BEST FOLDER STRUCTURE FOR DESIGN PROJECTS
A walkthrough on organizing design project files using Dropbox, covering folder naming conventions, version control, and how to share files with clients efficiently.
I do use Dropbox Pro, which is like $100 a year or something like that. I don't know. Without further ado, let's just take a peek at what it would look like to set up a new folder inside of Dropbox for a new client project. Let's dig right in. Alright, so if I open up Finder here and go to Dropbox Clients, I'm going to create a new client in here called YouTube. All right? And in case you're not aware, Command Shift N will create new folders on the fly. So I'm going to go ahead and create a new folder inside of YouTube called projects. And in that same directory, I'm going to create a new folder called Contracts. I like to keep Contracts and Projects separate because a lot of times I will share a project folder with another designer, with a developer, or even sometimes with a client. And I don't want to throw in the contracts and all the business documents inside of the same folder. So I like to keep those separate, first of all. And I like to have a Projects folder because you never know how many projects you're going to do with a certain client. So let's say inside of this Projects folder, we're going to design an iOS app. Everything inside of the iOS app would be for the iOS app. Now, if we're also going to do a website, we might also have a marketing site folder. So regardless of the project or the client, this is how I like to structure the initial setup. Alright, so let's just do one for now. Command delete will quickly throw away your folders if you didn't know. Okay, so inside of the Project folder, I always have a Design folder, I always have an Assets folder, and I always have a Review folder. I've used a lot of different structures inside of the project folder. Sometimes I'd have sketch folders right in the project directory, and sometimes I would have, you know, just slightly different tweaks. Recently I worked on a project with Dan Mahl, and he uses Assets Design and Review. And that was really close to what I already had. And I've tried it out for the last three or four projects, and I think this is as simple as it gets. So props to him for helping me tweak this last little section. All right, so inside of Assets, I would put anything inside of Assets that I get from the clients, or, you know, if I've got a handful of images or existing icons or fonts, I would put those assets inside of the Assets folder, probably inside of another subdirectory So I might have fonts or images. We might also have icons or brand guidelines. Anything that would be an asset to this project would go in the asset folder. All right. Inside of the design folder. This is where I would break things down by software. So I've got maybe some sketch files, maybe some Illustrator files. I might even have some Photoshop documents, and sometimes I might even have an XD file in here. I might have Adobe Animate After Effects, whatever the software is inside the design folder. That's where I would put all of my software files. And okay, so let's just go ahead and fire up Sketch. We'll do a new document and let's say we're going to design an iPhone app. So I would go ahead and save this inside of YouTube projects iOS design sketch. And this is another thing that I think is key is file name and structure. So I always do either the client's name or an acronym. Sometimes the acronym is weird and sometimes the clients don't like acronyms. So just do whatever feels natural for your project. For this one, I would say YouTube. Then the type of file that it is, then my initials and then the version number. So we might do YouTube. Maybe this is our first our UX document. And then I would do my initials and version 0.1. Now I would save this inside of there. And now let's take a look at this. All right, so now we have YouTube UX MDS version 0.1. I would just keep working in this specific document until it got big enough to where it made sense to either rename it into, well, maybe this is the first time user experience, maybe this is specifically for this feature. I might end up breaking that into several different sketch files once it gets larger. And every time I make a decent enough iteration to where I feel like the version number needs to change, I would just go ahead and just save a version of that and name it version 0.2. Sometimes if I have shown it to the client and they've signed off, then that's when I might jump up to like 1.0 or 1.1 from there on. And also, never, ever, ever throw away your design files. I like to create an underscore archive folder inside of any of the other projects. That way I can put the older versions inside of the archive. If you're working with another designer or someone else who's going to have access to these files and they need to collaborate, you can use this as a shared folder. And whoever is working from the last file would just grab this file, make a copy. Maybe the initials are NMS and they might change this to version 0.3 and that way I know NMS is 1 point version higher than point 2, that way I know which one is the more recent document. And so if I want to go back into this guy's file, I can dig something out. If I want to go back in here, I can dig that out. And oftentimes you might just end up putting the older ones always in the archive folder, so the newest ones are in the root directory. And then we might eventually get into where they're actual features. So maybe this is first time UX and since I'm adjusting this now I might Switch to version 1.0, throw that one in the archive folder and maybe now we have maybe this is the profile section and now we have maybe this is the settings. However it makes sense for your project to be broken up. I always start with one big file and then if it gets too sluggish or if it just makes sense to isolate one of the features, then I start breaking it up into multiple files and typically try to keep those version numbers roughly the same. It's a loose versioning system. It's not hardcore based on, you know, a very scientific whatever, you know, like it's just what feels right. So whatever feels right for you for version numbers. But I would recommend keeping your initials on there and version numbers, you know, don't use final. Final, Extra Final for sure. Final, Final, final, final. Don't ever use final on the name of your file. Just period. Just don't use final. It'll never be final. You know, this is one, this is 1.0 later. It'll be 1.1, 1.3 later when you. Alright, so let's say we're getting ready to export our screen for the first time. We want the client to review this. I'm going to go ahead and find that iOS folder. And I would always, always put my exported assets or exported designs inside of the review folder. So we'd go review and then I'm going to hit Command shift N to create folder and I always go 201702 23. I always do the year first, then the month, then the day. That will keep everything nice and chronologically ordered. Especially if you're in December and you bleed into January and the year changes, your folder structure won't get all screwed up. So in addition to that, I used to just leave it at date name only. But then if you get a ton of review folders, it's hard to find what you're looking for. So now what I do is name the date and then a little tiny description of what's inside that folder. So I might just do first review or something like that. Something that would help you remember. Just a little tag. And so I'm just going to save hello World. Sometimes I might even put a number on the design. Sometimes I'll number them so they're chronologically ordered. So I'm going to go ahead and save that. Let's close this file and then we can see. Now we have our design inside of this folder. We've got our review file in here. So now if I just want to send the client this specific file, I can right click because it's in Dropbox, Copy the Dropbox link, and now design, review, whatever you want to say, and then send that Dropbox link. I'm going to hit send. So that's going to send that specific file right there. So if I look at this in the browser now, I didn't attach any documents, so now the client can look at this right away. I could also go ahead and copy a link from the entire folder and paste that into my email. And then when someone clicks on it, they can see everything inside of this folder. So if I put a bunch of design documents in there, I can just email you the link and say, hey, I'm going to be dumping all my design files in here today. Check it out. So they have the link and here's all the stuff. And then as every day progresses, anytime you want to send files, you can just send them a link to the folder, to the review folder. That way you never have to attach anything. And if you send an email with an attachment and you're like, oh, crap, I forgot that specific design. Well, just go dump it inside of the folder. For example, if I already sent you this link and we go back to our sketch file and we have, oh, you know what? We really wanted to show you the red version of our hello World screen. Let's go ahead and export this. We'll call this hello World Red export to the same folder. All right, I'm going to save it. And now that I've saved it to that folder, it's in that file structure already. And so now if I come back.
