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For an Industrial Designer a design portfolio is an essential element in getting employment. There are hundreds upon hundreds of ways that you can construct your portfolio. You could create it in Flash, on the Web, as a hard copy, as a movie – the possibilities are endless if you put your mind to it.
In this article I will be talking about the basics of design portfolio creation that will allow you to create an excellent portfolio, no matter what medium you decide to choose.
In the creation of a design portfolio there are many considerations you must take into account throughout the building of the portfolio. However the overall process can be broken down into 5 main steps.
1. Plan, Plan & Plan.
2. Collect & Curate Content.
3. Design & Layout.
4. Review.
5. Revisit & Refine.
Plan, Plan & Plan
Planning is an important part of creating your portfolio. Since your portfolio is representing you and your work to people who, in many cases, you have never met then it is very important that it is well thought out and coherent. A portfolio should not be thrown together in a rush – which so often happens when that elusive job opportunity pops up.
You can avoid the rush by setting aside time to properly prepare your portfolio before your start searching for any form of employment. If you are a student, start making every project you create portfolio worthy as soon as possible and take time to consider how each one will fit into your portfolio. I know many people probably tell you this, but it is very very true and it will make life much easier come graduation.
The planning stage is essentially about clarifying a few things for yourself. This clarification will guide your decisions as you create your portfolio.
Portfolio Aim - Who is the portfolio for?
A portfolio is usually meant for one of two particular types of people 1. Potential Employers or 2. Potential Clients.
Although a portfolio for either of these types of people may be quite similar, it is an important consideration to keep in mind as these people will be looking for slightly different things in your portfolio.
Purpose of the Portfolio
Always keep in mind the main purpose of the portfolio – to effectively communicate and showcase you and your amazing design work. This affects many aspects of the portfolio, the main one being the design. The design of any portfolio should be understated, and allow your amazing skills and design work to shine.
Tip: A portfolio is a container for your design work, but it is a container that can be tailored to complement the work. Bottom Line – You don’t want the container to be better than the work inside.
Key Questions
Here are some other key questions to think about during the planning stage.
- How will you or how do you want to guide a prospective employer or client through your body of design work?
- How will you convey the right information, without undersupplying or over-supplying information?
- How much do you want to spend? – don’t spend the earth on your portfolio, but don’t be cheap either (spending might include things like printing & binding).
- What is the deadline for having your portfolio ready to present or send to someone?
- How many pieces do you need to show? This might be specified as a requirement in a job application or by a potential client, then again it may not.
- Does the portfolio need to display a broad set of skills or a very particular set of skills?
Tip: Go for Quality over Quantity.
Collect & Curate Content
In a portfolio, like on the web, Content is King. The design work that is actually contained within your portfolio is very important. Your portfolio is (or should be) telling someone a lot about you and what type of designer you are. It needs to be telling them exactly what they want or need to know, especially when you are not there with your portfolio – which is often the case.
Dependant on some of the answers to the questions mentioned in the planning stage you will have a tentative idea of some of the content that you will be putting into your portfolio.
At this stage it is important to gather as many of your relevant projects and design work as you can so you can begin the arduous task of sifting through and deciding what makes it into your portfolio and what does not. Note the use of the words Arduous and Curate. This stage is always the hardest part of constructing any portfolio, thus it is arduous. Curating your work to ‘tell a story’ and guide the viewer through it is very important so that your portfolio presents a coherent message about you and your design work.
Tip: Try out different combinations of your design projects for your folio, spend time considering each combination. Curate it until you find a flow through the work – flow is the point when it seems to fit together and tell a cohesive story.
Key Questions
- What does this particular combination of my design projects say about me and my design work?
- Does it communicate what the target audience might want to see? I use the word audience because your portfolio may be reviewed by more than one person – sometime an entire design team may see your portfolio.
- How many pieces of design work do you need to show to tell your ’story’? I would personally put in 6 – 10 pieces dependant on the work I have recently completed and the prospective job/client. Amount of pieces is always a key area of contention among designers, so go with what you feel is suitable.
Tip: If in doubt, take it out.
Design & Layout
The design of your portfolio needs to thought through quite carefully. The design and layout of a portfolio must do two things:
- Allow your work to shine ,and thus by extension make you shine. Do not create a portfolio that looks better than the work inside!
- It should make you look professional.
Avoid creating something that distracts from the work contained inside. A great example of portfolios that have a multitude of distractions are Flash based folios.
Designers get over excited by the many things they can do in Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash – animations, crazy unintelligible menus etc… These flashy bits cause it to take longer to load and serve no useful purpose other than to distract and annoy the viewer.
Unless you are actually a flash designer, then people are not going to look at your folio to see the amazing flash skills you have, they are looking at the actual work contained within. These bells and whistles will severely annoy the extremely busy people (company owners, studio heads or the underpaid HR people) who have the unfortunate job of having to sift through hundreds of portfolios. So if they are in Flash, take a million years to load even on their high speed connection, and they cannot quickly and easily navigate them then you will probably be passed by.
This also applies to portfolios in other mediums that have terrible layouts that distract (overly flashy graphics and colours), are badly designed (there are a few too many badly designed websites that showcase design work) and are not easy to figure out (sure get creative with your portfolio presentation, but if someone has to read a manual to figure it out, forget it they have already moved past yours!). Make your portfolio clear and simple. It MUST communicate, not confuse.
Remember simplicity does’t mean you don’t take time to put some effort into designing your portfolio or that you don’t explain yourself. Simplicity means you create a considered and appropriate design, and then take away all the superfluous crap that is not truly needed to communicate you and your work.
Multiple forms of media
These days it is also common for people to have a portfolio across a variety of media, the most basic and obvious being print and web. Don’t put all the effort into one and neglect the other.
Make sure that no matter how many mediums you are putting it into, that the portfolio design is as consistent across the mediums or that they complement each other as much as possible*. These days those looking at portfolios are likely to see a web and a print one, its nice if they obviously have a consistent look and feel so that the portfolios speak to them in a similar way about the work inside.
*Note: This is of course not always possible when using a service like Coroflot. But the great thing is that they have already provided a portfolio container that does a lot of things that your portfolio container needs to – its understated, clear, simple, sort of elegant. But remember it doesn’t do everything.It is just a cookie cutter approach to allow you to get up and running quickly at no cost.
Tip: If you are not skilled in graphic design, page layout, web design or what ever medium you want to use, then find someone who is to help you with the design and layout of your portfolio in that medium.
Cost
Cost is another major point of contention among designers when discussing portfolios, so I will be brief.
Spend what you think is reasonable and what you can afford. If you cannot afford a lot use that designer brain you have and treat it like a design problem, come up with a creative solution that meets all the requirements previously talked about. Don’t go overboard (your portfolio doesn’t need to be gold-plated or hosted on a Nitro Mediatemple hosting package), but don’t be stingy (make it look professional, shitty photocopied pages don’t look professional!).
Key Questions
When you execute the design of your portfolio the types of questions you should ask yourself are the same questions you should ask when you are designing a product.
- Does this actually need to be there? (e.g.: a little hovering thing next to the cursor in a Flash portfolio)
- What reason is there for it to exist?
- Does it serve a purpose? Or is it just a bell & whistle designed to distract?
- Does it actually look good?
- Does it communicate?
- Is it an effective and appropriate design or design element?
Review
Get someone to review your portfolio. You should take your it and show it to your peers, and anyone else who you think will provide you with excellent feedback on your portfolio.
Your peers might include (dependant on your situation) fellow students, lecturers, work colleagues, friends or family. Anyone else could include people you are aquatinted with in your part of the design industry.
For example you might, through your networking (which is an essential for any designer), be aquatinted with the senior designer at a local design studio (if applying at that particular studio then be careful about asking for a portfolio review, personally I might find someone else to ask for a review who knows what that studio is like).
Bounce this acquaintance an email which politely and courteously asks them if they will take some time to sit down and talk with you about your portfolio OR if they will review it via email/phone.
DO NOT attach a digital copy your portfolio to this email, the reasons for this are two fold.
They do not want any more attachments clogging up their email inbox – especially if they decide they do not want to or have the time to review your portfolio.
The second reason is that if possible you want to talk with them in person. If you were to send them your portfolio in the request email they are more likely to do a short, possibly unconsidered review (this is not always the case, but for busy people you could visit it person it usually is) via email.
Having your portfolio reviewed in person is excellent as it allows you to do several things at once.
1. If the person is an acquaintance then you are provided with a chance develop and further the relationship.
2. You will also get a more in-depth review because the person will in be forced to actually take the time to review and provide feedback directly.
3. You will also pick up on more subtle reactions - often facial reactions, but also changes intone of voice and the particular words used – that you would NEVER be picked up via email or over the phone.
4. Its more personal.
Getting a Face to Face Review
Getting a face to face with senior design professional can be difficult. As they are of course busy and they probably receive similar requests more often that you can imagine. Sequence things should occur – email, potentially a phone call, possibly a follow up email, then if everything goes well a meeting.
GOLDEN RULE : DO NOT be rude, always be extremely courteous and polite. They are doing you a favour.
Be bold and direct – ask for what you want, in other words don’t dilly dally around making small talk about the weather.
When writing an email, if you have met them previously be casual polite (i.e you could open the email with ‘Hi John’). If you do not know them and this is first contact be proper and polite (i.e. ‘Dear John’) and introduce yourself (i.e ‘My name is Jane Jones I am writing to you because……’).
Keep the emails short, punchy and too the point.
Ask for 1 hour. You may not get it, you may only get 30mins or 45mins. But always ask because you might. An hour is a good amount of time as it allows time for the person to be late, for the review and a bit of chit chat and a coffee. If they are willing only to give you say 15 mins, then politely decline and explain why you need at least 30mins to 1 hour. If they still won’t let up then move on and find someone else to ask.
Pick some dates and times that suit you and suggest them to the person, ask if any of these dates or time suit them and negotiate from there. Be flexible they are busier than you are.
If you want to visit the studio, ask to meet them there, but try to make sure you have the meeting a nearby quiet coffee shop. The reason for this is that it takes them out of their work environment where they may be easily distracted by work things. Eg: if other staff know its not a client meeting they may ask for opinions from this person – which will eat into your meeting time.
Once you have had the meeting and the portfolio review follow up by sending a thank you email.
Tip: ALWAYS be courteous and polite about criticism. DO NOT burn bridges (translation: don’t piss them off) you never know what you might might happen in the future.
Key Questions
Here are a few basic starting questions to ask anyone (or even yourself) who is reviewing your portfolio.
- These are the skills I want to convey, INSERT SKILLS HERE (e.g., Excellent attention to detail), do you feel that my portfolio conveys this?
- Does this all make sense to you without me having to explain it? If I wasn’t here would these projects make sense to you?
- If no (to the above question), then how do you think I could make sure they are conveyed effectively?
- Does the Design of my portfolio compliment the work inside or does it over shadow it?
- The purpose of this particular portfolio is XXXX do you think that it is suitable for this purpose?
Revisit & Refine
There are several likely scenarios after you have had a few people review your portfolio for you (scenarios 2 and 3 are probably most likely, and ideal).
1. You need to go all the way back and start from scratch – hopefully not, but it could be the case.
2. Your need to review the overall portfolio and then refine it.
3. A few small areas need fine tuning and refining.
4. That senior designer that reviewed it thought it was so good that he offered you employment and you no longer need to use the portfolio for that other job you were going for (You never know who might see your portfolio and offer you employment!).
Wrap Up
Keep in mind you will need to revisit, update and refine your portfolio regularly. I would say it is ideal to revisit every 3 – 6 months, but this is dependant on your situation and it might occur at different times for different reasons.
Reasons could be:
- You create some new work you feel needs to be in your portfolio.
- You have a particular job you want to apply for, so you revise and update to match the requirements of that job.
- You want to change jobs, are retrenched or are fired from your job.
- You get sick of the portfolio and design you have, so you start from scratch.
Tip: Look after your portfolio and keep it safe and dry, don’t show a portfolio around that has coffee stains all over, is ripped or looks like it has been for a trip through a sewer.
Good luck with your portfolio and I hope that some of the tips and advice above helps you create one that you will be proud to show around, but more importantly will get you employment.
Additional Resources
While I hope I have covered some of the most important aspects of portfolio creation in this article, not everything can be fitted in. Here are a few additional resources that might help you create an excellent portfolio.
Online Folio Solutions Series – A review series written last year on Design Droplets about various online portfolio hosting solutions.
Why You Should Start Your Portfolio Now – As always, great advice for design students over at Core77.
Advanced Portfolio Tips - Now you have some basics down, why now get into the advanced stuff?
Creating A Successful Online Portfolio - Taking your portfolio online, then be sure to read this one from Smashing Magazine. It also covers some nitty gritty of portfolio creation.
Please take time to leave your thoughts or feedback. Got some tips of your own? Or maybe a question? The comments section is waiting below for you.
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