Columbus College of Art & Design Masters Collaboration with PhotoShelter

CCAD declares its major: Efficient asset control

Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), a private art school founded in 1879 and located in Columbus, Ohio, educates approximately 900 full-time students. With a nine-acre campus comprising 11 buildings, its dynamic environment generates a vast quantity of visual assets. Managing this growing library presented a significant operational hurdle, prompting CCAD to seek a centralized platform that would empower its creative teams and streamline asset management.

The challenge: Digital assets out of focus

Art Director Ryan Feeney is responsible for Columbus College of Art & Design’s collection of visual assets, a core part of the institution’s daily creative and marketing operations. His team frequently encountered problems in efficiently managing this extensive library. Locating specific files quickly and collaborating on projects were persistent operational challenges.

• Disorganized and inaccessible local storage. Assets were difficult to locate as the team was “storing things in folders on a local hard drive.” According to Ryan, “The quantity of files was outrageous,” which also limited broader team access to necessary assets.
• Time-consuming asset searches. The team wasted valuable time because there was “no real way to customize the metadata or search it simply.” Their system made finding specific assets a time-consuming task, directly impacting project timelines.
• Workflow bottlenecks made collaboration slow. Asset contribution and management were slow, as the process relied heavily on a few key individuals. Without an easy way for contributors to upload assets directly, Ryan’s process became a bottleneck, which delayed project timelines and made delegation difficult.
• Lack of asset security and controlled sharing. There was inadequate protection for sensitive content and insufficient control over external sharing. This was a particular concern for “projects that we’re documenting behind NDAs,” and when needing to ensure only approved images were accessible.

“We had this terrible system of dating the asset, and then if we needed to go back and find it, we had to research what date the event took place, and then search for it that way. That just wasn’t working for us.”

Ryan Feeney, Art Director, Columbus College of Art & Design

The solution: Picture-perfect workflows

Storing, finding, and sharing visual assets was once a daily struggle for CCAD’s creative team. Implementing PhotoShelter provided a centralized, intelligent solution that directly addressed their previous pain points. This new approach enabled several critical improvements:

• Simplified access eliminated previous bottlenecks. PhotoShelter enabled various users, including departments, student workers, and freelancers, so “As we shoot something, it’s easy to have whoever’s working on it just add it directly into PhotoShelter.” This means assets didn’t “have to come to me as a director or project manager. That’s a step saved right there,” Ryan explained.
• Enhanced organization accelerated searches. Metadata features and AI-powered search dramatically improved file discoverability. Ryan found that “Being able to customize the metadata is great,” adding, “It’s really nice being able to tag our President, so all we have to do is type in her name, and we can get all of the images that she’s in.” During a major website rebuild, Ryan shared that, “The AI search function saved us, I don’t even know how many hours of trying to find the right images.”

• Streamlined collaboration made workflows smooth. Centralized access and direct uploads through PhotoShelter removed critical chokepoints. This allowed Ryan to “outsource a lot of that work to my designers too, who might not know exactly what to look for.” He confirmed, “We were able to cut out a lot of steps that way,” illustrating improved project efficiency.
• Modern security and controlled asset sharing. PhotoShelter provided essential security features, meaning “Pretty much everything we have is behind a password, except for a couple of galleries which are public facing,” Ryan stated. He emphasized, “That security is important for sure,” especially since “A lot of projects that we’re documenting are behind NDAs,” ensuring content is protected and shared appropriately.

“I can see AI Similarity Search working really well for us… We have a monthly meeting where we do website governance. We take a look at around 10 of our web pages and do an image and headline evaluation to make sure they’re still updated. This is gonna come in really handy for updating that. We’ll have a picture of our art sculpture in the middle of campus, for example. We can just use this when we need to find a new one.”

Ryan Feeney, Art Director, Columbus College of Art & Design

Graduating Summa Cum Laude in creative ops

At Columbus College of Art & Design, the hard days of messy files and long searches are gone. By finding a better way to handle their pictures and videos, CCAD now works faster and with more creative energy. The school’s teams can now easily find, use, and protect their many visual files. This helps them do their best work and share CCAD’s story.

“PhotoShelter does a really good job of being a DAM that’s tailor-fit for visuals stored by bigger institutions… It’s really straightforward and it works really well.”

Ryan Feeney, Art Director, Columbus College of Art & Design