A Designer’s Guide to File Organization
By: Jasmine Rosen
Tags: Design, Designer, Organization, Sketch, Files

A Designer’s Guide to File Organization

5 tips to help you design more efficiently

Illustration by Holly Gibbs

Objective: Learn how to set up your design art-boards, files, and folders so that you can spend more time designing, instead of searching and rearranging.

Being organized is often a secondary thought for designers. “I’ll organize my files once my project is done,” or, “it’s not a big deal to stop what I’m doing to just send a file,” is the typical response when I ask designers how they approach organizing their work. However, when do you ever have time to organize your files after a project? And how much time are you spending tracking down files? Wouldn’t it be great if people could help themselves to your files because your Google Drive is so easy to navigate?

Erica Tjader, VP of Product Design of SurveyMonkey, believes that, “being organized is actually a core competency in this profession. Performance is half the craft — and how you work (organize, communicate, and collaborate) is the rest.” If you are looking for ways to communicate or collaborate better, getting organized is a great way to start. An organized file system opens the doors for a more efficient workflow. Here are some easy tips to help you get your file system organized once and for all. If your desktop is overloaded with files, or you’re hesitant to share your screen when opening up your Google Drive, then this post is definitely for you.

Use a project folder system

After you’ve worked on a few projects at a company, you need to start thinking of a folder system before you forget where all your files are and they become a giant mess. Here’s a simple system a lot of designers use. Best part, if your file storage is shared, it doesn’t need much explanation to understand:

01_Docs ← Information about the project, research, and presentations. 02_Working ← Stuff you’re still editing, including archived versions. 03_Final ←Ready for handoff. 04_Future ← Having a documented vision outside of your Sketch file can do wonders for your team.

By doing this, you can share your work with anyone who’s interested, without disrupting your designing groove. Additionally, your work can potentially inspire other designers browsing your design files. You’d be surprised how much you can learn from simply looking at another designer’s Sketch files.

Pro tip: Having a “future” section is really helpful for designers who will work on the same or related area at a later time. If there are things you weren’t able to include during your current design phase, having a clear place that isn’t hidden in your Sketch file is great way to lead others to your ideal or “north star” design.

2. Use a file naming convention

You know when someone asks to see a Sketch file showing the most recent design changes, and you open up 6 different windows titled something like “final” or “the real real final?” Having a go-to file naming convention lets you easily find the exact file you need so you’re not stuck searching.

To start, you want to think long term when naming your files. First, think of the big project name, then break it down to sub projects. If you stay at a company long enough, this will come in handy because you’ll most likely work on a project again, just a different section or phase. Always having your past files at your fingertips can be a real time saver for yourself when you want to re-apply a design treatment you used before, but also for others as they are seeking inspiration for their projects. Having an organized file system makes it effortless to connect people with files they need most. Not to mention, everyone loves an accountable teammate that’s willing to share work relevant to their project.

Formula: [Name of big project] _ [sub project name] — [version]. Examples: Themes_Phase3–01, Themes_Phase3–02, Rewards_Onboarding-01

3. Use dashes (not underscores) to name art-boards

When you’re in your iteration phase and need to quickly rename things, be sure to use dashes. If you want to edit that section of the title, all you need to do is double click between the dashes — a solid timesaver! This isn’t possible if you use underscores since it highlights the whole title when you double click.

When you use dashes when naming your art-boards you can easily edit the content between dashes by double-clicking on it. This doesn’t work if you use underscores.

4. Label your working spaces

Have you ever had to scramble to find a specific art-board while sharing your screen during a meeting and your peers just had to sit there as you frantically zoomed in and out of your Sketch file? Super nerve-wrecking, right? Instead of zooming in and out of different parts of your Sketch board, label it! You can name it however you want. I often like to separate if by different flows, have a space for inspiration, and have a graveyard or archive area. However you decided to label your Sketch file, this makes it so much easier to find what you need at a glance.

Labeled sections of Sketch board with “Reference”, “Annotated”, and “Non-annotated.”

Pro tip: Whether it’s a section or a new page, have a place to “brain-dump” all your explorations. Be sure to label it “scratch” or “sandbox” so other designers know it’s not real.

5. Iterate faster with this art-board layout

I’m sure you’re no stranger to using the “Cmd + D” Sketch shortcut to duplicate your art-board when ideating, but that duplicate goes somewhere far, far away from where you want it to go. To get around that, set up your Sketch file so that the steps of the flow goes downward and you iterate across. By doing this, you can iterate quick and easy to your heart’s content since the duplicate board shows up exactly where you want it to — right next to your current art-board. Also, if you’re consistent with naming your art-boards, it makes the upload into Invision so much easier since it maintains the order of the boards.

Steps of your flow go downward and iterate across. Art-board naming convention: [Step in flow] + {Description] + [Version]

Thanks for reading this article! I hope these tips can help you design more efficiently. When you learn something new, it might take a while for it to become a habit, but I’m confident these tips will save so much time once they’re baked into your routine — and your team will thank you for it! I’m so glad you are actively learning how to improve your craft as a designer. How we design makes up such a huge part of our jobs.

If you liked this article, please share it with a friend or give it some claps, and if you have any of pro-tips of your own, please write them in the comments below! I’d love to learn more from you all!

Thank you to Tiffany Ferguson, my Hexagon mentor, who taught me these great tips! Thank you to the SurveyMonkey product design team family for always inspiring me to become a better designer.