What Is the Importance of Naming Conventions?

File naming conventions … Yeah, not the most exciting topic, but we need them. Without standard naming practices, creative teams get stuck sorting through files and projects, losing precious time we could be spending on other work.

This matter of saving time and energy wherever possible is even more vital as teams take on increasing workloads. In fact, over 70% of creative teams we spoke with in 2022 reported that the required speed and incoming volume of work remains a top challenge.

Luckily, we have everything you need to know about file names, including the essentials about naming conventions and our favorite best practices. (You might as well just bookmark this page now.)

Recommended reading: File Naming Conventions: What Is the Secret to Successful Ones?, Handbook on Guidelines for Naming of Buildings and Estates, Microsoft’s General Naming Conventions Framework Design Guidelines

What Are Naming Conventions?

According to the Harvard Medical School Research Data Management Department, file naming conventions are “frameworks for naming your files in a way that describes what they contain and how they relate to other files.” The idea is to follow a pattern in naming all of your assets.

When you do this consistently, your files will be easier to find. Using this logic, programmers have built a plethora of digital asset management solutions that cater to the needs of marketing and creative teams.

Why Are Naming Conventions Important?

Naming conventions provide at least three vital benefits.

1. They Bring Consistency and Efficiency

Consistency is a universal human trait. In fact, we love organization! It is one of the key drivers behind our successes and proliferation as a species.

Importantly, consistency permits greater accuracy and efficiency for repeatable excellence. When your team has a regular way of doing things that they understand and don’t have to think too hard about, they can put their minds on the finer points of the creative tasks at hand.

Also, staying organized and consistent demonstrates reliability, which breeds trust and stability. No wonder then that categorizing assets in a predictable and consistent way feels right.

2. They Improve Findability and Searchability

If you want others to see, use, and appreciate the materials you’ve worked hard on, you have to make it easy for them to find them. Practical naming conventions ensure your assets get full use because they increase searchability and findability.

Imagine someone needs an image or visualization that illustrates a concept and yours doesn’t show up with the appropriate search terms. They may just use something else that’s not as good. Solid naming conventions consider predictability in how people search so you can create a network of assets that are all easy to locate.

3. They Offer Transparency and Alignment

Everybody has a better idea of what’s available and how projects are going when you have naming conventions that you’ve thoughtfully constructed and consistently applied. That may not be true when you leave naming up to each person’s preferences.

Create a standard naming convention for your assets so everyone uses a common language when they refer to projects and campaigns. Such transparency leads to fewer questions and enhanced teamwork.

What’s a Good Example of Naming Conventions?

Let’s say you work for a creative agency that deals with multiple clients every week. A beneficial naming convention framework could look like this:

1. Create a separate folder for each of your clients on your desktop.

2. Add subfolders inside the original folders for each content medium, like web, printed, and email.

3. Include a separate subfolder for each content medium project, e.g. Website Rebrand.

4. Add one or more subfolders that categorize content by year, month, and content subtype.

5. Compress all your wonderful work into a single, zipped file so you can share everything quickly.

Of course, you’ll devise your own system. Whatever tactics you find to be practical for naming your files and folders, formalize them for success.

What’s the Best Way to Organize Your Work?

Use these best practices to create tailored naming conventions.

1. Do What Works for You

The naming conventions framework you need largely depends on the nature of your business. For example, the industry you’re in will dictate the vocabulary and abbreviations you use.

Discuss what’s most important with stakeholders to build a system that works for your team. The best naming convention is one that considers your team’s specific needs and work characteristics.

If your team likes to organize work for a client or department, it can be useful to put some information about whom the work is for in the name. On the other hand, if you are an in-house creative team that works solely with the marketing department, you might prefer a different strategy.

Image Source

2. Include the Details That Matter

It’s helpful to include something relating to the project type or other details that your team will want to see at a glance. For example, is the work a rush job? This can also be an area for flexibility and customization.

Potential elements for your naming conventions include:

• Content Title: Consider your naming format and whether you’ll use spaces, hyphens, or dashes between words.

• Content Medium: Define what content type your asset falls under, such as landing page, blog post, campaign email, or article.

• Client Name: Where applicable, adding your client’s name makes it quicker to find everything you have worked on for a specific client at a glance.

• Project Name: Adding the name of a project can assist with finding items that belong to the same initiative in an instant, but might be tricky for assets belonging to many different projects.

You may have other details specific to your team, so leave room for descriptive creativity.

3. Make It a Date

Knowing something about the when of a project can be incredibly useful, whether that’s the start date, due date, submitted date, or even what month or quarter you worked on it. When doing so, it’s best to use the convention YYMMDD for dates. You can more easily order items chronologically that way than the U.S. standard of DDMMYY.

4. Numbers Don’t Lie

An advanced option is to incorporate a numbering system into your naming conventions. Beyond dates, it could be as simple as counting the number of projects that year, starting at 1.

You could even include advanced information, like department or product codes. Fortunately, Lytho’s Creative Workflow provides auto-numbering to help teams assign numerical codes to project and campaign names.

5. Order Matters in Building Naming Conventions

Think carefully about the order of your elements in your naming convention. For example, if you follow the date convention of YYMMDD, put that at the beginning of your name to make it easy to sort items chronologically. If you put the date at the end, you will lose some sorting ability.

The question you should ask is, “What purpose does each element serve?” Then build the convention accordingly.

Image Source

6. Find Your Balance

Length is an important consideration in your naming conventions. Never make the name too long. You need a balance of being long enough to have meaning and distinguish the campaign or project from others, but not so long that it becomes cumbersome.

Make Setting and Following Naming Conventions Easier

Now that you know how to build your naming convention, the secret is to consistently use it. A cheat code to make this easier than ever is Lytho’s Creative Workflow, with auto-naming. (Yes, we’re biased, but it really is a powerful feature!)

Auto-naming allows teams to set up naming rules that apply to every project and campaign. This helps teams consistently use their naming conventions to streamline their workflow and reduce confusion.

Do you want to give yourself and your creative team more room for creative stimulation by automating the boring stuff? Lytho helps you streamline workflows and harmonize all brand collateral under a single, uniform platform. Feel free to reach out to us by scheduling a demo and learning how our creative solutions can boost the effectiveness of your creative projects and simplify naming conventions.