IDD 480 - Print Portfolios

While my intentions of a print version of my portfolio are not at the top of my priority list. I did take trip over to Hull's Art Supply in New Haven to see what types of ways I could bind a print portfolio when I actually have time to get around to it. Unfortunately, my options are quite pricey for what I would consider just a fancy binder. Although, after reading in the book, I found that there are other options to creating a portfolio and packaging it in a nice neat way without it being expensive. Portfolios ranged from about $35 to several hundred dollars. Perhaps when I am no longer a student and am making very fine work I'll display it in an expensive portfolio.

Some of the ways I saw portfolios displayed in the book included cloth boxes, magazine holders, metal boxes, bound books, a variety of objects in a FedEx box., a suitcase made from cut-up coffee cans, and clever ways of packaging everything into a unique folder. The variety of objects in the FedEx box struck my interest. This was created by Modern Dog, a design group from Seattle. A couple of the items actually contained in it was a breath spray called, "The Original Liar" and a package of gum called, "Be Nice Or Leave Gum." The effect this had on me from just looking at the photographs on the book was quite interesting and definitely grabbed my attention. Now some of the other items in the portfolio is borderline and might offend some people. This topic does get discussed in the 9th chapter of the Digital Portfolios book.

When selecting work for a portfolio, especially as a student, I feel it is important not to step off on the wrong foot. Modern Dog's portfolio is not for everyone. We need to keep in mind that we don't know what type of morals, ethnicity, race, etc. the person on the viewing end of the portfolio has.

Whether we are writing our resume or providing captions for the work in our portfolio, we need to write in an educated manner. Spelling, grammar, and typos need to be perfect. Bad writing will make anyone will look bad and it doesn't matter who they are. Humor, can be important, tricky, and dangerous. Humor needs to be safe because we don't know who will be viewing it at the end. To some, it could be hilarious, to others, it might offend and they could want nothing to do with you and your work after that. One last thing to consider is paying attention to the audience of the portfolio. Who is going to be viewing the portfolio? Or who is more likely to view it? Catering the text and the language to them and more of your true personality can be exposed.

IDD 480 - Creative & Organized

Do those two things run together? Well, perhaps with a little practice they will in my world. All design jobs that start in the creative process have some sort of design brief. They can come in many different varieties. Whether it is written, verbal, just a picture, etc. It can be given to you from the client themselves or it can be written up your own. Not having a design brief makes the designer vulnerable to the client. My favorite line out of this entire reading is: "Graphic designers need briefs. In fact, although designers constantly demand freedom, the really crave constraint. It's a little recognized fact, but designers are only happy when they are battling with restraints."

Before starting a job, designers often sit down and go through a pile of books, magazines, and the internet scouring for ideas. An important aspect of being a designer is having cultural awareness. Clients also like to have designs better than their competitors and urge the designer to study their work as well.

Typography, typography, typography, infact that can't be said enough. Unfortunately, it is one of the tougher areas to master in graphic design. OurType has one of the most intersting ways of displaying different fonts to purchase on their website. The typography of it is so intersting that you get sucked into reading the different phrases that the different type layouts use. In fact, I almost forgot that I could purchase some of those fonts that they displayed.

The design process for everyone is different. Some people like to dive right into working on the computer. Often times I like to make simple sketches to give myself something to go by and then go to a computer screen. One very important thing to do in the design process is to look at the work from a distance, which is hard to do when it is on a computer screen. So if possible, print it out, put it on the refridgerator, and then look at it up there for a couple of days. Of course this assuming that designers have a lot of time...which we all know that we don't. In that case, we can just put it on the refriderator, step back, and avoid leaving it up there for days.

In the chatper in Baron's book, she discusses ways to organize your work. A lot of it is common sense that is pointed out to us and being smart about storing and backing up work. The five main disciplines to organizing files are: Group, Name, Show, Weed, Backup. The two that didn't stand out to me after first glance were Weed and Show. Show just means to use thumbnails to catalog our work, since we are primarily visual people. Custom folder icons can help with this. Weed means getting rid of things that aren't needed. Put process ideas in their own folder and throw out any error files. Make sure to dot his while the project is still fresh in your mind. The last thing I can say is.... Backup...backup....backup.... While I do have backups of my current work, I can't access them at the moment because I didn't make enough backups. Such as back up to a CD instead of just another hard drive.

IDD 480 - I can't think of a good title

In this weeks Shaughnessy's reading, we read about dealing with clients and self-promotion. Dealing with clients is more familiar to me in the pseudo-design studio setting from when I personally dealt with clients while I worked at a sign shop. Keeping clients (happy) and developing new clients is usually what happened while I was working there. In fact most of our business came from repeat customers. The book talks about 'first job syndrome,' which I can't say I ever saw first hand, that happen to us. Although, now that I think about it, there were some clients that were a little more difficult and demanding than others. Usually they didn't understand the wait time involved and wanted immediate products, just as if they had gone into Wal-Mart and PRESTO there sign was all done the next day.

Developing new clients was always important in that business. Luckily, the company I worked for was one of the few in the area and benefited from the "Location, location, location" aspect of business. By default, most people came to that company because it was one of the few in the area. I did witness my boss maintaining communication with clients that had not requested any new business from us to generate work. In the beginning, my boss said that he would actively attempt to develop new clients by going out and looking for work. He would create signs for smaller businesses that needed signage.

In Baron's reading, she talks about the different formats for a portfolio. She starts by talking about portable media. The first topic almost made me laugh as she gave a short paragraph about Zip disks. I haven't heard of people using zip disks in years! I guess, however, that some people still use them for storage and wanted to make it clear not to use them for making a portfolio portable. Out of all of the mediums she discussed, I believe that it is safe to say that CDs, DVDs, websites, and perhaps a laptop (if absolutely required) are acceptable mediums for a portable portfolio. If creating a demo reel, I would make sure that it is easy to create a VHS tape on the fly if that format is requested, but I would not to waste the time in converting an entire demo reel to VHS tape in the beginning. DVD players are probably at this point more common than VCRs are since they come on just about every computer these days.

The book also mentions the site Sharpe Online and after visiting it, I encountered that it has changed since the book was published. In fact, each associate no longer has their own personal feel to their portfolio and they all follow the same format now. This could possibly be a sign of the company changing and perhaps changing internally or even growing since the associate list is longer than the original 7 and some names are no longer there.

IDD 480 - Final Round

Welcome back into the spring 2007 semester, the final semester and edition of Golb Bew. IDD 480 is my Senior Seminar and Portfolio class where we will be worked for every ounce of creative juice that we have. On top of all of our creative juice being squeezed out of us, we will need to then organize it into a nice neat resume, portfolio, letterhead, business card, etc., and etc.

This weeks weekly reading opened my eyes and told me just about everything that I needed to do/be that I am not already. In fact, it raised my stress level just a couple notches. The books that I'm reading for the next few weeks are:

Designing a Digital Portfolio (Voices That Matter), by Cynthia L. Baron,

How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, by Adrian Shaughnessy, Stefan Sagmeister

Some of the things I learned in Shaughnessy's book were very interesting. Some of them might be common sense though, such as when showing the interviewer your portfolio, make sure that they are the ones looking at it. Often times graphic designers fail to turn the portfolio to make it easy to view for their interviewer. Another thing that I didn't think of that is more specific to the area that I'm going to go in to, is in addition to having a DVD with a demo reel of my work, is to include stills from different frames of the project on paper so that it makes it easier for them to view. Not all interviewers have time to watch DVDs and demo reels right away.

There were tons of useful bits of information in this book just in the first few chapters as far as how to go about all the important little things that get over looked. From how the letterhead should be simple and not vary too much with font. To requesting interviews at design studios instead of a job.

Baron's book discussed the different types of portfolios based on the different professions that require portfolios. For motion graphics, a "formal" portfolio may still be a videotape/DVD (aka. demo reel). Although a digital portfolio (website) is growing increasingly fast as another type of portfolio since some work is being designed explicitly for the Internet. Baron's book is going to go more in depth to each of the different purposes of a portfolio. Whether it is to get a full-time job, to gain clients, etc.

This semester has got a lot in store for us and we have a lot of work ahead of us. Here's to making it through the semester and getting a job in one piece!