Planning Creative Capacity Across High-Volume Editorial Brands

Creating earlier demand visibility and supporting more deliberate designer allocation across Healthgrades and Medical News Today.

Challenge: High publishing volume generated more potential demand for custom creative support than the studio could address reactively.

My role: I improved the visibility of Creative Studio work within an existing priority asset tracker and helped connect editorial planning with designer capacity.

Outcome: The studio gained earlier visibility into dozens of priority assets each month, enabling more deliberate assignment planning and reducing some last-minute surprises.

By the Numbers

  • Approximately 400 articles published by Medical News Today each month

  • Dozens of priority assets represented in monthly planning

  • Approximately 30–70 priority items during a typical publishing cycle

  • Multiple editorial, design, illustration, photography, SEO, and content-operations contributors

  • One shared constraint: custom creative demand exceeded available capacity

The Operating Challenge

Healthgrades and Medical News Today operated within different editorial models, but both required Creative Studio support in high-volume publishing environments.

Medical News Today alone published approximately 400 articles per month. At that scale, not every article could receive the same level of custom illustration, design, or photography.

Creative teams needed earlier visibility into:

  • Which content was being prioritized

  • What type of creative support was required

  • When assets were expected to publish

  • Which designers would be needed

  • Where multiple requests competed for the same capacity

Without that visibility, assignments could become reactive and difficult to balance across the studio.

The challenge was understanding upcoming demand early enough to make responsible allocation decisions.

My Contribution

For Healthgrades, I improved an existing priority asset tracker and entered Creative Studio projects into the shared planning view.

I did not create the tracker or own the full process. My responsibility was to ensure that creative work was represented accurately so editorial and creative stakeholders could plan from the same information.

That distinction mattered. Editorial teams had visibility into their priority content, while the Creative Studio needed visibility into the production effort those priorities created.

My contribution connected those two views.

What I Changed

Incorporated creative work into editorial planning

I added and maintained Creative Studio project information, including:

  • Upcoming asset needs

  • Publication timing

  • Assignment status

  • Creative ownership

  • Open questions

  • Potential timing conflicts

This reduced the separation between editorial planning and creative production.

Created earlier demand visibility

By seeing upcoming work sooner, the Creative Studio could assess:

  • How many designers might be needed

  • Which skill sets the work required

  • Where demand was concentrated

  • Which assignments should be redistributed

  • Whether the expected volume was realistic

The tracker did not eliminate changing priorities or urgent requests. It did give the team more time to prepare for them.

Supported better designer allocation

The studio could review the upcoming body of work instead of assigning projects one request at a time.

Assignments could be considered against:

  • Designer workload

  • Available capacity

  • Required creative skills

  • Publication timing

  • Competing priority assets

The tracker’s clearest value was helping the creative team understand what was coming and allocate resources more deliberately.

Created a shared planning reference

The tracker gave editorial and Creative Studio stakeholders a common point of reference for conversations about:

  • Upcoming deadlines

  • Required deliverables

  • Assignment status

  • Open questions

  • Production conflicts

  • Timing or scope changes

Rather than relying entirely on individual conversations or separate team plans, stakeholders could work from a more consistent view of the upcoming portfolio.

The Result

The improved planning process helped:

  • Give Creative Studio earlier visibility into priority editorial work

  • Incorporate creative projects into a shared cross-functional view

  • Support planning across dozens of assets each month

  • Improve the allocation of designers

  • Identify workload conflicts sooner

  • Reduce some last-minute surprises

  • Strengthen coordination between editorial and creative teams

The most significant outcome was a more informed way to plan limited creative capacity within a high-volume publishing environment.