How do you organize assets?

Wow, no response at all?

Hi Linda - 

Be sure to take a look at the licensing terms for each of purchased items. Lots of stock art restricts use to a single purchaser and sometimes to a single project.

Being an independent developer, I divide mine up by type at the top level. I try to use as few folders as possible in the setup. This means carefully naming the file. I also keep a running tab of where the graphic was used and the source of the image in a spreadsheet. If a graphic is licensed for "use once" I move it to another folder called "license-used".

• graphic-assets
  • art
    • icons
    • illustrations
  • photos
  • compositions

I'm not sure my system would work well for larger teams. You might want to consider a system to track the assets. A tool like Picasa might help to explore the library. 

Oh and another trick I've used in teams is to use a copied and pasted image along with a link to the image in the draft of the assembled output. Buying the art is among the last steps if a licensed image is required. 

During review, some team members can catch that an image (or similar image) is already available.

Thanks for your input Steve!

Hi Linda! Thanks for starting this discussion :)

You might also want to check out these resources...

Here's an article I wrote on the topic: Top 5 Tips for Managing E-Learning Assets

and this is an article by Tom Kuhlmann: How to organize and manage  your course files

Also, here's a few links to some helpful discussions from the community:

• Sorting out your assets
• Photo/resource organization 

The discussions are a few years older but still have a lot of good relevant tips and tricks!

Hope this is helpful for you Linda. 

My organization is from the main elements of the courses so i have:

interface

   UI
   icons

backgrounds

   pattern
   texture
   blur
   ambients

characters

    photo
    vector

devices

   photo
   vector

And so on...

I keep all my photos, icons, etc organized by story.  Then we have a shared drive that we also put the pictures in by category so we can easily share them with others.  We mainly have people, places and things and then these are divided into categories such as old people, young people, families, etc.   This has always been a challenge, but works for us.  I recommend copying them and labeling them immediately, so you don't forget to do it.

Adobe Bridge is a good way to tag things up and help you build a library.

All of my projects have a folder structure that looks something like this:

It's modified on a project-by-project basis.

That's great.  Thanks for sharing