Designer Portfolios
Hey, all you designers & punk graphiK artists out there:
What's the currently "approved" means of showing your work?
What kind of portfolio case?
How big? Dimensions please.
How many projects to show?
What about digital leave-behinds?
What's the deal for corporate graphic designers...anything different?
Thanks everybody! (said in Dr. Nick Riviera style)
What's the currently "approved" means of showing your work?
What kind of portfolio case?
How big? Dimensions please.
How many projects to show?
What about digital leave-behinds?
What's the deal for corporate graphic designers...anything different?
Thanks everybody! (said in Dr. Nick Riviera style)
Comments
Originally posted by drewprops
Hey, all you designers & punk graphiK artists out there:
What's the currently "approved" means of showing your work?
What kind of portfolio case?
How big? Dimensions please.
How many projects to show?
What about digital leave-behinds?
What's the deal for corporate graphic designers...anything different?
ymmv, of course, but from my design instructor p.o.v.
web and/or cross-platform CDROM for all digital work (practice what you preach)
leave behinds might include anything that links them to these URLs (remotely viewable)
sometimes the best leave behind is the unique non-business card...
one of my students mocked up a restaurant menu of her skills/rates. clever.
portfolio might be huge if you're primarily architectural or interior (plan size),
otherwise 18"X24" is the biggest practical (can carry) i've seen... depends on print size.
best size might by 14"x20" (11x17 prints in nice mattes)
8 to 10 projects should give a good sampling of what you can do (2 pieces each)
target your pitch to the prospective client if you can (plastic sleeves let you swap projects to suit)
a shotgun might be ok if trying to demonstrate your breadth of skills,
but most interviewers will zone after 30 minutes (or if themes repeat)
some prefer a few carefully focused laser beams instead of buckshot
corporate pitches or multimedia campaigns might sample a variety of output collateral beyond annual reports
news print, glossy mag, posters, radio copy, tv or animation storyboards
or
point of sale, cd jacket, flyer, poster, magazine ad - all of one band/opera/show (for example)
do your homework on the company and try to bring work that fits their (or their primary clients') corporate image or style. don't waste your anarchypunk anger on the pinstripe set, and vice versa... clients like to see that you're as interested in them as they should be in you
practice a 30 second detailed q/a about each piece (including the mechanical specs, client briefing - why it came out this way or in these colours) that help convey its fit to audience or task.
don't just shpiel about how your inner artist overrode what the client wanted, be prepared to leverage your ideas in the service of the job
more info if you're a bit more specific about what you've got and what you're looking for
got web?
The pages are 7"w x 8"h, broken into four categories. It'll print out to 130 separate cards, total...a good slice of my portfolio (film, architecture, graphic design & web). This printed version will cost $300 for 2 sets, one of which goes into deep storage for toothless reminiscing.
I'm not binding the pages, that way I can mix-n-match to hit my target audience(s).
The deal is, these images won't be any larger than 6" wide or 5.4" tall....
So I guess I'm concerned about potential requests for at-scale prints of some the things that I've made. I can produce some of them for review, but others would require me to re-produce them (some items were kept by studios for possible re-shoots, etc).
I've never really had to go pimp myself out, so putting together a portfolio is a new experience.
The CD-based portfolio is a definite to-do on my list. My instinct is to do it in PDF. At this point I'm planning on using the same square format that I've created for the printed versions for uniformity of presentation.
I figured that it was up to me to choose my own path!
Click the little www button beside my screen name to go to my website, which I'll be updating a little this week.
What's the currently "approved" means of showing your work?
The old fashioned portfolio is still the standard-bearer. A lot of people submit min-folios with their initial resumes, either the one-page complement to the resume, a small tri-fold brochure, images in the resume itself, or some other clever means.
A CD is a bonus, either PowerPoint or PDF format to print (ideally both) and ideally an auto-launched director presentation. Make a good label for it -- handscrawling looks amateur and rushed.
What kind of portfolio case? How big? Dimensions please.
No bigger than 14" x 20" -- even for architects, anything bigger than a display for 11"x17" work is just cumbersome. 11"x14" is also a common and good size. I did show up to my first job interviews out of college with original drawings (10' long) of my thesis project, but it's a really bad idea to have originals around for risk of damaging them, and some people got ruffled by dealing with really big stuff in their conference room or office.
How many projects to show?
Between 8 and 12 projects. Ideally, you keep them down to a spread each, but some big projects or when you have a lot of juicy works in one project can go longer. Don't describe projects, just show the most provactive stuff. The best projects should be the first 2 and the last one. Everything else is potentially just filler for some interviewer who just flip through. Others want play-by-play of each page.
What about digital leave-behinds?
Use a cheap plastic folio as a leave-behind and put a CD in it if you want. They're more liekylt o refer to something from a file drawer than they are to pull out a CD, launch it and watch on their computer. If you're going to present your portfolio on a computer, bring your own laptop, and have it face the interviewer. You'll probably have to sit next to them rather than across fro them for when they ask questions and point to stuff. It can be awkward. Your laptop screen better be roomy.
Whatever you do, do what's fun for you, but don't let the presentation itself become a distraction to the content itself.
Okay, so soon I'll be armed with a miniature "total package" porfolio and a leave-behind package that includes a tightly crafted PDF (with hard hyperlinks to my site)....and possibly a PowerPoint presentation. For some interviews I could take copies of the best design guideline documents that I've created over the last five years.
I'm also going to go back and dust-off/tighten-up my website just a tinch.
A tinch.
Then I'll actually consider mustering the courage to go casting for interviews.....tired of doing freebies for friends while waiting for big jobs to land in my lap!