Portfoli-Ohhhh..!

Week 8:

I bought my first portfolio as a hopeful high school junior in order to attend an portfolio review to be accepted in to art school. I chocked it full of cartoons and whatever else I thought might be classified as "art" and heading down to New York with my dad. Oh, if I had only known then what I know now about portfolios! Until just recently I thought that a portfolio was more than a mishmash of work thrown into a file-like contraption. I had never imagined or known a portfolio to be anything more because I had never spent any time investigating the topic.  Fortunately, IDD 480 has changed all that.  I am not in the midst of learning about and creating my own portfolio...one digital and one in print.

I have been sketching a few design ideas for my print portfolio (well, the case at least) and I think that I am going to go with a cereal box theme.  I will design a cereal box with a graphic design theme.  I am thinking of calling it "Creative Crunch" and putting things like "creativity" and "attention to detail" under the nutrition facts.  

I need to do some optimizing of my work for my online portfolio as well as for a PDF of some of my work to send out to potential employers.  I have my resume all made and in PDF format, but I still have to add on these samples of my work as a way to hopefully entice someone to hire me!  I'm planning on going out to buy a box that I can use as my portfolio and decoupage my cereal box design to in the next week or so.  This is getting exciting!

Resu-ME?

Week 7:

I first heard about something called a resume from my mother. She had recently ended one job and printed out resumes to bring on job interviews as she searched for another. I can still feel the texture of the thick ivory colored paper she printed hers on and feeling like it would be a million years before I would have to create a resume of my own.

It's hard to believe that I am at the point where I need to create a resume. Yet, here I am. For IDD 480 we are required to create a resume...Not just any resume, but the resume of a graphic designer. After reading Building Design Portfolios I have gained some valuable information on creating a design resume. It excites me to know that a graphic designer's resume can have design aspects. I liked that the book showed two resumes by the same person. One was very plain and the other very much reflective of the individuals skills as a designer. I'm just so happy that my resume doesn't have to be words alone and that it can have aspects of design as well!

The reading also had a lot of great insight into the interview process and job hunt. It also gave me some great ideas for promotional material to leave behind with employers. I am thinking of creating a "leave-behind" that will be a flip book of some of my work. On one side of the flip book with be my work and when it's turned over it will have a little stick figure doing something...I haven't decided what yet.

Overall, I am pretty excited to have the opportunity to "wrap up", in some sense, my work from the past four years and present it to the real world. I'm eager to get out there and flex my creative muscle!

The Portfolio-Work Relationship: W.A.W.A.

Week 6:

The W.A.W.A. (pronounced wah-wah) or "What Are We About" conversation is one that two individuals have about the status of their relationship. Although the conversation typically relates to romantic relationships, for the sake of IDD, I will be using it to help myself better understand the relationship of an artist's portfolio to their work that they put in it.

Building Design Portfolios had a lot of wonderful things to say about portfolios and presenting work. I hadn't really considered the idea of the way my work would be presented to possible employers outside of the work itself prior to reading for this week. Having read, it surprises me that I hadn't considered the portfolio itself as part of the presentation for my work. I have a portfolio at home, which I thought was pretty sophisticated at one point. I considered it's black leather textured plastic exterior pretty darn classy when I first purchased it back in high school. I now realize that I'm going to have to step it up a little if I want to impress possible employers.

I am actually very excited to know that I can be creative in all aspects of my portfolio, not just in my work itself! It makes me happy to know that I can not only try to impress future employers with my work, but also with the way it is presented. This book also had some great tips about what type of work to display in my portfolio. One of the many helpful tips I have learned in IDD480 is that there needs to be a design process. A design cannot simply be made in one draft...rather, sketches and comps should be created and the design itself should be reworked until it is the best version of itself. Having learned this, I have begun sketching before designing and I plan to include these sketched in my portfolio because BDP notes more than once the importance of showing the potential employer the design process.