Designer’s Guide: Organizing Projects Methodically

When deadlines are short and managing projects becomes overwhelming, you often delegate your work to someone who is not as occupied. It’s important that your projects are well-organized and easy to follow. Suppose your delegatee is clueless, chances are he/she will temporarily store new data in various locations as well as name them in ways easiest for them to follow. Although the project may be successfully completed, it’s not until after you return a few months later that you often spend hours cursorily trying to figure out the workflow (given a large project).

The folder structure below is arbitrary; however, it should work for the majority of people.

I believe anyone can follow this structure, it’s simple and clean. Projects are sorted by year following the name of the project. Although every project varies; this example demonstrates the structure for a web site. You normally have source files and presentable files: the source files contain photo stocks, photoshop documents, flash documents, utilities, et cetera; the presentable/upload folder contains files necessary to present your data online.

You can easily expand by adding more folders or minimize by deleting a few. I’ve numerously came across folders where the project root contained photoshop, flash, and illustrator files all in one place; although convenient for smaller projects, it’s the bigger projects that usually take a toll. Personally I’m a little fastidious when it comes to organizing files, but it is well worth it in the end.

Few last tips to mention are naming your folders and files; try to be as laconic as possible. Don’t use secret codes for folder names or files, because there’s absolutely no reason to. I found it useful to name my files in a sequence too, such as: concept-01, concept-02, concept-03, and so on. Don’t worry about wasting hard drive space; after all, we’ve got plenty of it these days. Start taking advantage of it.

This structure is based on my several years of experience in the field; I find this to be the most effective method to store and retrieve data.

I’m open to any criticism anyone has to offer; perhaps you’ve got even a better solution. Whatever feedback it may be, I’m interested to hear from you.