The Graphic Profile App Marketing Departments Have Dreamed Of (And We Built)
It happens again. The sales team in Malmo has just sent out a product brochure to an important customer. The logo is from 2019. The font does not match your graphic profile. The colors are "close enough" but not entirely correct. The marketing department in Stockholm sighs when the email comes in. For the third time this month.
Despite clear brand guidelines, ready-made templates, and extensive documentation, off-brand material continues to pop up. Existing design tools are fantastic - but they either require extensive training or give too much freedom. The result is the same: material that doesn't follow the profile, frustration on the marketing department, and weakened brand identity.
After 20+ years of producing visual material for companies, we at Multiproduktion have seen this problem from both sides. We have been the ones producing professional content, and we have been advisors when companies have struggled with brand consistency. So we built the solution that marketing departments actually need - an app where you have total control over the design, but where employees can easily create local material in seconds instead of hours.
In this article, we explain the problem with current solutions, show our approach with a smart template system and centralized asset bank, and how the combination transforms what used to take hours into seconds.
The Problem With "Do It Yourself" - Why Existing Tools Fail
We love modern design tools. Canva is fantastic. Adobe Express is powerful. But here's the truth: these tools don't solve the brand consistency problem for companies with multiple departments. They solve a different problem - they make design accessible to everyone. And that's where the paradox lies.
Consider this scenario: You have spent hundreds of thousands of kronor on developing a visual identity. Your agency has delivered perfect templates. You have detailed brand guidelines. You have even run workshops on the importance of consistent communication. Yet week after week you see material being produced that does not follow the profile.
The problem is not that your employees do not care. The problem is that existing tools, however good they are, give users the ability to "go off-brand." They can change fonts. Adjust colors. Move the logo. Make it bigger, smaller, rotate it – regardless of what your guidelines say. Because the tool is built for freedom, not control.
Then we have the approval processes. In theory, everything should be reviewed before it is published. In practice, it becomes a bottleneck. The marketing department is drowning in review requests. Material gets stuck waiting for approval. Local teams that need to act quickly choose to move forward anyway – and there we are back to square one.
But there is a fourth problem that is rarely mentioned: scattered assets. The new logo is on Google Drive. Product images from last quarter are in Dropbox. Someone has all the fonts on their computer. Team photos from recruitment are in another system. When the salesperson in Gothenburg is about to make a presentation, they don't know which version of the logo is correct or where to find approved images. So they Google the company name and use whatever they find. Often it's old versions.
Four Common Pitfalls
Too much freedom leads to chaos. Give employees access to design tools without limitations and you'll get a hundred different interpretations of your visual identity. Every local manager thinks they're 'just improving a little.'
Too many rules make no one use the system. If the process is too complicated or requires too many approvals, teams choose to find their own solutions. Parallel systems emerge. Control is an illusion.
Manual review is neither scalable nor effective. When every brochure, presentation, and social media post needs to be reviewed by the marketing department, work comes to a standstill. You can't train 200 employees in graphic design. But you can't review everything they produce either.
Scattered assets guarantee incorrect usage. When approved assets are located in five different places, it's impossible to ensure the correct version is used. The result: old logos, unapproved images, and material that looks outdated.
We've seen this over and over again with the companies we work with. The problem isn't a lack of ambition or tools – it's that the tools aren't built for this specific need.
What Marketing Departments Really Need
Let's define the holy grail. If you could wish freely, what would the perfect solution look like?
Employees can create content themselves. The sales team needs customized presentations for different customer segments. Local offices want to post on social media about their events. HR needs onboarding material. Everyone wants to be able to act quickly without waiting for the marketing department.
The material always looks professional and follows the graphic profile. Not "approximately" or "close enough" – exactly right. The logo is in the right place, in the right version. Colors that match your palette perfectly. Typography that is consistent. Layout that works.
The marketing department has full control over what can be changed. You determine exactly which elements are locked and which ones users can customize. No one can "accidentally" change something they shouldn't.
All approved assets are in one place. Images, videos, logos, fonts, product photos – everything you've approved for use, collected and organized. No one needs to guess which material is okay to use.
No training is needed. The system should be so intuitive that anyone can use it. The first time. Without a manual.
The process takes seconds, not hours. From idea to finished, downloaded material in a few minutes. What previously took half the day (or several days if it was to be reviewed) now takes less time than making a cup of coffee.
This is not science fiction. But it is difficult to achieve. It requires an understanding of design, technology AND the entire production workflow. It cannot be built by a tech company that does not understand the design process. It cannot be built by a design agency without technical expertise either.
It requires someone who has been there, in production and brand management, and who understands the pain points from both sides.
With our background in visual production, we understood that this requires a different approach - where smart templates meet intelligent asset management.
Multi-Production Solution: Smart Template System With Centralized Asset Bank
The secret is not just smart templates. It's not just a well-organized image bank either. It's the combination. When both parts are in place, and they also communicate seamlessly with each other, the magic happens. What used to take hours now takes seconds.
Let's break down how it actually works.
Part 1 - Asset Bank: A Source of Truth
For the marketing department, it starts here. You upload all your approved assets to a central library. Not just images – but everything.
Product photos from the latest photo session. Team photos from the office. Stock photos you have licensed. Videos from product demos and customer testimonials. All versions of your logo – color, black and white, negative. Your custom fonts. Brand guidelines document. B-roll from company events. Everything that anyone in the organization might need is here.
Structure is important. You can categorize and tag material. "Products - Category A - Autumn 2024" or "Team - Stockholm Office - Management Group". Version control ensures that when you update a logo, the old version disappears (or is moved to archive). There is always only one current version of each asset.
The search function is intelligent. Don't just search by file name – search by content. "Office environment summer 2024" finds the right images even if they were named "IMG_4726.jpg" when uploaded. AI-driven search understands context and visual content.
For your employees, this is simple. They log in. They search for what they need. They only see approved material. There's no uncertainty, no guessing. If they can see the image in the system? Then it's okay to use. Period.
Part 2 - Smart Templates With Total Control
Now comes the second part. You have templates you use – perhaps created by your agency, or internally produced by your marketing department. It can be presentation templates, social media templates, brochure layouts, job ad templates, whatever.
You upload the template. The system reads the design and identifies all elements. You go through and decide what should be locked and what users are allowed to change.
The logo? Locked. Position, size, color – everything is fixed. The color palette? Locked. Users can't "experiment" with other shades. Typography? Locked. Right font, right sizes, right line spacing.
But the headlines? They can be written by the users themselves. The body text? Adapted to their needs. Image placements? Here they can insert images – but only from the approved asset bank.
For your employees, the workflow becomes extremely simple. They choose a template. "I need a product presentation." Done. They see directly which fields they can fill in. They write their headline. They insert their descriptive text. They need a product image – they go to the asset bank, search for the product name, insert the image. Done. They download. PDF or PNG, ready to use.
The Magic in the Combination - From Hours to Seconds
Let's compare the traditional workflow with our solution.
Traditional:
The salesperson in Malmo needs a presentation for a customer meeting tomorrow. They are looking for the company's presentation template. Finds a version on Teams from last year – is it the latest? They open PowerPoint. Now they need the logo. Where is it located? Google Drive? No. Dropbox? Find one, but is it the new or old version? They send a Slack message to the marketing department. "Which logo should I use?" Wait.
Now they need product images. They google the company name plus the product. Find some images but are unsure – can they use these? Send a new message. "Can I use these product images?" Wait again.
Two hours later, they have a first draft. They send it to the marketing department for review. "Can you check this before the meeting tomorrow?" The next day, the response comes: "Can you change the font to our brand font? And that logo is from 2022, use the new one."
Total time: Several days. Several hours of active work time. Frustration on both sides.
With our solution:
The salesperson in Malmö logs in. Selects "Product Presentation - Sales Meeting". 30 seconds. Enters the customer's name and product name in the unlocked fields. 1 minute. Clicks on image placement, searches for the product name in the asset bank, and drags in the image they want. 30 seconds. Adds a complementary image from the same search. 20 seconds. Downloads as PDF. 10 seconds.
Total time: Under 3 minutes. The material follows the graphic profile guaranteed. No review needed. The customer meeting is saved.
It's not just the time-saving – even if it's massive. It's the freedom for the salesperson to act quickly. It's peace of mind for the marketing department to know that the material is correct. It's professionalism in that every presentation looks as it should.
Intelligent Functionality - Without Getting Complicated
Behind the scenes, things happen that the user never needs to think about, but that make the experience seamless.
Smart text adaptation. When the user writes a heading that is longer than the template was originally designed for, the text is adjusted automatically. Not by breaking the layout – but by optimizing size and line breaks so that the design is maintained. It looks professional regardless of how long the text becomes.
Multi-page support. Don't just create individual pages – build entire presentations. Each page follows the template. Each page has the same level of control. The user can add or remove pages as needed, but the design remains consistent.
Variables for personalization. The salesperson in Gothenburg opens a template and their name, office, and contact information are automatically filled in. They don't even need to think about it. The same template for Malmö automatically gets Malmö office information.
Your custom fonts are always available. No more 'I couldn't find the font, so I used Arial instead.' The system has all your fonts built-in and applies them automatically.
Real Use Cases
Sales teams: One of our clients, a B2B company with 15 salespeople across the country, used to spend 2-3 hours assembling customer-specific presentations. Now it takes 3-4 minutes. They have access to all the latest product images in the asset bank and can quickly adapt presentations based on the customer's industry or needs.
Local offices: Another company with 8 local offices struggled with social media content. Each office wanted to post about local events and successes, but the material looked very different. Now they use the same social media templates, pull in their local images from the asset bank (which are tagged per office), and produce content that looks uniform but with local content.
HR department: Onboarding material is constantly changing as the team grows. Instead of having to go back to a designer every time someone new starts, HR can update onboarding presentations with new team photos from the asset bank and updated information.
Events and trade shows: When you participate in a trade show, you often need roll-ups, brochures, and other materials tailored to that specific event. With access to event-specific images in the asset bank and templates for trade show materials, the event team can quickly produce everything they need without involving design resources.
Recruitment: Job ad templates with current 'work with us' images, team photos, and company culture images from the asset bank ensure that each job is marketed professionally and consistently – without HR having to wait for the marketing department.
Why a Production Company Built This Solution
For over 20 years, we have produced thousands of visual materials for companies – from commercials and animation to corporate presentations and educational films. This experience has taught us something fundamental: asset management and brand consistency are not just design challenges. They are production challenges.
We have seen the problem from both sides. As producers, we know how important it is to have the right assets organized and accessible. In our own studio, we have systems for managing thousands of files – raw materials, finished productions, customer assets, audio files, fonts. Without order, production collapses.
As advisors to companies, we have seen the pain. We deliver a perfect corporate film, complete with graphics that follow their profile exactly. Six months later, we see that they are using old graphics in their presentations, or that local teams have created their own versions that don't match. The frustration is palpable – both among us and their marketing departments.
The insight was clear: Tools built by tech companies don't understand the design process or production workflow. They solve generic problems. But brand consistency for companies with multiple departments is not a generic problem – it requires deep understanding of how visual content is actually produced and used.
Our combination is unique. We have creative expertise from two decades of production. We have technical competence – we build software solutions and automations for our own production processes. We understand asset management because it's the core of our daily operations. And we use AI and modern technology in our production, so we know exactly how to balance automation with quality and human control.
Transparency is important to us: This is not our core focus. We are primarily a production company specializing in film, video, and animation. But when we built this solution to manage our own needs and saw the impact it had, we realized that every marketing department out there is struggling with the same problem.
We solved it for ourselves and our customers. Now we want to share it.
From Chaos to Control - Expected Results
Let's talk concretely about what companies can expect when they implement a system like this.
Immediately
No more off-brand material. When users physically can't change logos, colors, or fonts, the problem disappears. It's no longer a matter of training or discipline – the system simply doesn't allow it.
No more wrong versions of assets. When there's only one version of each asset in the system, and that version is always the latest approved, the problem with old logos and outdated product images disappears. You update once – everyone automatically uses the new version.
The marketing department no longer has to review every brochure. When the material by definition follows the profile, you no longer need to quality-assure the design. You can focus your review on content and message where it is actually needed.
Production time from hours to minutes. We have measured this among our customers. Tasks that previously took 2-4 hours (including waiting time for review) now take 3-5 minutes. Sales teams can act faster. Local offices can be more agile on social media. Event teams can produce material on-the-fly.
Employees feel empowered. Instead of being dependent on the marketing department for every small adjustment, teams can act independently. They can create the material they need, when they need it, without worrying about making mistakes.
Long-term
Stronger brand recognition. When all material looks consistent, everywhere, all the time, your visual identity is strengthened. Customers and partners learn to recognize you in a split second. That's exactly how strong branding should work.
Massive time and cost savings. Consider this: If 30% of your produced material previously needed to be redone or adjusted, and each round cost 2-4 hours of work – how much time do you save in a year? How much does that time cost in the marketing department's salary? The answer is often hundreds of thousands of kronor.
Scalability. When the company grows – new offices, new product lines, new markets – the solution scales with you. Add new templates. Upload new assets. Give more users access. The system handles it.
Professional image everywhere, always. Every touchpoint, from a sales presentation to a social media post to trade show materials, represents your brand in the right way. That's the difference between a company that looks big and established versus one that appears fragmented.
Better asset governance. You get insight into what's being used where. Which templates are most popular? Which images are used the most? Which assets are never used? That information helps you continuously improve your content and communication.
Real Talk From Our Experience
We've seen companies where 30-40% of all material produced by local teams needs to be redone because it doesn't follow the graphic profile or uses outdated assets. Think about that number. Almost half of all production is actually wasted time.
When the salesperson in Malmö uses the 2019 logo and the 2022 product image in a presentation to a potential key customer, what does it say about your organization? When HR publishes a job ad with team photos where half of the people are no longer employed?
This is not a cosmetic problem. It's money, time, and frustrations you don't need. It's also lost business opportunities when professionalism is questioned.
Is This Solution Right for Your Organization?
Not all companies need this. Let's be honest about who gets the most value from a solution like this.
Perfect for Companies That
Have an existing visual profile that you want to maintain. If you've already invested in visual identity and know what it should look like, this is perfect. We help you implement it consistently.
Have 50+ employees spread across multiple offices or departments. The more people producing material, the harder it is to maintain brand consistency. This is where the value really shows.
Actively struggling to keep material on-brand. If you recognize yourself in the scenarios at the beginning of the article – sales teams using the wrong logos, local offices going their own design way – then this is built for you.
Have assets scattered across different systems. Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, local computers – if your approved images, logos, and other materials are everywhere and nowhere, you need centralization.
Want to give autonomy to local teams without losing control. The balance between freedom and governance is difficult. This solution gives you both.
Have a marketing budget that's leaking on corrective work and waiting time. Count on it. How much time does the marketing department spend reviewing, correcting and remaking material? How much productivity is lost when sales teams wait for approvals? The numbers are usually enlightening.
Not Right If
You lack a clear graphic profile. If you don't know what your visual identity should look like, you need to start there. We at Multiproduktion are happy to help develop that first – it's after all our core area.
Only the marketing department produces all material. If you have a centralized model where no material is produced decentrally, you probably don't need this system.
You are a very small team (under 10 people). At that size, it's often easier with direct communication and manual control.
If you recognize yourselves in the first categories and are curious about how this would work for your organization, let's talk.
Control Without Losing Flexibility
Brand consistency is not just about having nice design templates or a unified image bank. It's about having the right tools that actually understand the problem you're trying to solve. Existing tools are built for designers or for general content creation. They don't solve the specific problem that arises when a company with multiple departments needs to produce material that always follows the profile.
With our background as a production company - 20+ years of creating visual content, managing thousands of assets and understanding brand management from the inside - we built the tool that marketing departments actually need. Where smart templates with total control meet intelligent asset management with everything in one place.
The result is something that previously seemed impossible: Material that takes seconds to create instead of hours, and that always, guaranteed, follows your visual profile.
The holy grail for marketing departments. Freedom for your teams. Control for you. Professionalism everywhere.
Would you like to see how it works in practice with your own templates and assets? Book a demo where we go through the system and show exactly what it would look like for your organization. We at Multiproduktion understand visual communication and production workflows – let us show you how to gain control without losing flexibility.
Contact us for a personal demo
Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Consistency and Graphic Templates for Companies
-
Description text goesThe biggest challenge with a consistent graphic profile across multiple departments is balancing control with autonomy. Traditionally, companies have two options: either centralize all production to the marketing department (which creates bottlenecks), or give departments the freedom to create their own material (which often leads to inconsistency).
The most effective solution combines three elements. Firstly, technical control through systems that lock design elements that should not be changed - logos, color palettes, typography. This eliminates the possibility of 'accidentally' making mistakes. Secondly, centralized asset management where all approved images, videos, and graphic elements are gathered. When teams can only use approved material, the problem with outdated versions disappears. Thirdly, streamlined templates that are easy to use so that departments actually use them instead of finding their own solutions.
In our experience from working with companies for over 20 years, we have seen that training and guidelines are never enough. You can't train hundreds of employees in graphic design and expect everyone to follow the rules perfectly. Instead, systems need to be built so that the right thing is the easy thing - where following the profile is the natural way, not something that requires extra effort. here
-
Brand consistency means that a company's visual and verbal identity is presented in the same way across all channels and touchpoints. It's about the logo always looking the same, the color palette being used consistently, the typography following the same rules, and the overall feeling being uniform – regardless of whether the customer encounters the brand on social media, in a presentation, at a trade fair, or in an email signature.
Why is this important? Research shows that consumers need to encounter a brand 7-10 times before they recognize it and start building trust. But every time the visual expression varies – incorrect color shades, different logo versions, inconsistent typography – the counter is partially "reset". The brain perceives it as different entities rather than the same brand.
For B2B companies, the effect is even more pronounced. When a potential customer receives a sales presentation that does not match the impression from the website, or when material at a trade show looks different from what they have seen before, it creates doubt about the professionalism. In our work with corporate communication, we have seen how inconsistency directly affects credibility – small visual deviations have major consequences for how seriously the company is perceived.
-
The most common problem with graphic templates is that they give too much freedom. A template in PowerPoint or a Canva template can look perfect when created, but the user can change almost everything - fonts, colors, sizes, positions. The result is that each user makes "small adjustments" that they think improve the design, and suddenly there are ten different versions of the same template in circulation.
The other major problem is accessibility and version control. Templates are sent around via email, saved locally, copied to different shared folders. Soon there are multiple versions, and no one knows which is the latest approved one. The salesperson in Gothenburg uses the 2022 version, while the Malmö office has the 2024 update. Both believe they are using the "right" template.
A third problem is that templates often lack the necessary assets. The user opens the template but then needs to search for logos, product images, fonts, and other elements in different systems. This friction causes many to choose to create something from scratch instead - which completely misses the point of having templates.
Finally, many templates are not built for how they are actually used. A presentation template may look perfect with example text, but when the user types longer headings or needs more bullet points, the layout breaks. The text goes outside the frames or becomes too small to read. In our production, we have learned that templates must be intelligent enough to handle real, varied usage - not just ideal examples.
-
Traditionally, it takes between a few hours to several days to create marketing material for local offices, depending on several factors. If the material needs to be reviewed by the central marketing department, which is usually the case, waiting time is added. In practice, the workflow often looks like this: the local office spends 1-2 hours finding templates and assets, 1-2 hours creating the material, then waits 1-3 days for review, followed by 30-60 minutes of corrections.
Total time from need to finished material: 3-7 days, of which several hours of active work. This assumes that everything goes smoothly - that the right templates are found, that approved images are available, and that only one review round is needed.
In many cases, the time required is even longer. We have seen examples where local offices have to wait weeks to get graphic material produced, either because the marketing department has a queue, or because the right assets are not available and need to be created first. This often leads to local offices either giving up (and missing marketing opportunities) or taking matters into their own hands (resulting in off-brand material).
With modern solutions where templates are technically locked and assets are centralized, the same process can take 3-5 minutes. The user selects a template, fills in the text, drags in images from the approved library, and downloads. No review is needed because the material by design follows the profile. From weeks of waiting to minutes of work – that's the difference between missed opportunities and agile marketing.
-
Asset management in a broad sense is about organizing and managing digital files – images, videos, documents, and other content used by a company. It can be as simple as a well-organized folder structure in Google Drive or as advanced as dedicated systems with metadata, tagging, and advanced search.
DAM – Digital Asset Management – refers specifically to systems and platforms designed to handle large quantities of digital assets at an enterprise level. DAM systems focus on long-term storage, advanced categorization, rights management (who can use what), version control, and integration with other systems. They are often complex and powerful tools that require dedicated administrators.
For companies working with brand consistency, the distinction is important. A traditional DAM system is excellent for storing and organizing thousands of assets, but it doesn't solve the brand consistency problem. It doesn't say "this logo can be used here but not there" or "these colors can be used together." It also doesn't link assets to templates in a way that ensures correct usage.
What companies really need is something in between: sophisticated enough asset management to keep things in order, but linked to a template system that ensures assets are used correctly. In our experience, it is the combination that provides value - not just file storage, but intelligent distribution to the right use in the right context. A DAM system can say "here are all our product images." A brand consistency system says "here is the product image you should use in this type of material, in exactly the right place, in the right size."
-
The most common reason outdated logos and images are used is not that employees deliberately choose old versions - it's that they don't know which one is correct. When assets are scattered across different locations, in email attachments, local computers, and various cloud storage services, it's impossible to know what's current.
The most effective way to prevent this is centralization with version control. All approved assets are in exactly one place. When a new version is added, it automatically replaces (or archives) the old one. There's only one version of the logo available - and it's the correct one.
But centralization is not enough. If users can still copy files locally or if old versions remain in existing material, the problem continues. Here, technical solutions are needed where assets are linked dynamically instead of being copied. When the logo is updated in the system, it is automatically updated everywhere it is used.
A third element is to make the right thing simple. If the process of finding and using approved assets is complicated, users will take shortcuts – google the company name and use what they find, or reuse old files they have locally. Therefore, the system must be so intuitive that it is faster to do right than to do wrong.
In our studio, we have zero tolerance for old assets in production. Every project uses material from our central asset bank where version management is automatic. When a customer updates their logo, the old one is immediately archived. This way of working, which we have applied for over 20 years, is what we have built into our systems for brand consistency.
-
Marketing departments traditionally use a combination of different tools, which is often part of the problem. Brand guidelines are usually documented in PDF format or as web pages – detailed documents that describe logo usage, color palettes, typography, tone of voice, and examples of correct application. These documents are shared via intranet or cloud storage services.
For the production of materials itself, many companies use standard tools such as Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, Canva or Adobe Creative Suite. Some companies invest in dedicated brand portal platforms where templates and assets are gathered. Communication about brand questions is often handled through Slack, Teams or email.
The problem with this fragmented approach is that guidelines are in one place, tools in another, assets in a third, and communication in a fourth. A user who is to create material must navigate between all these systems, interpret guidelines themselves, and hope that they do it right.
More advanced companies use platforms like Frontify, Bynder or similar that try to gather brand management in one place. These systems are often powerful but also expensive and complex, built for large enterprise organizations with dedicated brand managers.
What many marketing departments really need is not more tools to juggle, but an integrated system where guidelines are built into the production process itself. Instead of reading "the logo should be in the upper left corner with a 20px margin" and then trying to implement it, the logo is automatically in the right place when the user selects a template. Guidelines are not a document to follow – they become rules that the system automatically applies.
-
When companies have multiple offices or departments, chaos quickly ensues around which images are allowed to be used. Each office builds its own collection - some stock photos here, product images from an old campaign there, mobile photos from the latest event. The result is that the company appears fragmented. The Stockholm office uses one visual style, Gothenburg another, Malmö a third.
A centralized image bank solves several problems at once. First, quality control. The marketing department can ensure that all images used meet technical and visual standards. No pixelated mobile photos in marketing materials. No unlicensed stock images that can create legal problems.
Secondly, brand consistency. When all offices draw from the same image library, visual cohesion is created. Products are photographed professionally once, then the same images are used everywhere. Company culture images follow the same style. Event photos have consistent quality.
Thirdly, efficiency. Instead of each office having to search for or create their own images, which takes time and often costs money, everything is already available. Does the Malmö office need product images for a local campaign? They are already available, professionally photographed and approved.
Fourthly, updates. When a product is updated and new images are taken, they are added to the central bank. All offices have immediate access to the latest versions. Compare this to the alternative where old product images continue to be used for years by offices that are unaware that new ones exist.
We have seen companies transformed in our operations by implementing centralized asset management. From a situation where every office "did its best" with the material they had, to a situation where professional, on-brand assets are available to everyone in seconds. The difference in how the company is perceived externally is noticeable – from fragmented to united, from amateurish to professional.