DevonThink. An LD's paperless tool...?

How I, as a lighting designer, use DevonThink?

Over the years, I have used both PC and MAC computers, but for the last 15 years, I have settled on a MAC for work and personal use. When I bought my first MAC, I came across DevonThink and found the concept very intriguing, but at the same time confusing. I couldn’t quite get my head around it. It all sounded a bit… well… abstract. I had more questions than answers, and I also found it a little clunky, so I gave up. Just like that! I never touched it again. Maybe I was trying to overthink the whole thing. I couldn’t see the wood for the trees, as it was actually very simple.

Fast forward to November 2023, and I thought that I’d give DevonThink another go. I downloaded it and installed the trial, but before the trial had ended, I purchased the Pro version. Now DevonThink is the heart of how I work and run my work life. So how did this happen?

By trade, I am a stage and television lighting designer. I do many different kinds of shows and events, from small 300-people business conferences to arena-sized music shows, TV and video shoots. The biggest thing about my gig is the paperwork. There can be so much of it. CAD drawings, PDFs, images, photos, and all formats of documents such as Word, Pages, and spreadsheets. Sometimes the amount of paperwork for one job can be overwhelming.

My old method of keeping this stuff in order was to create a job folder in Finder with the name of the show, and inside the folder, there would be many sub-folders where I would put all the various assets sorted into categories as they came to me. Later, whenever I needed to access a document, I’d either go into the job folder and click through the sub-folders tree until I found what I needed, or use Spotlight to hunt the document down, which didn’t always work as I would expect. Yes, I used tags, aliases, and so on, and this simple method kind of worked, but it was slow, messy, and clumsy.

DevonThink has changed all of that now and has become the real hub of my work, converting and improving my workflow, making me think and organise myself with more clarity. Now I can find anything that I need with speed, freeing up time to act on what I was searching for and not having to think too hard about where it is in my file structure.

So how do I use DevonThink as a stage and television lighting designer?

It took a little thinking through and a leap of faith. I did a lot of YouTube watching and reading on the DevonThink forum. Lots of experimenting was also done. It’s the best way to learn, just keep a backup, that’s all! I wanted to make sure that I understood clearly what DevonThink was all about. With trepidation, I created a database called WORK. In this work group (or folder for simplicity) I created some more groups that relate to my work. These are just generic work folders that contain health and safety docs, first aid, public liability insurance docs, and other insurance documents. I also have manuals for software and lighting equipment manuals in these folders. I started with items that didn’t change very much, important to my work, yes, but not accessed very often. I did a full Files and Folders Import. DevonThink was to become my go-to place, so Indexing Files and Folders was not for me. I didn’t want to use the OSX Finder at all.

Once I had experimented for a while with these folders and files and was happy, I decided to move over all of my work. The jobs that I am currently working on and the jobs coming up in the future. I kept the original folders in Finder for a while until I was happy and that I wasn’t going to mess it up with DevonThink. The paranoia was so much that I ran both methods at the same time until I was absolutely happy. Even then, I zipped up and archived the Finder items and kept them safe for a while longer… Just in case!

After moving some items around and creating new groups, I wanted to automate the process so that when a new job came in, all the groups that I needed, along with a single “Where are we with this job?” document, would be created and populated for me ready to receive all the documents that would soon come my way.

I started by creating a template that would generate a group of folders for me. I managed to create a template called New Job, which was easy to create within DevonThink and OSX. So now when I click:

Data/New from template/Classifications/New Job

A new group is created in the Global Inbox that looks like this:

To a non-stage lighting person, this probably looks like nothing, but to me, it makes my work much easier and cleaner, and I can change the template as I go, adding and removing folders as my requirements change.

CADS: is where all the CAD drawings go.
Accommodation: Details about where I’ll be staying for the job. This would be a collection of web links, a reservations PDF, etc. I can stay in many different places on a single job!
Travel: Self-explanatory. How am I getting there? What are the details? Flight, train, and car rental dates and times.
Documents: Spreadsheets and text docs, any document that is a non-PDF.
Visuals: This is where all the visuals that I have generated for the client’s show or event using my visualisation software are kept.
Finance: All the quotes from equipment suppliers, my costs, crew costs, etc. Anything to do with money!
PDFs: This folder is always the most populated, as in my industry, the PDF is a big deal!
Notes: Any extra notes that I might take or get about the job that I have to deal with much later on.
Kit Lists: An important one this. It has all the equipment that I will specify and use for the job. This can constantly change.
Images and graphics: Photographs of the venue, and images from the client, such as set ideas, logos, etc.
Inbox: Nothing in here yet.
Anything Else: This is where stuff goes that I can’t put away anywhere else for the moment, or needs me to think about it a bit more.
Capture: This is the virtualisation software I use. Many versions of a show go in here. I can create 3D renders for a client and myself that change regularly, so all the files for Capture go in here.

Finally, JOB NAME - Where are we with this Job? This is a rich text document that does what it says. It’s a partially empty document with some basic information that is already in, such as the show name, client name, and dates of the event. Then, under that, I insert the date and time and then add significant notes and details about the job. Changes to the show, key people’s contact details, change of times, etc., etc.

This document is the hub of the job because anywhere within the document, I can place a copy link from any asset in DevonThink, which will then allow me quick access to the item, saving me from searching for the asset. This doc gets my daily attention as I have to keep it up to date with new and changing information and add any other asset link addresses for later use. I boil down all the important information from all the sub-folders of a job into this one document using links and edit it every day. Being able to link to other items in DevonThink in a document is one of the great advantages of using DevonThink, but you do have to keep it up to date for it to be useful.

This New Job template is created in the Global Inbox. All I do is rename the group with the show name and copy that name to the JOB NAME document within the folder, then move the lot to the JOBS group in my WORK group. Now all my jobs are in one folder.

Then the real fun starts. Items such as drawings, CADs, docs, and PDFs come via email, shared, or AirDropped to me. In the old days, I’d just gather this new stuff on my desktop and then file it into the appropriate folders in Finder. Now DevonThink AI does this for me.

I was a little sceptical about this function at first, but I found that the more data I put into DevonThink, the more the AI kicked in and suggested the right folder to put items into. Now, 90% of the time, DevonThink knows which job group and sub-group an item needs to go to. It is rather spooky to watch, but I can tell you it does work.

Each job can have lots of emails and documents. For each attachment or shared item that comes to me, I just put it into the Global Inbox via OCR, and I convert almost everything I can into a searchable PDF. Everything goes in there, but I mean everything. I print nothing, I save nothing in the usual way in Finder. I just send it to DevonThink. It’s like a “scruffy” unorganised folder where stuff just gets thrown into for sorting later. I didn’t intend to go paperless; it just happened naturally. I have invested in a scanner now, so if I do get given something on paper, I scan it into DevonThink and I’m done.

So I have all these items in my Global Inbox. When do I clean it up?

This usually happens at the end of the working day. I get a large glass of red wine and I go through all the items in the Global InBox. As I click each item in the Inbox, the See Also & Classify tab in the inspector suggests where the item should go in my database. First, I read or look at an item and act on it if I need to, copy the link item into my “Where are we with this?” document. I’m a big fan of tags, so I will tag the item, then click the suggested location in See Also & Classify, and boom, it’s gone to the right group.

When I go to a meeting or an on-site location, I use my iPhone or iPad to recall everything I need to know about the job I’m working on. All at my fingertips and instantly available. No trawling through folders or searching with Spotlight. Using DevonThink To Go, all my jobs and the assets for the jobs are all there. Using an Apple Pencil, I can amend PDFs and schedules, etc. During the meeting, all my new notes get synced back to my MAC for sorting later on. The DevonThink sync function is taken care of using WebDAV to my self-hosted Nextcloud instance. It has not let me down yet!

It has taken a bit of trial and error. Reading, watching, and listening to other DevonThink users, but without a doubt, my old cumbersome, messy workflow is now streamlined and easy. I am spending less time looking for stuff, now I’m doing stuff. My creative lighting designs may not have improved, but the way I put a job together and manage it is now at another level.

Now I can’t do without my DevonThink. I am now in the process of moving and administering all my personal stuff. I have created a new database called Personal, and everything not work-related is thrown into it. I write as a hobby, so I have moved my research and writing to DevonThink.

Of course, people have different jobs and have different ways of using DevonThink. My method is no big deal, but I wanted to share how I use this software. Maybe you have spotted another way of doing what I do, or maybe I have given you an idea of how to streamline your work.

Help or harm?

Dj

Have a look at the DevonThink website for more details.

Personal Knowledge Management

Taking notes, good old pen and paper, or electronic?

PKM - Personal Knowledge Management, can mean anything from how we take notes to how we sort them out and file them with supporting documents and objects. Are you a pen and paper person, a notebook person with bits of paper shoved in between pages, stapled items to pages, folded pages or paper with a pen and a highlighter? It's all PKM. These days, we all seem to have more and more information and notes that we need to consolidate in one place, and be able to access at a moment's notice.

Your pen and paper may work perfectly well for you, so why should you change? There are a few computer applications that can help, but are they just a hammer to crack a nut? Are they necessary?  Here is a personal reflection on my work. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to take and file notes; it's like telling someone whether their shirt should be tucked in or not. The shirt is on, that's it. A poor analogy, but you get the idea. Here are a few examples, not in any order, you understand:

I'm a stage lighting designer, so I have different clients with different needs, crew lists, kit lists and venues all different, some cross over to and from different jobs, so I need to be able to keep track of them, and sometimes they link together. This conversation can be cut short now if you have a look at my article about Devonthink. I'm a big, big fan of this application. I dipped in and out of it for a while, but I have committed to it now and find it almost indispensable for the work I do.

Having said that, I have recently come across a new application called Capacities. It's very similar to Devonthink, though not as powerful, but it looks better and is easier to navigate than Devonthink.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of their key differences:

Feature / Mindset	Capacities 🧠	DEVONthink 📚
Purpose	Grow and connect ideas	Store, organise, and search documents
Data Type Focus	Notes, images, links, concepts	PDFs, scans, documents, email, media
Core Strength	Linking concepts into a network	Advanced search, tagging, OCR
Where Data Lives	Cloud only	Local-first with optional sync
Access	Cross-platform (web, Mac, win, iOS, Android)	macOS + iOS only
Offline Use	Yes	Yes
AI Use	Summarisation, idea linking	Smart classification & search
Best For	Creative thinkers, writers, and content planners	Researchers, archivists, lawyers, academics
Metaphor	Digital “second brain”	Private “personal library”

You can use the two in combination with each other, which I do, but really, it's a bit pointless. I need to come down to one or the other. They both have excellent AI functions, with Capacities doing the job better, I think. As a self-hoster, I sync Devonthink between my devices via my self-hosted Nextcloud instance. Capacities, however, is hosted and synced through Capacities in Germany. Despite that small detail, I think my preference is leaning more towards Capacities, if only you can sync through WebDAV. They both lack a good calendar and contact plugin. Capacites can use your Google or Office 365 contacts and calendar, but I'd like to see CalDAV/cardDAV support, again for us self-hosters!

The other compelling reason for using Capacities is that notes or objects are linked. There are no folders, groups or hierarchy; you just create an "object" and then link them together with tags or groups as collections or queries. It all works very smoothly and efficiently.

Here is a list of applications that do PKM and journaling.

📒 Note-taking & Writing

• Obsidian – Local markdown files, powerful linking, plugins, great for “second brain” setups.

• Logseq – Local-first, outline-based, daily notes, backlinks, and graph view.

• Roam Research – Popular for networked thought and daily notes, cloud-based.

• Notion – Flexible database-style system with pages, embeds, and collaboration.

• Evernote – Classic note-taking app with web clipping, tagging, and search.

• Apple Notes – Simple, synced across Apple devices.

• Google Keep – Sticky-note style, fast and minimal.

📚 Research & Knowledge Curation

• DEVONthink – Mac/iOS powerhouse for storing, tagging, and searching documents.

• Zotero – Reference manager for academics and researchers.

• Mem – AI-driven note management and linking.

📅 Daily Planning & Journaling

• Day One – Rich journaling app with media support.

• Reflect – Daily journaling with backlinks.

• Capacities – Combines objects, notes, and tasks into one graph-based PKM system.

• Trilium Notes - Daily journaling with backlinks.

📂 Plain Text & Markdown Lovers

• Joplin – Open source, cross-platform markdown notes, sync options.

• Standard Notes – Encrypted notes with extensions.

• TiddlyWiki – Self-contained personal wiki in a single HTML file.

Out of the above, I have tried:

Obsidian, Notion, Evernote, Apple Notes, Joplin, Capacities, Devonthink, Standard Notes, Trilium and TiddlyWiki.

Comments on the above:

Obsidian - Couldn't get my head around it. Uses markdown. Hate markdown!!! Sorry if you are a user!

Notion - Similar to Capacities, but a bit more 'faffy'. Nice though.

Evernote - I used to subscribe to this app when it first came on the scene. Not mad on it now.

Apple Notes - Excellent. Use on its own or in conjunction with Devonthink and Capacities.

Joplin - Excellent app which can host yourself. A bit boring to look at, but easy to use.

Capacites - Love it!

Devonthink - Love it!

Standard Notes - Very nice, but expensive for what it does. I used to self-host this server and use the app, but the support for self-hosters stopped. Shame that.

Trilium - A very nice PKM that you can host yourself. Very fast and responsive.

TiddlyWiki - Very nice app that you can self-host. Uses your browser to store and secure your notes.

Final note. I can't be doing with Markdown. What's it for...?