A Graphic Design Cleanup - RD316

It’s the beginning of spring here in Canada. And with spring comes a desire to put all the messes of winter behind us and clean things up as we prepare for summer. That’s where the term Spring Cleaning comes from.

However, today, I’m not talking about packing away your sweaters and pulling out your shorts. Nor am I referring to cleaning the yard or washing the grime off the windows. Although, it is time to do all of those things. No. I’m talking about doing some spring cleaning of your design business. More specifically:

• Cleaning Your Computer
• Cleaning Your Office
• Cleaning Your Business
• Cleaning Your Branding

Cleaning Up Your Computer.

Spring is an excellent time to review your computer and see what you can clean up.

Clean up your Backups.

The first thing I suggest is examining your backup strategy. Are you doing everything possible to ensure your important files are adequately backed up? Do you have a good in-house as well as an online backup strategy? The price of hard drives is one thing that doesn’t seem to be affected by inflation. You can get large-capacity hard drives for great prices these days. Paired with Time Machine on Mac or an equivalent solution for Windows or Linux can ensure you always have your backups on hand.

I recommend Backblaze, a much more reliable backup system for online backups than Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. And priced as low as $65US per year makes peace of mind very affordable.

Speaking of backups. When was the last time you double-checked to ensure your backup files were backing up? You’d hate to have something happen only to discover your most recent backup is months old. Whatever backup strategy you’re using, take a few minutes to ensure the backups are functioning and are current.

Clean up client files.

Clients come and go. So do design projects. After a while, you tend to accumulate a lot of outdated and even redundant files on your computer. Take some time to review your client files and see if you can get rid of anything.

Delete or move files off your computer for any client who isn’t in business anymore. If you want to keep something for nostalgia, keep the finished files which are often smaller. There’s no reason to keep large working files for something you’ll never use again. The same is true for old projects from active clients. If you don’t think you’ll ever need them again, get them off your computer.

And all those stock images files you accumulate. Did you know that once you acquire them from a stock image site, you can re-download them anytime without paying again? So there’s no reason to keep them on your computer.

Clean up your Client List.

One thing that can get out of hand in our business is our client list, especially if you do a lot of one-off projects.

Depending on the system you use to keep track of your clients, you may want to divide them into Active and Inactive categories. It makes managing it much easier if you don’t have to scroll through dozens or hundreds of inactive clients to find the one you’re looking for.

Clean up your email mailboxes.

You may not realize how much hard drive space email takes up, especially in our field, where attachments weigh in at multiple megabytes.

Chances are you save any attachments you receive to their respective client folder. It’s the smart thing to do. But that means you have two copies of that attachment on your computer. One is stored in the client folder, and one is still attached to the email message.

The same goes for attachments you send to clients. On a Mac,