How do you organise your folders?

So many people upload amazing graphical content and after having a 2 day organisation of my files and hard-drives I was interested to find out how organised people are (or aren't).

I had an awful habit of saving work projects to desktop for quick access which then would go into folders to be sorted (lazily)& repeat.

Do you split by date, program, content I would love to see some of the OCD freaks in here!

And some of the downloads > to sort > to sort 2 > this_has_gotten_out_of_hand.zip

Not a graphic designer, but I have a lot of business files flowing through my Laptop.

What I do to keep everything tidy is to create folders and subfolders and subfolders etc.
For example, there is the main logistics folder, sorted firstly by year, then month, then day, then specifics.
As long as you can find one common aspect in files, you can put them together with that general aspect.

Dunno if it will work for your graphic projects, but I think sorting by type/content, then programs, etc. is sufficient

And of course, the best thing to do is to not let the problem figure itself out. It won't happen. Let every 1st of month be the cleanup date.

05-01-2021, 04:09 PM

Oathkeeper Wrote: Not a graphic designer, but I have a lot of business files flowing through my Laptop.

What I do to keep everything tidy is to create folders and subfolders and subfolders etc.
For example, there is the main logistics folder, sorted firstly by year, then month, then day, then specifics.
As long as you can find one common aspect in files, you can put them together with that general aspect.

Dunno if it will work for your graphic projects, but I think sorting by type/content, then programs, etc. is sufficient

And of course, the best thing to do is to not let the problem figure itself out. It won't happen. Let every 1st of month be the cleanup date.

1st of the month it is, completely agree.

Something that takes a few mins of upkeep can otherwise become a mammoth task by leaving it.

I was just curious is all, clients and project names seem to be working fine for now but I do think for a master backup a date folder above would be a smart move.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I hope business is well during these strange times!

Actually i make a folder for image (sources)
Another one for my PSD/AI and i keep a folder for my fonts to have a preview easily without creating any text on a PSD file and try everything

-Folder Client
--- Folder project
------Folder Image
------Folder PSD
------Folder Fonts

It's the same thing as making a website, you have a folder for your CSS, another one for JS etc

i try to separate it by resource type, inside each project. but besides that, its really bad.

-Resources (separated by type: textures, fonts, etc)
-Works
-- (Index) Folder Client
--------------- Folder Idea
---------------Folder Materials (separated by type)
---------------Folder Design (Business card, web, stationery...)
------------------Folder Final (To print)
------------------File Versions(Steps)

I use a prefix with a Number (1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, etc...) to order it by name in the order I need to work

As a general rule of thumb for folder organization, look to go wide rather than deep. You want to avoid being overly specific with folders/subfolders.

I mostly order everything in folders that lead to subfolders, separating those that are works, content for my networks and assets from different designers

This is the largest challange in my life...
What I do is I created 3 folders: Done, Present, Future and put stuff I currently work on by projects