard to tell if you have the right file when all you have is a generic icon.

Can better naming and folders fix Google Drive?
They help for a while, but break down as assets grow. A visual component is a necessity for long-term scale, growth, and brand management.

What is a DAM?
A Digital Asset Management system stores and organizes digital files with tagging, search, and version control. It helps brands maintain consistency by organizing assets in an accessible, centralized location, enhancing productivity and collaboration.

How is Lingo different from Google Drive?
Lingo is built for creatives. It’s part brand guideline builder and part digital asset manager, helping you to visually see your creatives and distribute them to different users without the need for asset or folder duplication.

Will Lingo fix file chaos overnight?
With the right setup, yes. Many teams go from 20-minute searches in Google Drive to 20-second searches in Lingo. Lingo does offer a quick and convenient way to import assets directly from your Google account and to get started.

Give Your Files a Home That Works for Designers

Tired of the Google Drive drama? Lingo is a better home for creative assets. It keeps everything visual, organized, and accessible to the right people. No more folder mess, lost logos, or wasted hours.

Try Lingo for free and see the difference. Your team will thank you. 

Give your files a proper home and get back to creating your best work.