Organization & Productivity · Freelance & Business

An editorial designer's client folder, naming and backup system

Hadley Hendrix shares her nested client folders, round-and-date file naming, and end-of-day backup routine.

Done withOneDrive

One designer’s own system

WHAT THEY DID

Hadley Hendrix keeps one folder per client, then per project, with service folders (cover, interior, typesetting), a general folder for contracts and invoices, and round folders (R1, R2, R3), each with deliverables. Files are named round, service, short title, date, and she saves a dated copy before reopening a file.

HOW IT WENT

She reports the dated names let her return to earlier milestones without redoing work. She backs up by copying the day’s changed folders to an external drive, a habit she adopted after losing files twice.

WORTH KNOWING

Built around book and magazine projects, and the manual copy depends on remembering. She calls it her current method, not the right one, and plans to simplify the abbreviations.

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Source: Hadley Hendrix · Substack (Hadley House) · Apr 2, 2026Open as a page

About this source

Type: First-person workflow · Firsthand report

How to organize project files
Hadley Hendrix · Substack (Hadley House) · Published Apr 2, 2026 · Checked Oct 20, 2026

Source check: Spot-checked by the 4TC build team on Oct 20, 2026. Fetched and read on 2026-10-20. Nobody at 4TC has tested this.

Claims and where they come from

OneDrive isn't used as the backup because syncing propagates deletions (reported) [1]

4TC interpretation

Our reading, not something the source says.

Most lost-file and revision-mix-up problems are organization problems. A named, repeatable structure is a free upgrade to any practice.

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