#vcd homework

The words “Naming” and “Conventions” sound a bit tedious when you say them together but really, it’s just the way that we organize our files!

Honestly, I’ve been using the same system for years. It’s quite simple for me to understand and basically just starts with the year, season/quarter, course/client, and then project. In the folder for the project would be all the files necessary. I always say “A folder within a folder within a folder...”

This process has been the thing that’s best helped me understand where I can find everything and is definitely agreat way to reference back to a project even a year or two later. These documents stay on my computer for about a year before they get moved to my external hard drive for safe keeping, though!

This system itself can be a bit of a chaotic mess, though, because I’m only human. It requires maintenance every few weeks once works in progress, revisions, and final products pile up. Say you work really hard on an assignment, get it finished and get the final, and then suddenly, 10 minutes before the time it’s due, you realize that there was one minor kerning issue you wanted to take care of. So that file named “logosproject_f.ai” is no longer the “_f” but really becomes the “_r”. Revisions and Finals. Finals and Revisions. You’ll have to go about naming and renaming so many times before you finally get it perfect. Even I don’t even have it perfect. So hang tight.

But here! Have a screenshot of how my stuff looks when organized!

yes... it was 2am when I took that screenshot.... shhh.

Eventually, too, if you are turning it in to a professor or client, it might be best to put your name into the final zip folder. For example, the project above will be completed and turned in under the zip file name “Logos_lharris”. All the file names will remain the same. 

You can find a few pretty good examples here, too:

http://minesf.com/resources/cca/2013/04/22/file-naming-conventions/