Hi, everybody! I’ve been using a system of directory naming for years for tracking all incomingoutgoing files with outsourcers I use, and I’m tweaking it and trying to standardize it. The goal is to be easy to understand and simple to sort. I’d love to get input and feedback on this. Here’s the way I do it now:
/(2012-03-22) INCOMING – SUBMISSION – STUDIONAME (character art for milestone 002)/
/(2012-03-22) OUTGOING – FEEDBACK – STUDIONAME (feedback on characters)/
The syntax is [date] [droptype] [studio] [description]
Date always comes first for easier sorting. The date is written year-month-day to adhere to the ISO 8601 information interchange standard. It sorts perfectly alphabetically so months don’t get mixed up between years. For example, you could write March 22, 2012 two different ways:
2012-03-22
or
03-22-2012
What if, a year from now, I make another directory with the date?
2012-03-22
2013-03-22
or
03-22-2012
03-22-2013
The more directories get dumped in there, the more confusing it’ll be trying to sort out which year which drop came from since it’s not sorted well.
Droptype comes second so I can easily sort out what kind of drop it is. Is it something I sent to the contractor? Is it something they sent me? Or is it a reference or information drop of some kind that doesn’t really count as incomingoutgoing?
There are the different droptypes and subtypes I’ve set up so far:
INFORMATION
ASSET DUMP
TECH DOCS
REFERENCE
INCOMING
ESTIMATE
SUBMISSION
OUTGOING
RFP
ASSIGNMENT
FEEDBACK
REFERENCE
RFP means “Request for Proposal,” by the way. This means I’ve sent the studio a batch of work, reference and tech docs so I can get the work priced and scheduled out so we can decide whether or not to sign a contract.
I have everything capitalized for easier readability. I don’t like lower-case or mixed-case for important information. And I think all of these droptypes and subtypes encompass pretty much every type of standard communication I have with outsourcers. It’s a short list.
After that I include the studio name, which helps a lot with filtering alphabetically if I’m working with a lot of art studios or artists for a single client. I used to include the studio name in the description, but I prefer this for sorting, especially as projects scale.
From there, I include a short written description of what’s in the drop. It’s a lot more casual than the rest of the naming conventions. I don’t care about capitalization as much and I don’t have a very standard syntax for it. It’s just a brief description of what’s in the directory and why it exists.
That’s the best system I have so far. I’d love for people to pick it apart, though, to see if there’s anything I could be overlooking or doing better. I’ve gone back and forth before on whether or not to put STUDIONAME before DROPTYPE as a means of sorting more easily. It came down to being purely a matter of preference, as I’m personally more focused on seeing at a glance the actual inflow and outflow of information on a daily basis, and the ratio of in vs out. That’s more important to me than sorting first by how many times I interacted with an individual studio on a certain day.
Because of this, I’m better able to assess how productive my artists are and how productive I am, and helps me see relationships with regards to the amount of time I’ve invested on art drops and feedback and how quickly it comes back and from which studios. Again, that’s just a matter of preference.
Seriously though, any and all feedback is appreciated! 🙂