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Valaire hefner Portfolio

Portfolio Assignment

What is a portfolio?

A portfolio of work is defined in different ways depending on the situation. There are different portfolios for different occasions. Obviously you will have a different portfolio at the end of your junior year as an undergraduate student and another kind when you have finished your studies. More importantly, when you come to make your portfolio at the moments in your life when you want your academic or professional career to develop or change, you will most probably make a different portfolio to suit where you would like to be heading.

For this assignment you will be creating a portfolio that will be approximately A4. It is a travelling document that you may use for your review but also as a professional portfolio. It has to be tough, beautiful, clearly organized, very easy to understand and even easier to use. There are four basic rules that you need to understand in order to create a successful portfolio:

1. documentation

2. editing

3. message

4. audience

1. Documentation: DOCUMENT ALL OF YOUR WORK. Keep every piece of work you produce and document it after each review, even the sketches, because you may later on need to show some of your exploratory sketches for a design project.

2. Edit: The second rule for making a portfolio, is knowing what it is NOT! It is not an archive of every piece of work that you have ever done. You will need to edit the portfolio to include only the best, the most engaging and sometimes the most provocative work. You need to edit your work because your portfolio will have to be as clear as possible about your ideas and experience, and should only contain work that shows your strengths.

3. Message: What do you want to show and why? You want to clearly communicate your interests and skills, your creativity and ability to work through challenging ideas and unusual forms. If you are applying for a job, you may also want to communicate your ability to execute construction drawings, take photos and make schedules to emphasize your technical competence.

4. Audience: You need to understand who your audience is, because that audience may change dramatically during different phases of your career. It will also allow you to change your environment, your education, and allow you to fit into the world of the people who will be looking at your work.

Preparing the Portfolio:

1. If you have hand drawings, you should scan them in at 300 dpi full color. Digital images should be saved as .jpg or .tiff for the insertion into indd and digital drawings should be saved as .eps files. Do not save a line drawing as an image file. No images intended for print should ever be below 150 dpi. Image resolution and image size are inversely proportional to one another and if you enlarge an image, you lower its resolution so make sure that an image has enough dpi to be enlarged. (for example a 4” x 5” image at 300 dpi enlarged to 8” x 10” will only be 150 dpi)

2. You should edit out material that does not show your strengths. Focus on communicating your successes, but also make sure that you have a breadth of work, as we will be looking for signs of continuing improvement in integrating different information within design projects. Choose work that shows your ideas and skills, and you ability to combine complex issues into a coherent whole, thus making your design as easy to understand as possible. Use text clearly and minimally for maximum impact. The most important thing to remember about the portfolio review process is that the focus is on showing your design skills and the development of your work over the relevant period of time.

The Cover:

You never get a second chance to make a first impression so make sure that your portfolio cover or container absolutely makes the BEST possible impression! It should be well crafted and creative.

The cover should be detail oriented, it should be water and abrasion resistant, lightweight yet with sturdy construction. It should resist puncturing, tearing and moisture.

You can buy a case or cover at sites like: http://www.portfolios-and-art-cases.com/ or http://www.caseenvy.com.

You can have book style portfolios printed for you at sites like http://lulu.com. They print both soft and hardback books with various types of bindings including: perfect bound, coil bound, case wrap, etc… They often require a 10 day turn around time however, so you should take this into consideration. You can have a simple coil bound portfolio made at fedex or you can also make your own container or cover. For this assignment, everyone’s cover should have some portion that is laser cut or etched.

Layout:

The layout of your portfolio is as important at its contents. The appropriate use of text, the compositional ideas that orchestrate the relationship between image and text, the use of colour and texture, all contribute to the way your work is received and understood.

1. Select only the best. Organize it by best projects first and last.

2. Your portfolio should have clear contact details – your address, phone number, email address and website url if you have one.

3. You should use some, brief text to explain your progress and ideas but words should be at the service of the visual message. Having already decided upon the sequence of work, think about how to integrate image and text so that it communicates your ideas as powerfully and clearly as possible. Use word to HIGHLIGHT visual ideas. Think about 2 second ideas, 10 second ideas and 45 second ideas. Nothing should take longer that that to understand.

4. Choosing font type, size and character to support the message in your work is critical. Choose 1, possibly 2 and limit it to that.

5. Labeling is very important, appropriately label all your projects including the project name, location, drawing type and so on. You want your portfolio to be easy to use and navigate. Labeling and text should be consistent throughout the presentation and keep repeating itself.

6. Colors and textures can enhance your portfolio. You can print in various hues and tones, you can use glossy or matte paper, etc….

7. Use excellent craftsmanship!

Schedule:

Nov. 1 – assignment given

- indesign tutorial

- laying out a tartan grid

- laser cutter tutorial

Nov. 3 – digital pdf or preview presentation of selected projects for inclusion in the portfolio. Present all associated renderings, scanned sketches, drawings, photos of models, etc… you should choose no less than 3 and no more than 4 projects from dsit 15,29,33,34,102,103 for inclusion in the portfolio.

Nov. 8 – PIN UP Choose a size for your portfolio, make a grid and layout the first project in your portfolio. This should be the best project in your book. This will be a preliminary layout and subject to change based on further feedback and critiques. The pages should be printed out on the size paper that you intend to use in your portfolio. Take a first pass at selecting a font and placing captions by your work and a pass at writing a brief text to describe the project.

Nov. 10 – PIN UP ideas for your portfolio cover

Nov. 15 - PIN UP the first two projects in your portfolio. As before the pages should be printed out on the size paper that you intend to use in your portfolio and printed in color. Take a second pass at selecting a font and placing captions by your work and writing a brief text to describe the project.

Nov. 15 – (I movie / movie maker)

Nov. 22 – PIN UP a mock up of your portfolio. This should include all three (or four) projects you will be including in the portfolio and a mock up of the cover / container / bring paper samples to pin up

Nov. 24 – desk critiques

Nov. 29 – desk critiques

Dec. 1 –PIN UP Final mock up of portfolio

Dec. 6 – desk critiques

Dec. 8 – portfolio due