File Storage / Retrieval

Storing documents in an organised and structured fashion is a necessary evil. It can be time consuming if not done properly and being done as a retrospective task, but it can be highly efficient if set up upfront.

There are many ways to store documents to ensure people can retrieve them over time, these include the hard drive, cloud (e.g. dropbox) and memory stick.

In marketing roles I’ve undertaken, we’ve used all 3 ways to store documents as the hard drive is where the catalogue of items is kept but a memory stick is often used when you need to take an item elsewhere and upload on a different desktop location.

Ensuring the folders are organised in a relatively easy to understand format is useful for when others use the same location, or there is an unusually high staff turnover.

File Naming Convention

It’s important to ensure, wherever possible, there is a simplistic way to name documents, and that they are not too long. Documents may not save if they have too many characters in the document name.

Many people may need to access the documents so it needs to either use words that relate to the document or have maybe job or project numbers.

When I worked at Legal & General, we used to use job numbers for each job e.g. folder, mailing pack or product. And we prefixed them with A for affinity comms, D for direct consumer comms and B for business to business comms.

It’s also important to make sure you version documents as sometimes you need different iterations of one item. An example is I have numerous versions of my CV as I tweak for different jobs, but also I change the layout and volume of information provided. Sometimes I go back to an old document to pull out some relevant copy.

Another way to version is to include a date or time the item has been produced. Again for the CVs and job specs that I save on my laptop, I have a suffix of a numerical month and day so 04 15 for 15th April. I therefore know what date I applied for the role and can find it when needed.

File Formats

File formats can vary depending on what you are saving to your folder/drive. Personally I am used to saving and reviewing word, excel, powerpoint and PDF documents.

If I was in a more creative role I may hold documents such as PNG, JPG and GIF. As I work in the campaign management side of marketing, I tend to work with designers and creative agencies who hold these documents in their catalogue or on the cloud. When I need to review documents to approve to output for print, I normally get sent PDF versions of the document.

A PDF is a Portable Document Format and is a smaller sized document than an InDesign format. Images and copy can be within the item, and hyperlinks can also be embedded (which is something I never knew was possible).

A PNG is a Portable Network Graphic – as the latter word states, it’s used for graphics so logos, icons etc. It contains a minimal number of colours so not relevant for photos or complex iconography.

A JPG is a Joint Photographic (Expert) Group, which unlike the PNG, uses a huge volume of colour, so is used for high resolution items. As it uses pixels, they will be compressed when the item is output.