Graphic design file structure 📁
A guide to organising graphic design project files.
Having a project file structure or template is probably the easiest and most important process you can have as a designer. Every new project should start with a templated project folder structure and it should have clearly defined principles to be adhered to as the project grows in size and complexity. If other designers are also collaborating they should be familiar with how it works and where files and folders should and shouldn’t be saved. A file structure can vary based on a designers specific needs so you do not need to copy mine directly, it should be flexible and adapt to what you need it for, what is important is that you stick to your overall principles of organisation.
Advantages 👍
- Easy to navigate
- Easy to maintain
- Easy to share with other people
- Consistency between projects
- Saves time by allocating pre-determined file locations
- Encourages a consistent design process
- Separates files based on purpose
- Allows for messy folders but keeps them contained within a larger system
- You can start using template files within templates to speed up your processes faster
- Avoid duplicate assets
- Keep incoming and outgoing files separate
- Demonstrate good working principles to clients and colleagues
- Helps project momentum
Key principles ☑️
- Use basic easy to understand folder naming
- Use the minimum amount of folders possible, only add sub folders when necessary
- Stick to one method of organisation (e.g. all links live in a _Links folder)
Routed In Design Process
My folder structure roughly aligns chronologically to our working process and helps us not to overlook any key part of the project. In its simplest form we can view the project as a three step process.
Setup 🏗️
We need a to ensure we set strong foundations before we begin designing. Examples will include having plenty of visual references, making sure we have brand assets and guidelines (if working on an existing brand) ready to go and to have a clear understanding of the brief and deliverables.
Working & Presentations 🔧
The meat of the project and where we do our ‘work’. We need a flexible but organised system for creating designs and presenting them to a client. We must always be able to make continuous revisions as we receive feedback and continue to adjust our designs as necessary.
Delivery 🎁
Finally we need to deliver artwork and assets to a client alongside clear documentation in the form of guidelines or playbooks.
Top Level Structure
So for the very first breakdown of folders aligns a lot to our working process as previously mentioned but we have a few extra details just to help keep things better categorised.
I have 6 primary folders for every project which categorises everything that I would need to touch. I recommend no more than 7 folders at this level, remember to keep things as simple as possible. You also have the option at this level to number each folder 1–6 if you have an order of preference but I tend not to bother.
From Client 📥
As the name suggests this is all the information coming from the client, this may include briefs, feedback, legal documents, contact forms. I like to think of this as the admin section. I find this actually gets minimal use for me personally and if you wanted to you could put briefs and feedback in the Support folder instead.
Support 🏗️
One of the most undervalued folders in my personal opinion. If you can get this folder set up properly when you first start a project it will help massively as you begin designing. Having well made SVG logos on hand as well as the most up to date guidelines when working with brands is incredibly helpful, your colleagues will also appreciate this very much if they have to help out on the project. You can zip up this whole folder and fire it over to someone so they can get going straight away. Consider using sub-folders for Images or Content if there is a lot of assets being provided.
Orientation 🧭
With the introduction of tools like Miro Boards and using applications such as Keynote, saving images of visual orientation is sometimes just a fast way of filling up storage. However brand audits and analysing competitors can be a really useful exercise and storing all that content in one place can mean creating presentations is much easier as well as referring back to references later in the project.
Working 🔧
Ahh, this is probably going to be the most contentious of all the folders. There is no doubt everyone has their preference to how they like to work and often it can be part of the company culture. It’s strange how something as seemingly trivial as a folder structure can influence the very fabric of an agency but I have bore witness to it first hand. For me, a designer who wears many hats working across multiple touch points at various stages of a project I am required to work in a variety of tools so this is how I believe I can best organise my working files. I am a strong believer that a good designer will always use the right tool for the job, which means on a larger branding project you are likely to use much of the Adobe Suite (I have not included Adobe XD as files are saved to the cloud).
Organising your files by the type of design application I have found to be the easiest way to keep things neat and tidy. You can then use one master _Links folder (underscore to make it always sit at the top) for all links to all working files, this folder can get pretty big and messy but I wouldn’t waste your time renaming and organising everything, just remember to only use this file for links and nothing will ever go missing. Likewise a master _Exports folder manages all of the JPEGs and PNGs that are saved from working files to be used in presentations (although ideally you should link PSDs if creating presentations in InDesign) it is similar to _Links but you can keep this folder more organised and use proper naming conventions. You can include _SS (superseded) or _Old (literally, old) sub-folders in each of your working folders to help hide files which you no longer need and which are starting to make the folders too big, NEVER delete files, always supersede them.
One other option I have seen people use is to create master folders within Working for Route 1, Route 2, Route 3 etc. However I find projects are rarely isolated to one route and there is so much crossover between designs that making a Route based project structure is more complicated. I recommend using file names to delineate one route from another and once a route has been chosen by the client you can supersede the old files by moving them to _SS.
Presentations ✨
This is for presentations only, this should be exclusively PDF’s and Keynotes (if they are not saved in iCloud). This helps keep a separate running list of everything the client has seen and is a great reference if you want to check what you showed in the second round, for example.
Artwork 🎁
For final, packaged artwork only. This should be the most well maintained folder in the project, only the absolute final assets should be here and anything that is out of date should be moved to _SS immediately. A client should be able to ask for a logo or a piece of print and you should be able to supply that artwork instantly from this folder. Use sub-folders to help further organise this primary folder.
Summary
👋 I would love to know how you organise your folders and what you have found works really well for a file structure. I have tried a few different methods in the past while working at different agencies and have settled on this for now.
AAA000_ProjectNameFrom Client| Brief| FeedbackSupport| Fonts| Font Folder| Images| Image Folder| Logos| Content| GuidelinesOrientation| Audit| Current Brand| Competitor| Visual Inspiration| BenchmarkWorking| _Export| _Links| PSD| INDD| AE| AIPresentationsArtwork| Artwork Pack Name
