Hi everyone, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today we're going to go over graphic
design portfolio best practices.
So this is going to include what types of projects you should have in your portfolio,
whether you should bring it to a job interview, the design of the portfolio itself, and just
a lot of different things like that.
All right, let's get started.
Number one: Portfolio Design.
The design of the portfolio itself should be very minimal.
It shouldn't be distracting from your projects at all.
The projects should be the portfolio, if that makes sense.
If you have an online portfolio, you're going to want to have the user interface be very,
very easy.
You don't want the person who might be hiring you to have to click around and try to find
things.
It should just be very simply laid out.
If you have a printed book, you'll want the design to again be minimal.
Just let the projects shine.
It's OK to have a short description telling what the project was about, but no more than
maybe two lines.
And each project that you show should have more than just one application.
I'm going to show you some examples from my book.
I don't know if you can see these, but if you can't, I'm going to put them on the screen,
so that it's easy to tell what's going on.
It's actually a little hard to see these.
So I'm just going to show you on my PDF.
Here you can see it's a really simple design for just the layout of the portfolio.
This project is sort of like a campaign.
It shows a lot of different applications for the logo, business card, letterhead, pins,
just a lot of different uses.
Number two: Types of Projects.
You should really only include projects in your portfolio that you're interested in working
on at the job you're applying to.
So a good example of this is, I've done user interface for a mobile app.
And, although the project actually really turned out really great, and I love the way
it looked, I just didn't enjoy doing that.
So I wouldn't want to put that in my portfolio because I don't really want to do that type
of work.
But it is good to tailor your portfolio to the type of job that you're applying to.
So if you're applying to be an infographic designer, you're going to want to have some
infographics in your book.
I usually keep a few extra pages that I can switch out different projects in my portfolio
really easily based on what job interview I'm going to.
Number three: How Many Projects?
I think eight to 10 projects is a good sweet spot for an interview, and make sure all of
them are very strong.
You don't want to have any filler projects in your portfolio at all.
As an interviewer I've seen people come in with no portfolio at all, and I've seen people
come in with 50 projects that they want to show us.
And I think both of those are a very bad idea.
I fully expect people to bring in a portfolio of some sort.
Even if it's a laptop, a thumb drive or something like that.
Please bring a portfolio to the interview because usually the interviewer is going to
want to talk to you about your projects.
So you can go the digital route and bring a laptop or whatever, or you can just bring
a printed book.
And as far as having more than 10 projects...as an interviewer, at that point, my eyes start
to glaze over no matter how great the projects are.
So really keep it to a small number, please, for the sake of your interviewer, unless they
specifically asked for that many.
Oh, and by 10 projects, I mean 10 kind of campaigns, so many, many pieces, that all
have the same look and feel.
It's fine to do that.
So I mean, generally speaking, you probably could have 50 projects, but they're actually
only 10 projects with, you know, 10 pieces each, five pieces each.
When people bring in more projects than that, it really tends to drag the interview out.
And sometimes we have to just cut them off.
And that's never good.
Number four: Student Projects.
Should you show them or not?
If you've been in the industry a while, I really recommend not showing any student projects
in your portfolio.
This isn't something that ever really bothered me as an interviewer, but all the other interviewers
that I talked to just absolutely hate seeing student work if someone has been out there
for a while.
It's more acceptable if you're just fresh out of college, but even still, you should
have some freelance work under your belt at that point.
And then you can show projects that way.
And some of you might be saying, well, I signed an NDA, (a nondisclosure agreement) when I
started my job, but that can be worked around.
You can actually just create a new logo for that client, call it something else, and then
drop that into your design, and just change everything that could identify them.
And that way you get to show your work, you can still see the design, but it doesn't look
like that company's work.
Number five: Project Order.
As far as the order of your projects goes, I think it's always a good idea to start really
strong...put your very strongest projects at the beginning.
And then, as you go, the third and fourth and fifth projects can be just a little lower
level.
And then at the very end, ramp it back up to your very strongest stuff again, because
you want the interviewer to remember your best stuff, and they're going to remember
the things that are at the beginning or the end.
It's just a good idea to do it that way.
All right, that's my video for this week.
If you liked it, please click on the 'Like' button.
And if I've forgotten a best practice for what to do with your portfolio, please add
that in the comment section below.
And I'll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial.
Thank you!!!