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Vox Populi: Best practices for file naming

If it wasn't apparent from my pathetic cry for help the other day, even I -- one of your more theoretically productive persons in North America -- struggle with what to call things.

Tags, files, and -- dear Lord -- the innumerable assets associated with making web sites, graphics, audio, and video projects; it's all a hopeless jumble unless you have some kind of mature system in place for what you call your stuff and its various iterations. Of course, if you're like me -- and I hope that you are not -- you still have lots of things on your desktop with names like "thing-2 finalFinal! v3 (with new changes) 05b.psd".

For prior art, I still treasure this Jurassic thread on What Do I Know where people share their thoughts on this age-old problem, but, frankly I haven't seen many good resources out there on best practices for naming.

Anyhow, during a recent MacBreak shoot, I noticed that Alex and his team seem to have a pretty fly system for naming the video files that eventually get turned into their big-time IPTV shows. Thus, I turned to Pixel Corps' Research Division Lead, Ben Durbin (co-star of Phone Guy #5) for insight and sane help. And, brother, did he ever give it to me (see below the cut for Ben's detailed awesomeness).

But, just so I don't lose you, do give me your best tips in comments: What are your favorite current conventions for naming files? How does your team show iterations and versions? Do you rely more on Folder organization than file names in your work? How have Spotlight, Quicksilver, and the like changed the way you think about this stuff?

Ben shares how Pixel Corps does it, video style:

We're still settling into best practices that are shared amongst all the teams, but here are some themes:

File names are a set of fields separated by underscores. We share files on linux servers, so while manageable, we consider spaces in filenames to be lowercase b bad.

If it's an established or long-term project, we try to keep the codes for the various fields to three letters. This allows for more fields without having the file names get too long.

If it's not an established project, we favor readability (longer field names) and consistency. Even if your field data are arbitrarily chosen, as long as you're naming things consistently, you can always use batch renaming to convert a given field into a code later.

When possible, the fields are arranged left to right from general to specific.

Files that may have iterations get a three-digit, padded iteration number as their final field.

Even when we use folder structures with multiple subfolders, the project code fields stays as a prefix of all files, so that if files get misplaced, they're still easily findable (example: all post files for a MacBreak episode will start with "mbk_eps_episodeNumber_" regardless of where they sit in the folder structure).

Caveats:

As you've probably noticed, the problem with file names in general is that they only give you a single "view" and aren't applicable to other ways in which you might want to see/sort the files in other contexts. Advanced users can get all grep-daddy with it, but they're in the minority. At best, file naming structures are a "good enough" solution that works well most of the time if you don't have a more robust metadata system in place.

The problem with metadata systems, of course is that they tend to either be proprietary or only applicable to certain file types. Are we going to use annotations on all of our Quicktime movies? Create some custom xml format that gets parsed by a proprietary app? Structured Spotlight comments? The check-in comments of a versioning system like Subversion? The lack of a good, widely-accepted metadata framework that is spoken by all OSes and/or that can be embedded into most file types lead many people to resort to file naming structures and leave it at that.

Dang. Thanks for that, Ben!


To repeat:

What are your favorite current conventions for naming files? How does your team show iterations and versions? Do you rely more on Folder organization than file names in your work? How have Spotlight, Quicksilver, and the like changed the way you think about this stuff?

Jay-Z's picture

USER>DOCUMENTS > PROJECTS_NOW>CLIENT_JOBNAME - DESI

USER>DOCUMENTS > PROJECTS_NOW>CLIENT_JOBNAME - DESIGN
- ASSETS
- INVOICE

The Breakdown for a typical design job:

_DESIGN
___Within "Design" Folder I have folders in dates to track versions.time.progress.ideas.organize.
___10.28
____FILENAME1_v01.psd (A file name can be a working name usually the desc of job or what it is aka Poster)
____FILENAME1_v02_differentcolor.psd
____FILENAME1_elements_01.ai
____FILENAME1_elements_02.ai
____FILENAME2_v01_Sharp.different font.psd
____FILENAME3_v01_Blur.psd
_________SENT
___________FILENAME_v01.jpg
___________FILENAME_v02.jpg
___________FILENAME2_v01.jpg
___________FILENAME3_v01.jpg
___________MYNAME.10-28-2006.PRESENT.zip

___10.29
____FILENAME1_v03.psd
______FILENAME1_v04.psd
____FILENAME1_v04_A.psd v __FILENAME1_v04_B.psd
______FILENAME_element_web nav assets.ai
__FILENAME_elements_somethingelse.ai
_________SENT
___________FILENAME_v03.jpg
___________FILENAME_v04.jpg
___________MYNAME.10-23-06.PRESENT.zip (Zip and send to them is easier)

___10.30_F
____FILENAME_v11.psd
____FILENAME_v12-FixedColors-F.psd ("F" in the end of file name is FINAL. no buts. label it red)
_________SENT
___________FILENAME_v12-F.jpg
___________MYNAME.10-26-06.PRESENT.zip (Zip and send to them is easier)

___10.30_FINAL
_________FINAL_MASTER
___________FILENAME_v12_F-layers.psd
___________FILENAME_v12_F-flat.psd
___________FILENAME_v12_F_Websize.psd (72dpi so you can open it in photoshop)

___ASSETS
____FROM.CLIENT
_________BRIEF
_________CONTACT INFO
_________IMAGES
______FROM.ME
_______IMAGES
_________LOGO EPS ELEMENTS
_________OTHER

___"_INVOICE" (underscore it stays at the top of Client.Jobname when job is over)
_____SENT
_______MyName.JobDesc.INVOICE.MonthDayYear.pdf

__ "DOC"
______Contract.doc
__helpfulbookmarks.txt (this is good little txt to have when you find good bookmarks)
____Client.Jobname.notes.txt (sketchbook notes. I place this in the desktop so its always accesible when i am on the phone)

After job is finished, drop into: USER>DOCUMENTS>PROJECTS_ARCHIVE

For a WEB job, same rules apply but different set of folders: - DESIGN
- - - MASTER (Master layout psd or ai)
- - - ASSETS.ELEMENTS (certain section designs PSD to save for web)
- - - ASSETS.RAW (like all the product shots or whatever to save for web)
- CODING
- - - SCRIPTS.HELP (Scripts im using that i got online. URL's saved to folder for easy access)
- - - CODE (where the html, php, files live)
- ASSETS
- - - ASSETS.RAW (sometimes the assets folder is really huge and you dont want it mixed with design)
- INVOICE (add underscore in front of Invoice to declare job finished, and you sent invoice off)

(note 2006-10-30: reformatted by Merlin)

 
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