[DesignerTerp]

It seems that my pack-rat like style has carried over into my computer.
I am the sole designer/art director/production artist/Mac technician in a fairly large dealership. I handle everything from direct marketing pieces to magazine ads to a billion newspaper ads. This has given me a plethora of files--I need to have matte art of all the different vehicles (we carry about 6 different lines), plus 4C location art, not to mention 800 different logos in black/white, color, EPS, tiff, etc.
Any suggestions on how to organize all this? I have a 60GB hard drive and have about 12GB available.
My current file set up is by month, and then broken done into job type (postcard, newspaper, etc), except for the newspaper ads, which are in their own folder. I have all the art in a central folder, as well as the logos. Should I put the art for the newspaper ads with the newspaper ads? Should I keep both .tiff and .eps versions of logos? (I prefer .eps for manipulation purposes, but use .tiffs in my files) Put them all on a CD?
I've tried to consolidate as much onto CD as possible (like all of our Power Sports art I don't need on a daily basis).

Help!!
(sorry this is so long!)

[Chad A Wright]

And here I thought I was at the only dealership in america who had their own advertising director.

I'm in a very similar situation to you. We have 9 different lines. I have a folder for artwork. It is broken down into factory logos and vehicle artwork. I then have individual folders for each vehicle (ie: Artwork - Vehicle Images - Cadillac - '03 Cadillac Escalade EXT)

As far as the individual ads, I have them organized by newspaper, then by date. I also have separate folders for radio, tv, and direct mail.

There is also a separate folder for promotions. If I'm going to do a month long promotion and all my creative is going to tie in to it, I put it in its own folder inside the promotions folder.

It's a complicated system, and probably not the best, but it works for me. Ironically, I have abandoned this system entirely with other clients I do work for on the side.

I'm hoping to reorganize everything next week when I upgrade to Quark 6. I like the feature where you can have multiple layouts in the same document.

[DesignerTerp]

Originally posted by Chad A Wright:
And here I thought I was at the only dealership in america who had their own advertising director.

Ha ha--I thought that, too!

I'm in a very similar situation to you. We have 9 different lines. I have a folder for artwork. It is broken down into factory logos and vehicle artwork. I then have individual folders for each vehicle (ie: Artwork - Vehicle Images - Cadillac - '03 Cadillac Escalade EXT)

As far as the individual ads, I have them organized by newspaper, then by date. I also have separate folders for radio, tv, and direct mail.

There is also a separate folder for promotions. If I'm going to do a month long promotion and all my creative is going to tie in to it, I put it in its own folder inside the promotions folder.

It's a complicated system, and probably not the best, but it works for me. Ironically, I have abandoned this system entirely with other clients I do work for on the side.

I'm hoping to reorganize everything next week when I upgrade to Quark 6. I like the feature where you can have multiple layouts in the same document.

That's pretty much how I have my newspaper ads organized. I just spent over 2 hours collecting all the art for each newspaper ad, for each line. I put them all in the corresponding folders (i.e. Washington Post>Chevy Art, Washington Post>Hummer Art, etc). I am going to put my Art folder on CD as well as the Logo folder on CD and just access them that way. Hopefully this will free up some space. I have about 3GB worth of archives to burn, too. Whew!!

I'm hoping to get Quark 6.0 soon--I've been waiting for it--that's the last app I run in Classic besides Flight Check Collect.

Thanks for the tips!

OT: What lines do you sell?

[Chad A Wright]

We have Chevrolet, GMC, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep. Plus all the "Certified Used" vehicles for all those lines.

It gets confusing after a while.

I have a 60 GB hard drive in my Powerbook, so I keep all the artwork on there. Right now I've got about 15GB worth of artwork. I'm going to back it up on DVDs, but until it gets larger, it's just easier to access it from my hard drive.

On another note, did you have problems talking a very PC dealership environment into letting you have a mac?

[DesignerTerp]

Originally posted by Chad A Wright:
We have Chevrolet, GMC, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep. Plus all the "Certified Used" vehicles for all those lines.

It gets confusing after a while.

I have a 60 GB hard drive in my Powerbook, so I keep all the artwork on there. Right now I've got about 15GB worth of artwork. I'm going to back it up on DVDs, but until it gets larger, it's just easier to access it from my hard drive.

On another note, did you have problems talking a very PC dealership environment into letting you have a mac?

Cool! We have Chevrolet, Kia, Honda, Lamborghini, Lotus, HUMMER, Chevy Commercial and Power Sports (Kawasaki, Polaris, Yamaha, Honda, Victory and Midnight Express) and like you, all the used vehicles.

Yeah I have a 60GB hard drive as well, I just put all the Art/Logos on to a CD.

I had no problem talking them into it--they created this position for me--they brought all their advertising in house. I basically just made a huge "wish list" of everything I needed and they bought it (G4, monitor, scanner, digital camera, etc). My boss is pretty good about getting me software and stuff when I ask him. I am about to hit him up for Quark 6.0! Have you gotten that yet? I'm interested to know how it works--especially PDF workflow and opening up 4.X docs.

[Chad A Wright]

Actually I have a meeting with my boss next week to ask for the Quark upgrade and another printer.

I'm in the exact same situation. The dealership was paying an agency crazy amounts of money and they weren't doing a good job. They created my position in order to move all marketing in house. The only condition I had for working here was that they buy me a new Powerbook.