IDD 480 - Creating Interactive Portfolios

Often times, the first thing a potential interviewer will do is visit a designer's website to take a look at their work. This gives them a quick and easy way to view the work at any time of the day or night. It also shows that a designer is serious about their work and eliminates a lot of barriers that are involved with sending print portfolios. A lot of successful design studios redesign their web sites as often as once a year to maintain their good reputation, stay current, and give a reason for visitors to come back to the web site.

For some designers, a web site is all that is needed, for others, it won't do the designer justice. Book designs, annual reports, and other things that might have heavy typography or a lot of pages to review aren't viewed that easily on a web site. The case where all a designer might need is a web site portfolio holds often true with interactive designers and photographers.

Motion graphic portfolios are often provided on VHS, CD, or DVD and vary in length. They usually have music that accompany them. Most are usually less than 1 minute in length but there is no magic number for length.

Motion can also be shown with stills such as with the traveling exhibit film called Logomotion. The concept of animation with the famous logos is quite evident and we are able to see how they would look in motion.

Another thing to consider when creating a motion graphic portfolio for the web is optimizing them for different formats so that there is a high level of cross-compatibility. Quicktime is the most common format that is used with designers. I, however, think that perhaps Flash with its new video encoder features may take over with its perhaps even higher probability of being installed on someones computer. Not to mention files are smaller and can load quicker, but some quality is lost. But down the road I think this could prove to be useful and I may even try implementing it as another option into my website.