Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dakna 2224 days ago
Outside of development work using repositories, I also handle a good amount of design documents, think Indesign/Photoshop etc. My workflow is like this:

- Substantial changes result in a new version number at the end of the file:

Document v34

- Branching to try out ideas uses a marker what this idea was:

Document v34-2 test-color-scheme

If the idea is approved, it results in a new version:

Document v35

- Tagging for long running designs adds the context where it was last used, this can be considered a final release version

Document v36 - July 2020 promo

Once a file is used like that, an export copy with the same name is saved in the same folder:

Document v36 - July 2020 promo.pdf

This document is copied using a general name and then moved to a different folder:

promo2020/july/flyer/Document.pdf

This is what is printed, e-mailed etc. Date and file size allow comparisons to find out which version this was.

While this falls apart for testing a lot of similar ideas at the same time, it has served me well to have a history of snapshots and their context, have all final documents archived, and ignore (or delete) all the versions in between, while still saving progress over days/weeks.