Reading #1 BUILDING DESIGN PORTFOLIOS

Introduction - pgs 9-11 Making a Working Portfolio - pgs 13-23
There are many kinds of portfolios, but they all share an over all set of traits. 

 In olden times designers worked for printers and their portfolios were type books. 

In the 1900s designers began working on more self-directed projects, without printers and they started getting work from more and more places, such as mints asking them to design their currency. 

When design was taught in colleges, students portfolios became black leather cases with samples of work contained inside. Today most designers favor digital methods of distributing portfolios.

Most design professionals say a website is just a preview to a closer look at the real portfolio which exists in the print form. 

The person behind the portfolio is more important than the work itself. Studios want someone who will be easy to work with, fit in at the office and be able to consistently produce a high level of work. 

Portfolios are not just about a fancy case, they are more so about the work inside. 

There are many ways to present work, the textbook is just a guide for helping make informed decisions for the final product. 

Resumes are like breakfast, important because they are the first visual meal someone gets of your work. Make everything, business cards, resume and etc consistent, right down to the letter spacing. 

Print portfolios are still the better way of getting a job, since they come with in person interaction. Websites are useful for showing interactive, or exclusively digital work and for advertising. 

Self-promotion is important, but don't look conceded and don't let your presentation outweigh your actual work. In the end the perfect portfolio for me can only be designed by me and it will reflect my own talent and personality. 

Remember you can always redesign later if it doesn't work, that should make this feel less scary. 

Projects from the same school might look the same so it can be a good idea to expand beyond student projects when looking at portfolios contents. Often times student work reflects the professor more than the student's own creative decision making. 

Include in your portfolio work in the specific area you want to work in. 
Ambition and being willing to go above and beyond the call of duty is actually just as important as talent. 
Speak the language of the people you're trying to work for. Post-modernism is usually the better language for talking to younger, noncorporate folks. 

Include a large breadth of design mediums, cds, books, corporate identity, brochures, websites. Show that you know a little of everything so that the art director will see how you would approach a project in their specific area of focus. 

The book approach to a portfolio seems like it would be more effective when it's arranged to tell a story about the designer. Books make designers seem more like artists and less interested in joining a team.  

Books have a lot of drawbacks, they are not easily updated and they are a step removed from the actual design artifcat only able to show photos of it. 

Thumbnails and concept sketches are important for showing potential employers the process to design that I take. 

Not everyone however is going to be interested in how I think or my process. Some people just care that I come up with an idea as opposed to how it comes about. So I can either use fold out flaps that show process or include process only for a few select pieces. 

Make your portfolio flexible so you can rearrange content depending on the client and interview. 

Pay attention to how an interview is going and adjust how you present in order to respond to the interviewer's interests.