Asana for Designers: Visual Work Management for Creative Teams

Asana is a work management platform that design teams use to track projects, manage creative requests, and coordinate with cross-functional stakeholders. It’s more visual and approachable than developer tools like Jira, with timelines, boards, and calendars that make project status visible to non-technical team members. Asana excels at connecting design work to the broader business: marketing campaigns, product launches, and operational workflows.

Key Specs

How Designers Use Asana

Asana adapts to different design workflows depending on team size and structure. Here’s how designers apply it to common scenarios.

For Design Project Tracking

Create a project for each design initiative (website redesign, rebrand, new feature). Break it into tasks with assignees and due dates. Use sections to organize by phase (research, wireframes, mockups, handoff) or by component (homepage, product page, checkout). The timeline view shows how tasks stack up across weeks, making dependencies and bottlenecks visible.

Most design teams use board view for active work (Kanban style: To Do, In Progress, Review, Done) and timeline view for planning longer projects. Switch between views without changing the underlying structure.

For Creative Request Management

Set up an intake project where stakeholders submit requests as tasks using forms. Each form can have custom fields for request type (social graphic, email banner, landing page), priority, and due date. Requests land in a triage column, and a design lead assigns them to designers. This replaces email requests and Slack threads with a trackable queue.

Templates save time for recurring requests. Create a “social media graphic” template with subtasks (gather copy, create concept, review with marketing, finalize), then duplicate it for each new request.

For Campaign and Launch Management

Coordinate design, copy, development, and marketing tasks in one project. Use timeline view to track milestones leading up to launch. Add dependencies so tasks that need to happen sequentially (design mockups before development, QA before launch) show up in the right order.

Portfolios group related projects. For example, a “Q1 Product Launch” portfolio could include design, engineering, marketing, and sales projects. You can see progress across all workstreams without jumping between projects.

For Cross-Functional Collaboration

Asana works for teams that aren’t just designers. Marketing managers, product managers, and executives can follow projects without learning specialized tools. Comments, file attachments, and status updates keep everyone aligned. The visual interface (especially timeline and calendar views) makes it easier for non-designers to understand project status.

Asana vs. Alternatives

How does Asana compare to other project management tools? Here’s a quick breakdown.

Choose Asana if: You’re a design or creative team working across departments (marketing, product, operations) and need a tool that non-technical stakeholders can adopt easily.

Choose Monday.com if: You want even more visual customization and automation, and budget isn’t tight (it’s pricier than Asana).

Choose Jira if: You’re embedded with engineering teams who already use Jira for sprint planning. Learning Jira’s quirks is worth it to stay in the same tool as developers.

Choose Linear if: You’re a product team (design + engineering) who values speed and keyboard shortcuts. Linear is more opinionated and less flexible, but faster for issue tracking.

Choose Notion if: Your primary need is documentation and knowledge management, with lightweight task tracking on the side.

Getting Started with Asana

A 20-minute quick start to get your design work organized:

Step 1: Create your first project

Click the + in the sidebar and select Project. Choose a template (try “Creative Requests” or “Campaign Planning”) or start blank. Name it something specific like “Q1 Website Redesign” or “Social Media Design Queue.” Pick board view if you want Kanban columns; timeline view if you need to plan phases.

Step 2: Add tasks and assign work

Add tasks for each deliverable (wireframes, mockups, prototypes). Assign to team members, set due dates, and add descriptions with context or links to design files. Use subtasks for multi-step work. Drag tasks between columns (To Do, In Progress, Review, Done) as work progresses.

Step 3: Set up a creative request form

Go to project settings and create a form for stakeholders to submit requests. Add fields for request type, priority, due date, and any context you need (audience, platform, brand guidelines). Share the form link with your team. Requests become tasks automatically, eliminating email threads.

Asana in Your Design Workflow

Asana connects to the tools designers use throughout the project lifecycle.

• Before Asana: Whiteboarding in FigJam or Miro, research in Dovetail or Notion
• During design: Asana tracks tasks and timelines; design work happens in Figma, Sketch, or Adobe Creative Suite
• After Asana: Handoff via Figma Dev Mode or Zeplin; Asana tracks QA and launch tasks

Common tool pairings:

• Asana + Figma for linking design files to project tasks
• Asana + Slack for notifications and updates in team channels
• Asana + Google Drive for attaching brand assets, presentations, and docs
• Asana + Harvest for time tracking and billing (agencies)

Common Problems (and How to Fix Them)

These issues come up regularly when design teams adopt Asana. Here’s how to solve them.

“Too many notifications”

Asana defaults to notifying you about every comment and task change. This gets noisy fast. Fix it by going to Settings > Notifications and adjusting what triggers emails or in-app alerts. Turn off notifications for tasks you’re following but not assigned to. Use “Do Not Disturb” hours to batch notifications.

“Projects get cluttered with completed tasks”

Old tasks pile up and make it hard to see active work. Archive completed tasks (click the three dots on a task and select “Archive”) or set up sections for “Done” and “Archived” to visually separate finished work. Use advanced search to view only incomplete tasks if your board is messy.

“Hard to see who’s overloaded”

Workload view (Business tier) shows how many tasks each person has and when they’re due. If you’re on the free or Premium tier, use a manual workaround: add a “Week of” custom field to tasks, then sort by assignee to see task distribution. Or use board view grouped by assignee to see each person’s queue.

“Can’t track design revisions”

Asana isn’t version control for design files. Upload design files as task attachments, but use Figma’s version history or Abstract for tracking changes. Add comments to the Asana task for each revision with a link to the updated file. For formal approvals, use Asana’s proofing feature (Business tier).

“Stakeholders don’t update their tasks”

This is cultural, not technical. Set expectations that task status updates are part of the workflow, not optional. Use Asana’s “Status Update” feature to prompt project owners for weekly updates. If people still don’t adopt it, consider if Asana is the right tool, or if a simpler system (shared doc, Slack updates) fits your team’s working style better.