Setting Up a Team Workspace for a Design Studio

Design studios live and die by file management. The work itself is good; the workflow around it usually isn't. After running this setup for two different studios I started, I've converged on a structure that scales from 3 to 10 designers without a major reorg. Here's the full playbook.

Step 1 — Create the team

Owner (you, the studio principal) goes to sendme.co.in/teams/create. Mobile-verify, set a name (e.g., 'Acme Studio'), and a strong team password. You'll get an 8-character Team ID — share this with your designers via your team's preferred channel (Slack DM, in person).

Step 2 — Set up the top-level folder structure

I use four top-level folders, no more:

• →01_Clients — one subfolder per active client, with the format YYYY_ClientName (e.g., 2026_Acme).
• →02_Brand — studio's own brand assets, templates, presentation decks.
• →03_Resources — fonts, mockup templates, photography licences, anything shared across projects.
• →04_Archive — at the end of each quarter, completed client folders move here.

Step 3 — Inside each client folder

Every client gets the same structure — predictability beats cleverness. Inside, three subfolders:

• →_Briefs — every brief, contract, and reference image from the client.
• →WIP — work-in-progress files, by deliverable: Logo/, Website/, Print/.
• →Final — only finalised, signed-off deliverables. This is the folder you can confidently send a client a link to.

The underscore prefix on '_Briefs' keeps it pinned to the top of the alphabetical sort. Small detail; big quality-of-life win.

Step 4 — Member roles

Senior designers get admin role — they can invite others and delete files. Junior designers and contractors get member role — they upload, organise, but can't accidentally nuke the whole workspace. Externals (a freelance copywriter on a single project) get member role and a written reminder that they only touch their assigned client folder.

Step 5 — Daily practices

• →Every file gets a versioned filename — Logo_v3_2026-02-04.ai, never Logo_FINAL.ai.
• →End-of-day rule: any WIP file you touched goes into the workspace before you log off. No more 'I left it on my laptop'.
• →Weekly cleanup: every Friday afternoon, archive any project that's been signed off. Keeps WIP focused on active work.
• →Use the activity log when you can't find who last touched what.

Step 6 — Client handoffs

When a deliverable is ready, don't share workspace links with clients. Make a one-off SendMe transfer (outside the team workspace) and send the client a code. This keeps the workspace internal-only and doesn't require client accounts.

Why this works

Designers think visually. A predictable, shallow folder hierarchy is a visual signal — they recognise the structure within a week and never have to think about it. Compare with the typical studio Drive, which has 'Old', 'Old 2', 'Archive', 'OLD ARCHIVE', and 'Sahil's folder' all at the top level. Cognitive load matters.

Scaling beyond 10 members

SendMe Teams caps at 10 members per workspace. For larger studios, split into multiple workspaces — one per discipline (Brand Studio / Web Studio / Production), with cross-team handoffs via individual SendMe transfers. The 10-member cap is a feature here: it forces clarity on who actually needs to be in any given workspace.