hey everyone welcome back to the channel my name is ashley and i'm an architect
in Ontario and in this video we're gonna be talking about architecture portfolios
by the end of the video you're gonna have six tips
for your architectural portfolio i'm also going to talk about the differences between
an academic portfolio and a professional portfolio so if you're interested let's get started
give you some context and background on my experience with portfolios itself so i've worked
on several academic portfolios because i did my undergrad at Ryerson and i also did my master's
at UBC and i was briefly at Carleton university too and i've been accepted to southern California,
Florida university in the states and a few other schools as well so i've had a bit of experience
with working on portfolios and so the tips on this video is a collection of my personal experience
on working on portfolios and also my experience of what i've learned throughout the years from
school from other professors and my mentors as well so i collected that information into this
video and the tips i provide too is also my experience in reviewing portfolios as i was
a part of the admission committee being on the other side reviewing portfolios and that
really opened my perspective to a lot of new things and what to take into consideration
what are the important things to focus on and so on so let's get started with the tips
number one know your audience now this is important before you get started on your portfolio
is to understand who your audience is and what you're applying for there are typically two types
of portfolios there's the academic portfolio and the professional portfolio and sometimes
you may have actually other types of portfolios if you're applying for a specific scholarship
or a competition and you need to show some of your breadth of work those are all different types of
portfolios so it's important to understand who your audience is so that you can better tailor
that portfolio so for example i recommend if you're applying for schools to do research on
that particular school understand what the school is all about and what the program is known for so
you can better tailor to that audience and to what they're specifically looking for
and the same thing goes for a professional portfolio so if you are applying for
let's say a designer role you would make sure that your portfolio emphasizes and illustrates
all the characteristics and all of the skills that you have that would benefit the employer for that
particular position and that would show to the employer that you are a perfect fit for that job
so you want to make sure that your portfolio isn't just a portfolio that you would use for everything
you want to make sure that it's tailored for that audience and while you're looking into
the audience i would also collect information now collecting information is important because every
type of school for example has a different set of requirements that they want for your portfolio so
for example they may have size restrictions to the portfolio if you are submitting a hard copy
if it is digital they would indicate that they're only accepting digital versus a hard copy and
those two versions are different so when you're working out and planning out your portfolio you
want to keep in mind if it's a digital portfolio or if it's a hard copy because there's going to be
some choices that you'll be making that will better fit that format so it's important to
collect that information understand how many pages how many projects you can include in your
portfolio and so that you can better tailor to that audience into that specific job description
or program that you're applying to so make sure to do some research and collect that information
number two build a storyline now this is important because you don't want your portfolio to just be
a collection of projects you want it to have a storyline you want to build a storyline starting
from your cover page all the way till the end of the portfolio you don't want it to be and
i would recommend to avoid this to have just a collection of projects that illustrate your
first year work your second year and in that particular order i don't recommend that you
need to have a bit of a storyline that helps to bring the portfolio together and what i recommend
when i was putting together my portfolio and i got this recommendation from a professor as well and
it really helped me and it changed my perspective of how i think about portfolios was looking at for
example magazines so every magazine issue for example would reflect a particular theme in a
particular storyline and then all the articles within that would support that
theme or that particular subject of that issue of that magazine and so all the articles and all
the projects that they're featuring or interviews and so on support that theme of that perform not
portfolio but magazine so you would want to make sure that your portfolio has a similar storyline
and thought process as well so starting from the cover page all the way through the portfolio so
each project that you display in your portfolio would fall under this big picture so make sure you
have that big picture and you lay out that story so one of the things that i found really helpful
when i'm laying out storyboards or presentations and i want to have a storyline to them
is i do a bit of a comic strip and i have thumbnails and i start to plan out my story
and i may have you know sub stories within that big picture story so you can start to
lay it out and start to build that storyline that you want to convey with your projects and
i would also recommend to pick projects that fall under that big picture that storyline
and most portfolios if you are doing them from academic there is a particular limit on the
number of projects you don't want to overload the reviewer with so many projects you want to
showcase your best projects and the ones that fit best within the storyline so you may need to cut
most likely cut out a lot of the projects that don't fit that big picture and that storyline
that you're trying to convey and of course depending on the program and depending on
your audience you may want to show more variety of the different types of projects that you do
that kind of build off of your story or if you're applying to something that's very specific and
or that program has a specific item that you want to target toward then you can build your
portfolio around that too so these are the type of things that i would take into consideration
when you are starting to look at your portfolio and laying out the projects and your storyline
number three be clear and concise less is more in this case less is more and it's important to
note that we are not graphic designers i think this is something that i've noticed a lot in a
lot of portfolios that i've reviewed as well is that we tend to over do it with graphics i used
to do this as well and i've learned throughout the years that that's not the way to go and
it's important to note that a i am not a graphic designer as much as i'd like to think i am but i'm
not um so it's important to keep your graphics simple use one typeface one character type
in your portfolio and don't overdo it with text you know whoever is reviewing your portfolio they
don't have a lot of time because remember they're reviewing maybe thousands of portfolios hundreds
for sure of portfolios at a time so they're not going to have time to read all the texts
for that particular project in your portfolio so it's important to communicate with diagrams
and drawings and those diagrams and drawings should show that story for that particular
project and build and communicate your ideas and your thoughts and that storyline that you
have in that project and of course similar to how you lay out your portfolio overall it has a
storyline each project that you also illustrate in that storyline would also have a story of itself
so make sure you build a story and you have diagrams and illustrations that illustrate that
and communicate those ideas and so i wouldn't rely on text text is just there in case you
know someone does want to go ahead and read it but don't rely on text have the project and the images
speak for itself thing i would do is use colour sparingly this is something i see done often is
there's an overload of colour and graphics now i'd like to use my colour sparingly to emphasize
particular elements within the storyline or in that sequence of diagrams i want to specifically
emphasize an action or emphasize a process that's happening but i don't overload everything with a
lot of colour and then you don't want to overwhelm the reader when they first open
your portfolio and they see so much colour and it's just a lot to take in it's hard for them to
follow and they don't know where to start so if you're using colour sparingly you're using it to
specifically emphasize particular things it's a lot easier to flow and go through your portfolio
and it's less overwhelming as well and then not only that but it also makes things a lot more
clear and more concise as well in your portfolio i also recommend doing edit make sure you edit
edit edit edit out what's unnecessary and a lot of times i understand that that can be difficult
because sometimes and i this has happened to me is i'll spend a few hours working on a specific
drawing that i think will communicate well the ideas of the project but then when i lay it out
i noticed that it's not quite what i wanted it wasn't quite communicating and sometimes
it could be hard to scrap that out because you spent so much time in it but i would recommend
to really be mindful and even if you do spend time on something but if it doesn't fit and it doesn't
work i would recommend to scrap it out because editing and how you edit it is really important
so edit out any repetitive information edit out projects that don't specifically fit the overall
storyline and edit any drawings that also don't fit within the storyline of the project as well
number four embrace white space now this was a life-changing tip that i received when i was
in architecture school and it's so simple yet it didn't hit me until someone actually brought it up
to me and they just said why are you not embracing white space and you design white space in a way
as well and that got me thinking that's such a great point because you got to remember and this
is something that came to me afterwards is that the projects and illustrations need to breathe
on the page and if you're overwhelming the pages with so much content and information
and drawings it's a really hard for the reviewer on the other side reviewing your portfolio to
follow and the drawings are not breathing you're not really giving those drawings
and the information on the page any justice as well because you got to remember when you are
designing those pages to also look back and see how everything flows as one spread
because a lot of times we're so focused on those details of those particular illustrations
that we're not really seeing the overall big picture and this goes back to tip number two
of how you build that story line so it becomes important to do the same and to make sure to
design the white space of that particular page and this was something that it sounds so simple again
and it just wasn't resonating with me until someone brought it up and it's very important
because that's what i think probably the tip that changed my portfolios the most
was how to embrace that white space and how to design it as well so when you are reviewing your
page and you're designing the white space make sure to also evaluate if all the illustrations
and everything that you're showing on that page is conveying the information that you want to convey
in terms of the ideas are they successfully communicating those ideas and concepts
and so this is important when you are looking at the overall spread and designing that white space
but embrace it don't overload your pages with too much information because you need to allow
those drawings to breathe so make sure to really design and take into consideration white space
number five show your process this is probably the other most life-changing tip that i received when
i was putting together my portfolios is to really illustrate your process what do i mean by that
well you don't just want to show the end result of where you got with that particular building so yes
you want to have a rendering but you just don't want to have a rendering some floor plans some
sections that basically document the building so you don't want to just document the building
you want to illustrate your process how you built that concept how the building got to
the way it did so you may have illustrations illustrating that so you want to illustrate your
process if you know if your process was really heavy on model building if it's very heavy on
sections you know you would show that process from how you start from zero to let's say 10.
so make sure you show that process the sequence of that process of how the building came to be
illustrate and talk about your concept again start to build that storyline for that project
everyone loves a storyline everyone even when you're working in the professional world
every building when it has a story line it communicates and connects with people a lot more
than if it didn't so simply documenting the project is not enough you need to look at
how you can show and illustrate the project of course but also how you tie a story with it and
how you illustrate your process as well and this is very important especially when you're putting
together a portfolio for academics so if you're looking to do your masters or your undergrad
this is probably the one the most important tip that you should take into consideration
number six be yourself this is important you need to be yourself and without knowing you are being
yourself by making particular decisions about your portfolio now what i don't recommend is to hire
someone to do your portfolio and this may sound shocking because i didn't know this was happening
when i was in school but yes there are people that do hire people to do
their portfolios and i do not i do not recommend you to do that it may seem like a shortcut now
because it's a lot easier to hire someone but that is not being yourself and you're selling yourself
not as yourself because when someone else is doing your portfolio they're making particular
decisions for you and if you do get accepted into the program you're getting accepted on false
pretences because that's not truly who you are those weren't really the decisions and your ideas
and so what i've seen in the past is people get into the program it's not their portfolio yay yeah
it may look great but then what happens is they're not able to keep up with the workload in school
and they struggle they really struggle to get through the program because they got in on false
pretences they got in because they weren't being themselves and so what ends up happening is they
really struggle it's important to be yourself when you are putting together your portfolio it's
better in my eyes to be yourself and if you don't get in at least you were honest and transparent
that was who you are versus getting into a program with someone else's portfolio or someone else's
ideas and then getting into the program and then you're not able to keep up with the work
and so on so i don't recommend that i haven't seen anyone that has done well by going through
that path do not take those kind of shortcuts it is not recommended and it's not wise to do so so
those were the six tips that i would recommend if you're putting together your portfolio
i'm planning to do more videos on portfolios because this is only scratching the surface
i have a lot more insight that i want to share with you another principles that you should
take into consideration when you are putting together your portfolio so if that's something
that's interesting to you let me know down in the comments down below if you would like to see more
on portfolios and thank you so much for watching i'll see you on the next video until then bye