Version Control for Designers, Without the Jargon

Designers already do version control — it just looks like 'final_v2_REAL_final.psd'. The problem isn't discipline, it's tooling: file names can't answer 'what changed and why', and they collapse the moment two people touch the same project.

The mental model worth stealing from software is the snapshot. A snapshot is the whole state of your project at a moment you chose, with a label you wrote. Restoring one isn't undo — undo replays keystrokes, restore teleports the entire file to a known-good state.

Start small: snapshot before every export, before every big merge, and before trying the risky idea. Label them with intent ('before client feedback round 2'), not with dates — the timestamp is recorded anyway, but your reasoning isn't unless you write it down.