AI and DAM: Where It Shines and Where We Still Fight
AI is rewriting digital asset management — tagging, search, distribution, even creation. After 20+ years in DAM and hundreds of users onboarded, here's what's working, where the fights still happen, and what I learned the hard way.
I often think in terms of efficiency and reducing redundancy. Well, unless we are talking about redundant storage for digital assets — that I am most certainly a fan, big fan!
In steps related to creating content, organizing, search, and distribution — duplicative efforts = bad.
Where AI is winning in digital asset management
Where AI comes in and is awesome!
- Creation — Claude Design, go build a wireframe or a prototype, amazing!
- Organization — AI engine, tag these assets appropriately, also amazing! 15 years ago this wasn’t a thing and man it is just incredible. Most people never ever go back and tag. I know this from working with 100s of DAM users. The organization and tagging of course unlocks search.
- Search — AI tags and visual search not only save time, but ensure we can find those assets we didn’t even remember existed!
- Distribution — Check my channels and tell me where I haven’t posted and post!
I am a user of all the tools — Claude Design, Claude Cowork, OpenAI, Gemini, etc. And I have a mostly happy relationship with them.
Where we fight…
Where AI for design still breaks down
…build me an email template. Wow, it’s beautiful and I love it and it was done in minutes. Fast forward and I sunk hours before I corrected the critical error because I was attached to the design.
The problem, inserting this into tools for marketing emails — ouch! Headers ended up not editable and the slick styling was in the header. I need to change the header for every email, scratching my head… what to do….
Back to Claude Design and he gives me something else — not nearly as good. Am I mad at Claude Design or the email marketing tool that doesn’t allow me the flexibility I need? I am mainly mad at Claude Design (and maybe myself)… in this case, he was a bit too human.
Having worked with designers for many years, he did exactly what designers do — built the best design. What he did not do is build for real-world application and flexibility in other tools.
The lesson — and the prompt fix that solved it
Lesson learned — add to his memory these are the tools and explicitly say I need this to support these types of designs in the future. I’m sure many of you have already learned this, so consider this a tip for those who have not.
And, frankly — Anthropic is probably already aware and in a week will ask in advance about the tools I am using it in and design for flexibility first. I will say, his less flexible design never did get as good — sorry email newsletter recipients, we’re on it!
We’re all in this together
All in — the pros outweigh the challenges by a mile. AI is moving fast and most days, it’s just making the digital asset world better.
We’re all on this journey together, learning the quirks, sharing the workarounds, figuring out the prompts. If you’re navigating the same stuff, I’d love to compare notes!
We’re just getting started over at Vanday — come say hi and follow us on LinkedIn.
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