Organize creative assets around two questions people actually ask six months later: "what shipped for that campaign" and "where is the editable version of this." A structure that answers both survives; a structure organized by file type or by date does not, because nobody has ever gone looking for "all the PNGs from March."
The folder logic
One level for the campaign or project, then a fixed set of subfolders that never varies:
2026-08_refill-launch/
01_brief/
02_references/
03_source/
04_working/
05_exports/
06_shipped/
The numbering forces the order in every file browser. The fixed names mean anyone can find anything in a project they have never opened.
Source is untouched capture and downloaded originals. Never edit in place. Working is project files and work in progress. Exports is everything rendered, including versions that were rejected. Shipped is only what actually ran, which is the folder people need most and the one that usually does not exist.
Naming that survives
project_asset_variant_format_version.ext
For example: refill_hero_02_9x16_v3.mp4
Four properties make it work. It sorts correctly. It is readable without opening the file. It carries the variant so results can be traced back to the asset. And it has an explicit version number rather than a mood: final, final2, and FINAL_real are the three horsemen of asset management.
Use v1, v2, v3, and when something ships, copy it to 06_shipped unchanged. The shipped folder is the archive that matters, because in six months nobody cares which working version was which.
What to keep and what to delete
Keep forever: shipped assets, source capture, project files, the brief, and the approved brand board.
Keep for the campaign, then delete: intermediate exports, rejected renders, and proxy files.
Delete immediately: duplicates created by download, screen recordings of review calls once notes are written, and anything named Untitled.
Storage is cheap and search is not. The cost of keeping everything is that finding anything takes twenty minutes.
Where generated assets fit
This is the part most structures were not designed for, because generation produces an enormous number of near-identical outputs.
Do not save every generation. Save the ones you chose plus one runner-up per beat. A campaign that generated 400 clips and saved all of them has an unusable archive.
Save the prompt with the asset. The prompt is the source file for a generated clip, in the way a RAW file is the source for a photograph. Store it in a sidecar text file or in the filename convention.
Note which model and settings produced it. Six months later, matching an old asset means knowing it came from Kling v3 Standard at 5 seconds with audio and not from a different model in the same family.
Keep the reference images. A reference-conditioned generation cannot be reproduced without them, and reproducing the look is the whole reason to keep any of this.
The practical version: a canvas where the references, the prompt, the generation, and the chosen output all sit together is a better archive than a folder tree, because the relationship between them is preserved rather than reconstructed from filenames.
The habits that keep it working
Name at creation, not at cleanup. Cleanup never happens.
One person owns the structure. Shared structures with no owner drift within a month.
Archive at the end of a campaign, not continuously. A twenty-minute pass at the close is the whole maintenance cost.
FAQ
Should I organize by campaign or by asset type? By campaign. Asset type is a filter, not a hierarchy, and nobody searches by type.
How do I stop final_v2_REAL?
An explicit version number in the convention plus a shipped folder. Once the shipped copy exists, the working versions stop mattering.
What about generated variants? Save the chosen output and one runner-up, with the prompt and references stored alongside. Discard the rest, since regenerating is cheaper than storing.
The archive that actually reconstructs a look is the one where the reference, the prompt, and the output stayed together. The 8frame canvas is free and unlimited, and generation is paid from $19/month.