Naming your client / project folders

[Karen White]

nice topic. i do this to Dan.

company name
vehicle or sign etc.
photos
vector files
Notes

they vary a little but all in a similar format.

[Dan]

Thanks you.

How do you keep them in order? Do you put a number before Vehicle / Signs etc?

[Chris Wilson]

We are not as complicated.. but maybe we should be. If it’s not broke don’t fix it ay.

But proofs etc.. are all in the emails. We do pay google an extra £0.79 a month as our inbox is booming.

We then have

Digital print

Artwork

Graphtec

Embroidery

Then a-z in each folder.

Then customers name and that just there folder. Some customers get broken down into signs, vans etc.. when it’s a new or revised van layout we label the folder within the clients folder as van graphics 2021 and move the others to “old van graphics”. Just incase ones comes up. We don’t number them. If there was a failure we have trello/emails and invoices to check. I make we notes on an invoice. Like *passenger side been re-sprayed, paint not bonding on arches, graphic removal may lead to damage” and of course customer has an email to say that’s the crack and of course that’s where the discussion takes places as to what to do if there is a issue of possible issue in the future.

[Cian Byrne]

A designer we had working for us brought this system along and it’s worked for us.

Jobs Folder

> Customer Name

>> Date of job in reverse_Name of Job

>>>Assets

>>>Working Files

>>>Print Files

>>>Everything Else

The date in reverse is yearmonthdate, so today is 20210701. This allows you to sort by folder name and it organises list by date, if you rely on the folder modified dates they can be a bit off if you’ve linked to a file in a folder and it updated.

It also allow you to offload old folders to a backup by searching for 202101 to give you all of January’s folders, or 202006 for last years June folders and then you can drag and drop.

Also helps if you name the job with something you’ll remember rather than “labels’ or “sign”

Looks a bit complex but it works and we have no problems finding jobs from years back. Once you know who it was for, and roughly when the job was it’s easy to find.

[Dan]

Thanks everyone

I need a little more structure than some of you, I need that in my life lol.

@Cian The date thing may work best rather than using 1001, 1002, 1003 etc so I’ll give that a go. I’ll update the post with my finalised structure if anyone else wants to copy.

[David Hammond]

We use Clarity, and it’s main perk is that when we create a quote, it creates a customer & job folder, with sub folders, on our server.

We have a folder for each year:

Eg: 2021 -> Customer Name -> REF1234 -> Artwork, Proofs, Print Files, Documents

Clarity links to the folder, only issue is browsing for jobs on the server, you ideally need to know the job number, although I think if we saved the job sheet to the documents folder we could search by the description. Or created a text file with some searchable text that will help locate what we’re looking for.

[Jeff]

@DavidHammond

Thats clever, a shame that doesnt happen with Signlab.

Downside is like you said though. Number referencing does nothing when your faced with a list of them and all you want is a Tranbsit LWB. well thats what i find with Impact vehcile software library.
how much better would it be seeing:
Ford Transit LWB – High Roof Top
instead we get:
For12345-L2H3

🤔