Organization

Stuart Sandler

Hey Gang! This may be an odd question but is something I think about from time to time. Does anybody have an organization system they use or love to manage all the different fonts/images/etc that all the different distributors require? I feel like I have a folder for each distributor rather each font and it gets overwhelming. Always thinking of the most efficient way to structure this sort of thing and it felt like a Type Business question.

Paul Miller

I use 'Main Type' by High Logic to organise my fonts.  You can set up whatever arbitrary categories you like.

Mark Simonson

I keep each font/font family in its own folder.

Within that folder, I have a folder for banners and other images needed by distributors and for my own site. I have a master Adobe Illustrator file that contains all the different sizes needed. I export required images into separate folders for each distributor.

I have another folder that contains specimens and user guides, both the source documents and PDFs for distribution.

I also make a folder for each new version of the font/font family containing the source documents, finished fonts, and anything else related to that version.

There are a few other folders for keeping information or documents relating the the font/font family as a whole.

I have a completely separate folder in which I put copies of the latest version of each font, organized by family and also by package (some distributors require preassembled sets). Whenever I need to send font data to a distributor, it comes from this folder.

I'm not sure if this is the best system, but I've developed it gradually over a couple of decades and it seems to work for me. I continue to tweak it. It was much less organized even ten years ago.

Chris D

It's also made weirder these days by the fact that programs like Glyphs allow you to roll back to different save points in the past, all from within the single file itself. (I'm more used to saving out duplicate copies (v.1.0, 1.1, 2.0 etc) and I still need to get used to that new system )

@Stuart Sandler Also I suggest storing your files somewhere in a cloud folder (like Dropbox) and that also adds an extra layer of versioning on top, so you can easily pull an earlier version of the file you're working on. (I use Dropbox Business which I believe gives you unlimited versions, other plans usually limit it to 30 days.) That feature alone has saved my bacon too many times.

Stuart Sandler

Many thanks all! Good insight!

Vasil Stanev

This chart has gotten diversified as the volume of the projects increased, but has not broken down because of it.