GridIron Flow is a project organization tool for people who don’t want to take the time to get organized. Think of it in the context of Adobe Production Studio, with content like PSD and AI files. At a high level, it provides a workflow map that shows all the content you input into a Premiere Pro, After Effects or even Final Cut Pro project (see Figure). From the map, you can track a particular piece of content through project.

For example, say you created a Photoshop file that you used to create a motion menu in After Effects, as a background for titles in Premiere Pro and a menu in Encore. Client calls and asks you to change the font size or adjust the color. A quick look at Flow shows that while the initial change will probably take 30 seconds in Photoshop, the “collateral damage” in the other applications could take hours to resolve.

And it gets better from here. Suppose you try to delete the PSD file. Flow warns you that it’s included in your project. Suppose you save seven different versions of the same PSD file, and then decide you liked version 4. Flow can restore it. Want to know how much time you’ve invested in each asset and project file used in a project? Flow tracks that to.

Suppose you’re the illustrator and you create an AI file that’s grabbed by someone from your network for use in an After Effects project. If you both have Flow ($349 per seat, Mac and Windows), you can identify which projects the file is included in, even if they’re not on your system, and the person who used the file in the AE project knows that he got it from you. But you’ll both have to wait until summer, when the product should ship.

Company president Steve Forde gave the demo, which was one of the most impressive I saw at the show. Once it was over, I jokingly asked him for the top five signs that you need GridIron Flow. Here they are:

5. Your desktop has more than 20 items.

4. You’ve had more than two overnighters in the past week trying to get projects done.

3. You spent the weekend working because you deleted the wrong file and didn’t want to tell the boss or your client.

2. You didn’t make any money on the last job because you thought a “simple” change would take five minutes.

1. You have a client that thinks he/she is creative.

Any of these sound familiar?