Designers, get your files organized!

Starting your design project right can help you finish in front of the pack. We designer are notoriously right brained, creativity dominates and defines our lives. We are good at making connections, bringing together elements, but not so good at organization. Details. Details. One of the marks of a successful graphic artist is not only their ability to handle type (which I will write about in a later post), but their ability to organize their businesses. It simply saves time and aggravation if you have a good system of organizing your files. Generally, you don’t want to have more items in a folder than you can see on you screen at one time. As a rule, it usually works best to have a folder for each client and within each client folder there should be a fold for each separate job. Each job folder should be broken down in various resources such as images, fonts, copy, etc. Naming files and folders is very important. I recommend using the client name or client initials on each file. There are two reasons this comes in handy when you accidentally save something to the wrong folder: You will be able to do a search and find it; and you won’t inadvertently save over a file with the same name. I have found that it works best for me if I set up my job folder as soon as I create or load any files for that job. For instance, if I’m doing a new brochure for a company called Winning Directions, I would create a new job folder in the Winning Direction client folder. I would name the job WD_Brochure. Inside the job folder I would create folder for images, layouts and copy. Of course, if you use a job number you will want to use that as part of the description. A little time up front can save you much frustration later on.