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How Do I Present My Graphic Design Portfolio?
A strong graphic design portfolio is important for professional advancement. It serves as both a calling card and a gateway—a visual illustration of your accomplishments so far and a metaphor for where you expect to be in the future. Learn graphic design from Blue Sky Graphics online graphic design course and we will help you create a strong portfolio after you complete the course.
To ensure that the portfolio stands out from the ever-growing crowd, it’s critical to understand what to add and what to leave out. Here’s how to build a collection of graphic design work that can astound your customers.
Include the finer points
When deciding what to put in your graphic design portfolio, the solution is straightforward: just the finest work.
When developing a portfolio, it’s critical to ensure that each example shines and demonstrates a range of talents and abilities. This ensures that if you’re just starting out with your profession, your portfolio can be brief and sweet, consisting of a single page of truly outstanding ventures that make you proud. Avoid forcing visitors to sift through hundreds of prototypes in order to select the really great material.
Bear in mind, though, that not all of the examples may be thrilling—a well-designed business card or landing page, for example, might not be the most exciting commodity, but they demonstrate to a prospective customer the breadth of your work. Additionally, not all sample must be work for which you were compensated; feel free to include a poster you produced for a friend’s passion project or an infographic you made in your own time, just be careful to mark them as self-initiated versus paying.
Avoid dubious function.
In terms of what you can exclude: all programmes for which you were dissatisfied with the end result. Every graphic designer will sometimes fight a war with a customer to keep them comfortable and in line with their vision. This is not a cause for alarm. However, when it comes to your portfolio, you should only include your finest work. You might be tempted to have a narrative about why you disliked the hue of hot pink the customer ordered or the font you couldn’t convince them to change—do not do so. Allow the job to speak for itself. Justifying client demands would only make you seem petty and angry, and can turn off a client.
Don’t Repeat
Additionally, avoid using multiple instances of the same type piece. If you’ve produced fifty logos, choose the five highest. Perhaps have a logo for a rustic brewery and another for an upscale refined clothes boutique. Again, the most significant takeaways for portfolio guests should be the capability and range. Exclude instances where you served as part of a team and were not directly involved with the implementation of the final design. Although it might be an excellent design, if anyone else illustrated it and a customer requests anything identical, you would be unable to meet that requirement.
Consider the presentation format.
Conduct research on the platform that will house the portfolio. Perhaps the most appropriate forum for you would be one that helps you to build a profile and upload your samples. Whichever choice you chose, ensure that the page is capable of not only hosting a highly visual site but also portrays the work in an aesthetically pleasing manner. While a gallery-style page with numerous small entries can function well for logo designs, if you’re a photographer, your images should be fullscreen to be effective. Numerous portfolio platforms provide designs and extensions for photographers that provide lightbox galleries. If you operate in a variety of types or formats, organise your work into easily navigable mini-portfolios.
Narrate a novel
Consider the portfolio as a narrative. It can have a plot arc with a beginning, centre, and conclusion, with the best work acting as bookends at the beginning and end. If you start with the positive things, a customer will have a negative experience if the job deteriorates or becomes worse when they click through. In the other side, saving the best work for last could result in a busy recruiting manager or art director failing to locate the examples you need. Captions and definitions should be succinct and direct. Allow your job to talk for itself—clients will email you with any concerns. Any writing in your portfolio should be genuine and self-assured.
If you want to have longer storylines, such as an About or Bio, keep them focused on the subject at hand and steer clear of rambling thoughts. Clients do not need to know anything about you in order to make a recruiting decision. Ascertain that your contact information is easily accessible, comprehensive, and current.
Engage in mutual interaction
It’s important to keep in mind that your portfolio is just one component of your overall online presence as a graphic designer. Have the social networking handles as well. Social networking may be an excellent tool for developing the brand and including the human aspect that may persuade a customer to recruit you. Develop social networking streams that are connected to and associate with your portfolio—for example, retweet a web poster you created for an event or use your Instagram feed to showcase works in progress, rejected draughts, and even errors. Apps like Hyperlapse or other time-lapse programmes condense and amuse the workflow on a massive project. To demonstrate the finished product, provide a link to your portfolio.
Bear in mind that it is alive!
A portfolio is not a static entity. Indeed, it’s as though it’s a breathing thing that grows along with you. One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is tightening the portfolio, deleting superfluous content and replacing it with more appropriate, up-to-date information. It should be updated often as your abilities develop and your attention shifts.
When your expertise grows, change your portfolio to represent the type of work you want to pursue. If you genuinely enjoy creating landing pages and can do so on a daily basis, making them the focal point in your portfolio, positioning yourself as the professional an art director or recruiting manager cannot ignore for their next work.
