As I was interviewing candidates for my “designer who can ship” position, I asked a few how they picked typefaces. One person’s answer stood out above the rest. They shared their screen to show me a folder of inspiration on their hard drive. Dear reader: the folders structure was immaculate. In that moment, I immediately realized I was talking to a professional.

What is it about a clean workspace that signals expertise?

Raise the roof

Cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall coined the term proxemics in 1963 to denote “the interrelated observations and theories of humans' use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture.” His seminal research includes the observations that people tend to feel confined in small chapels with low ceilings and experiencing a sense of liberation and openness in grand cathedrals with high ceilings.

In 2007, academic researchers Joan Meyer-Levy and Rui Zhu studied participants in rooms with different ceiling heights, concluding that higher ceilings encourage psychological freedom and more liberated creative thinking, as summarized in their paper “The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use.” Their work is instrumental in understanding the psychological impacts of spatial design. Design writer William Lidwell later labeled this phenomenon “the Cathedral effect,” the idea that our perception of boundaries in defined spaces can greatly direct our attention. As described by writer and essayist Sean Joyner, “our perception of mental space moves in parallel with our perception of physical space.”

Mise en place

There’s a lot we can learn about this concept from other industries. The culinary industry heavily employs the idea of mise en place, a French phrase that literally translates to “everything in its place.” It was formalized and popularized in the 18th century by renowned French chef George-Auguste Escoffier, who drew on his military experience to pioneer kitchen organization systems like the brigade hierarchy. His incorporation of mise en place brought a sense of calm and efficiency to otherwise disorganized and chaotic kitchens.

In his book Ad Hoc at Home, renowned chef Thomas Keller describes the value of mise en place:

Being organized is a skill to develop… Good organization is all about setting yourself up to succeed. It means getting rid of anything that would interfere with the process of making a recipe or preparing an entire meal.

Space for ideas

That’s well and good for architecture and cooking, but how do we apply this to digital design?

Productivity author Tiago Forte gives us a starting point in his book Building a Second Brain:

No one questions the importance of having physical spaces that make us feel calm and centered, but when it comes to your digital workspace, it’s likely you’ve spent little time, if any, arranging that space to enhance your productivity or creativity. As knowledge workers, we spend many hours every day within digital environments—our computers, smartphones, and the web. Unless you take control of those virtual spaces and shape them to support the kinds of thinking you want to do, every minute spent there will feel taxing and distracting.

Here’s the breakdown of how I create my digital mise en place for everything I work on. (Skip the breakdown to see the full structure at the end.)

(I learned this system when I went to work for SPCSHP in 2012. I’ve been using it since then and have remixed it several times to fit my own work.)

Everything is a project, organized by year

Project 3, Project 4, Project 5, Project 6, and z_archive folders inside a folder called “2023.”

In general, the way I think about my work is that everything is a project. Every year, I do multiple projects. So, the organizing principle is that every year gets a folder, and every project is a folder inside that year.

(I should mention that I use a Mac and have for the last two decades, so your mileage might vary if you try to apply this on a PC. I imagine the concepts still hold true, though some of the execution might be a little different.)

Each year folder has a z_archive folder in it (“z” so that it appears at the bottom of an alphabetical list). Once a project is done, move it into the z_archive folder. That way, the year folder only contains projects you’re currently working on.

Project structure

“Assets,” “Editable Files,” “Review,” and “Delivery” inside a folder called “Project 5,” inside a folder called “2023”

Here’s the guts of it. Every folder has this specific structure:

Assets

Assets are already created files that you’ll use in the course of the work. I start with fonts, logos, and photos. You may also have music for podcast projects, stock footage for video projects, brand guidelines, access documents, and more. If I’m working with clients, the initial goodie bag of files they send you is usually the stuff that goes in here.

Editable Files

Any layered files that might need editing, organized by file type/file extension. Basically any files that you’re actively working on and/or iterating over. This folder has gotten smaller over time for me as more source files move to the cloud and autosave. Even so, for some projects, I’ll save aliases to cloud files to their respective folder because I’m working in so often.

“home 02 DM.psd” and “apparelMockups 04 CK.psd” files inside a folder called “psd”

The filename format goes [ FILE CONCEPT ] [ VERSION NUMBER ] [ INITIALS OF LAST PERSON TO WORK ON IT ]. It’s a helpful version of a pseudo file check-in/check-out system, especially if you’re working simultaneously with multiple people using a shared drive.

Review + Delivery

“2024-10-05 requirements docs.” “2024-10-06 apparel ideas,” and “2024-10-07 requirements revisions” folders inside a called called “Review”

Probably my favorite part of this structure. Editable files are great but they’re not always the best way to share something with someone. The best way is usually a rendered and/or export flat file, something like PNGs, PDFs, MP4s, etc. When designers export comps, they often send them to the Desktop or Documents in a way that tends to clutter those spaces. My first favorite thing about the Review folder is that it give you a place to put those exports. My second favorite things about the Review folder is that you can quickly browse the entire project in chronological order by navigating through the Review folder and using Quick Look. This is much easier than looking through source files to find something you might be looking for.

I name the folders within the review folder in the format YYYY-MM-DD [ SHORT DESCRIPTION ], like 2024-11-22 design round 1.

“2024-10-07 client brief review” inside a folder called “Delivery”

The Delivery folder is like the Review folder, except specific to more “final” things. When I’m working with clients, the Delivery folder is only the stuff I’ve delivered to them, whereas Review is for things I want to review internally with my team before the client sees it. It’s common for me to copy some things from Review to Delivery, and I like the redundancy of having it in both places.

Entire structure

Here’s the entire file and folder structure at a glance.

2024/
├── Project Name 3/
│   ├── Assets/
│	│   ├── Fonts/
|	|	├── Logos/
|	|	└── Photos/
│   ├── Editable Files/
|	|	├── ai/
|	|	|   ├── logoSketches 02 DP.key
|	|	|   └── z_old
|	|	|	    └── logoSketches 01 DP.key
|	|	├── c4d/
|	|	|   └── packagingDesign 01 DM.c4d
|	|	├── key/
|	|	|   ├── siteAudit 01 CK.key
|	|	|   ├── competitiveAudit 03 DM.key
|	|	|   └── z_old
|	|	|	    ├── competitiveAudit 01 AC.pages
|	|	|	    └── competitiveAudit 02 DM.pages
|	|	├── pages/
|	|	|   ├── requirements 01 DP.pages
|	|	|   ├── productBrief 03 BW.pages
|	|	|   └── z_old
|	|	|	    ├── productBrief 01 GG.pages
|	|	|	    └── productBrief 02 GG.pages
|	|	└── psd/
│	|	    ├── home 02 DM.psd
│	|	    ├── apparelMockups 04 CK.psd
│	|	    └── z_old
│	|	        ├── home 01 DM.psd
│	|	        ├── apparelMockups 01 DM.psd
│	|	        ├── apparelMockups 02 DM.psd
│	|	        └── apparelMockups 03 DM.psd
│   ├── Review/
│	|	├── 2024-10-05 requirements docs
│	|	|	    └── requirements-v1.pdf
│	|	├── 2024-10-06 apparel ideas
│	|	|	    ├── apparel-ideas.png
│	|	|	    └── apparel-reel.mp4
│	|	└── 2024-10-07 requirements revisions
│	|		    └── requirements-v2.pdf
│   └── Delivery/
│		└── 2024-10-07 client brief review
│			    └── brief-review--20241007.pdf
├── Project Name 4/
├── Project Name 5/
├── Project Name 6/
├── Project Name 7/
└── z_archive
    ├── Project Name 2/
    └── Project Name 4/
2023/
2022/
2021/
2020/
2019/
…

Could you see yourself using this? What kinds of file folder organization have you found useful?

Subtle Acts of Exclusion

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The File Folder Structure Every Designer Needs

Keep it clean.