Easy Archiving/Organising your graphic elements for later use

Question

As many designers, I sometimes find myself designing elements not for a particular project but only because inspiration was there and I might use it in a later project. It could be a button, an icon, a character or whatever.

When they are finished, I used to just through them inside a folder, which I would reorganise later when I have time. But as their number is growing it becomes more and more difficult to find what I'm looking for.

I think this could be fixed by abandonning folders introducing some tagging system with a search feature, but I would like to hear some thoughts from other designers.

How do you organise and sort you work to be able to retrieve it later efficiently? What software do you use?

Answer 1

If you have a good folder structure (something you follow for every project, plus 'general' resources folders), Bridge or a similar program that shows previews for files like PSD, AI or PDF, should be good enough. I had hundreds of resources to navigate at a previous job, and I used Bridge + IrfranView quite successfully.

Otherwise you could use a database with queries for the different file types (no idea of the specifics), or, if you have a chaos, automate the sorting side of the process using something in the lines of Digital Janitor.