Had a lightbulb moment about my file naming system yesterday

I used to name my design files stuff like 'final_v3' or 'homepage_edit2' and it worked fine until I had to find an older version for a client revision. I spent almost 45 minutes digging through 30 different files before I gave up and just started over from scratch. Then my coworker Sarah showed me how she names files with the date first and a short description like '2024-03-15_homepage_hero_update'. That little tweak saved me hours on my next project because I could find anything in under 10 seconds. Now I also add a version number at the end like 'v2' and it makes sense even when I look at files from 6 months ago. Has anyone else had a simple naming trick that completely changed how they organize their work?

2 comments

2 Comments

uma_patel1922d ago

lol I heard some UX designer talk about using ISO date format like 20240315 instead of with dashes cause it sorts better in some systems. kinda genius honestly, saves that extra second of typing

hart.zara22d ago

Asked my friend Jenna to send me her preferred dates for a team meeting last month. She sent back a spreadsheet with every date written as 20240228, 20240301, and so on. @uma_patel19 it drove me crazy at first because my brain expects slashes or dashes, but she swore by it for sorting across time zones. Turns out the system she uses for scheduling actually does handle those numbers better than the formatted versions. I still prefer my dates with dashes since it's what I grew up with, but I see the logic behind the plain number style.