Cage – Professional Presentations

Cage is a web-based tool that designers can use to present their work to clients, colleagues, and anyone else online. In three simple steps, a freelancer artist or ad agency team can upload, share, and collaborate on a design. Cage is an application that fosters a sense of unity and collaboration among teammates thanks to its useful commenting and feedback features, and even helps businesses communicate with finicky clients throughout the entire design process.

You can create an account with Cage in less than a minute. That’s all the time it takes. You’ll be asked to enter your name, business name, and email address, and to create a secure subdomain website address where your projects can be found. Next, it’s time to start uploading projects. Click “New Project,” give your project a name, and upload a design. Cage accepts .jpg, .gif, and .png files up to 4mb in size. You can upload multiple designs to a single project, and then reorder those design thumbnails on the project page in whatever way makes sense to you. Click on an individual design to see it full size in “Preview Mode,” and email the link to colleagues for feedback. You can add notes to the specific part of a design that you have questions about – which works great in cases where you’re not sure about a font size or the placement of a graphic – and collect feedback in the comments section underneath each design.

For more private designs, like those you’re making for individual clients, Cage offers a quick passcode protection feature that can be turned on and off with ease. The application also lets project creators decide whether to allow notes and conversations on their project pages. An individual user can upload multiple projects onto Cage, making this a fantastic application both for freelance designers and small agencies looking for better ways to share projects online.

Practical Uses:

• Collaborate with colleagues on an advertising project for a new client
• Upload all the logos you’ve come up with and ask a client to choose his favorite
• Get feedback about design ideas from mentors and associates
• Let clients see the progress you’ve made on a design without posting it publicly

Insider Tips:

• Upload multiple designs to a single project
• Pinpoint exact areas on each design that you’d like feedback on
• Set a unique passcode to prevent outsiders from seeing a secret project
• Email links to the project page to colleagues and teammates

What we liked:

• Getting set up with Cage is a very quick process
• Threaded commenting cuts down on the number of back-and-forth emails
• Users can email their projects to friends without leaving the project page
• Ability to add, change, remove passwords quickly helps keep designs secure

What we didn’t like:

• Large files aren’t automatically resized in the Cage thumbnails on each project page, which makes it hard to tell what a design looks like without clicking for the full image

Alternatives:

• Cozimo – http://www.cozimo.com
• Notable – http://www.notableapp.com
• Notebox – http://www.noteboxapp.com

Company Info:

• Launched: March 2011 (Beta)
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Founded by: Sandip Patel, Michael Dick, and Justin Boeckman
• Web site: http://cageapp.com

Costs:

• Free