File naming is fun
At every office I’ve worked there has been the scourge of bad file naming. It’s caused countless problems and even heated discussions (we designers are so emo!). I’ve heard out other people’s naming systems and just found them riddled with problems. When we founded Objective Subject, we cracked this nut. I thought I’d share, if anyone out there is suffering the same problems.
Goals
The user base of a naming system is both the creator and the outsider. A good naming system should satisfy the following requirements:
- Be legible and transparent to the outsider
- Make the creator’s life easier
- Work in current conditions and those within the foreseeable future
- Enable order and hierarchy
- Extend beyond a particular file format or workflow
Solution
[Client] [Filename] [YYYYMMDD] [EDITOR'S INITIALS] [A-Z].[ext]
That should result in something like this:
DeOrchis Web Presentation 2 20100906 ADC A.ai
Hopefully it reads without explanation, but it came from a long and reasoned brainstorm, and you deserve the whys and wherefores.