Creating and maintaining a rock star portfolio
My portfolio is super stale and needs a make-over! I would love to see examples of other designers' portfolios (graphic, web, industrial, IxD, fine art, etc). How do you decide what body of work makes the cut? How much narrative do you include? What makes a portfolio stand out from the rest? General do's and don'ts might be good, as well.
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I live to keep my portofolio up to date and think it is important to make it available in different forms across multiple media so that it is ready to send out quickly in any way depeding on the client or opportunity.
I am not sure how to sign up, but I would be happy to lead a discussion on this topic and give some insight into how I maintain my portfolio and insure that it stands out wheter its presented in print or on the web.
Looking forward to BarCamp,
Sam
Hi Sam,
I think this session is mostly about the myriad methods and facets of displaying one's portfolio online: flash? straight css? lightbox? splash page?
Also, this is a birds-of-a-feather session, so in effect we'll all be leading the discussion; each of us has a different perspective and style, after all. But I look forward to hearing your insights on the day.
Cheers,
Bran
Sounds good I look forward to it as well...still learning the jargon here I guess, wasn't sure what 'birds-of-a-feather" session was ;)
Yup, that was the right place. And I'll gladly lead a conversation, if a leader is actually needed; I've been spending a LOT of time recently looking at online portfolios and seeing what is popular and what works (and, for that matter, doesn't work.)
Cool!
This session might be nice if it were a birds-of-a-feather discussion; I'm definitely of the opinion that there's no one "right way" to do it, which would seem to be the case if there were someone "teaching" on it. I would, however, love to hear what many other designers have done. And we can talk from a designers/artist's perspective on what we like and don't like when we visit others' online portfolios (er-hem, SPLASH PAGES UGH), how much copy we thing is necessary, and what we think makes the portfolio shine.
I have tons of opinions on these things. Don't you?
Agreed; conceptually, I don't think I thought of someone 'teaching' on it as much as leading a conversation, but I can definitely see that that might imply that there's only one, right way to do things.
So, I changed it to birds of a feather in the length field--was that the right place to change?
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I'm with you there. My portfolio needs a makeover too. Unfortunately I'm more of a PHP web developer and WordPress expert, not really a web designer. But clients don't understand this separation between a coder and a designer, so coders need great-looking websites to get the gigs. I don't want to go with a canned template. I'm not really a designer -- merely a copier and an attempter. You can't look to me for spontaneous stuff or true art. I can chop anything into XHTML/CSS in record time, and have it working cross-platform. Some site themes that influence me lately are:
http://www.postbox-inc.com/
http://www.beetil.com/tour
http://www.newsgroupdirect.com/
So, somewhere in there might be my next portfolio theme. I'll then add in lots of jQuery and AJAX examples because clients seem to go nuts on that. And I'll add popup site visuals on projects I've done.
I'll probably do the design work in Inkscape and Gimp because they are free (installs on Mac, Windows, and Linux) and just as capable for what I need compared to the expensive Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop products. From there, I'll chop by hand into XHTML/CSS.
The people I follow on Twitter have a lot of great ideas and post on things like FreelanceFolder, FreelanceSwitch, Smashing Magazine, and so on. So, I'll be reading a bunch of those before I complete my design.