When choosing to self-publish your game you’re going to find yourself multi-tasking across a wide range of disciplines and if you’re anything like me it’s easy to get quickly overwhelmed with information. One of the key things that helped me was maintaining a roughly organised list of website links. For a link to make it onto the list I had to have taken either direct action from some information in the link or know that in the future I would need to take some direct action with the information in the link.
So for example, when dealing with Inkscape it might be a youtube link to a a tutorial I followed on how to create a silohette. With manufacturer links I would either request a quote and then add a link to my list or know that I should request a quote in the near future. What became extra useful with both the manufacturing links and the CE testing links was to also include a little additional information on the quote itself such as whether it had already been requested and/or received.
During the development of Zuuli having these links proved extremely useful, particularly when context switching after an extended period working on a specific process such as the design work. Jumping back to CE testing would have been much harder if I didn’t have the links of already researched information to boost my memory. With respect to categorising try not to get too caught up with a perfect indexing system. For me I ended up with the following but find what works best for you and don’t be scared to change it up or break the rules a little.
- Art Stock and reference images
- Kickstarter
- Business related
- Printing & Manufacturing
- CE Testing
- Fulfillment
- Inkscape
You can also store this in cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox as you never know when you might need to dig into it and refresh your memory on a topic. At some point I hope to collate them in a post and share in case they are also useful for any other budding designers out there.
This all might sound obvious and maybe even a little simplistic but I think its a good habit to get into if you can. It’s hard to keep everything in your head and documenting can help your mind relax a little by offloading information it’s desperately trying to hold onto along with the rest of life’s necessities.
Let me know in the comments below how you document your own creative journeys.