A Guide to Storing Digital Files the Right Way
When you begin working as a freelancer, you quickly realise that having an organised system for storing digital files is essential, especially as you start working with more and more clients — and taking on more projects.
Plus, by having an organised way of storing digital files, you can limit the stress that hunting for things can cause when everything is in chaos. This was something that I had to learn the hard way…
Anyway, below you can see the exact way that I organise all the files I work with on a daily basis. Plus, at the very bottom, you can check out the full infographic with everything together.
THE TOP LEVEL
This is where everything is saved. I personally have this saved in Google Drive (with monthly backups to an external hard drive just in case) so I can access files everywhere.
The top-level folder should include all the folders and files relating to your design business. For me, it contains three folders: Templates, Personal Projects, and Clients.
THE TEMPLATES
Since I began working in the graphic design industry, I’ve been saving up the various bits and pieces I’ve worked on, gradually converting some of them into templates. Having access to a bunch of all-purpose files comes in very handy when kicking off a project with minimal fuss.
Email Templates
It goes without saying that you’ll likely be sending out quite a lot of emails. It’s always handy to have a few Word documents with some standard email templates ready to go. Once you’ve built up a collection, all you need to do is customise each one before sending. Trust me, it’ll save you SO MUCH time!
Design Templates
If you find yourself working on the same types of projects over and over, having a collection of standard design templates you can use is essential. For me, I have things like business card designs, social media graphics, and even basics like PSDs with cool text effects.
Document Templates
As a freelancer, you’ll have to send out various documents to your clients. Things like contracts, project proposals, invoices and more should all have a place in your documents template folder.
THE CLIENT ARCHIVE
This one is pretty self-explanatory. As you begin to work with more clients, it may be best to further categorise your client folders by putting them into year-specific folders. But that’s not essential. If you prefer to have all of your client info in one main folder, then that’s totally fine!
A CLIENT’S INFO
For every client I have, I create this exact folder structure. Splitting everything into dedicated sections helps to keep everything in order.
Communication
I archive every single email I send and receive from a client. There are two reasons for this. The first is that it generates a paper trail of all communication (albeit a digital one), and the second is that it saves email storage.
When you’re sending and receiving hundreds of emails each month, many of them with large attachments, your email inbox can fill up pretty quickly. Storing everything like this helps to mitigate multiple copies of the same file taking up more space than needed.
Assets
Each of your clients likely has logos, brand guidelines, copywriting examples, a digital archive of imagery, and all the rest of it. The Assets folder is where everything like that should live.
Iterations
You know that back-and-forth I was talking about in the email section above? Each of those will likely be an iteration of the project you’re working on. I recommend, every time you make changes to a document, save a new version of it in this folder.
There’s nothing worse than making a whole bunch of changes just to learn that the client doesn’t like it. And that’s even worse when you don’t have an archived version of the document before the changes took place.
Deliverables
This is for the final, approved version of the project. In my folder, I store the final editable version of the document, multiple formats of exports, and any showcase/mockup images too.
It’s important to keep data protection and GDPR in mind when storing client information. How ever you’re storing client information, it’s important you understand your responsibilities. This GDPR guide from IPSE is a good place to start.
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This was originally posted on my blog, which you can find here. The original article also includes a handy infographic with all the file levels.
