Archi Portfolio Top Tips for Applying to Uni | Do's & Don'ts | Bartlett UCL

i am in no way claiming to be a portfolio expert because i have some complicated feelings about my portfolio [Music] hey there thanks for stopping by my name is glory and i'm a third year architecture student studying at the bartlett school of architecture ucl it sounds so weird to say that because in my previous portfolio video i was still a second year and all of a sudden i'm a third year now anyways this video was suggested by one of my subscribers my previous portfolio video thank you so so much for the lovely messages you guys have left on that video i'm so glad it was helpful to a handful of you and i hope this video will be helpful too and if you haven't seen my previous portfolio video which i talk about my accepted portfolio please click here or is it there i don't know i'll put a link there um so go check it out if you're interested again i need to put a disclaimer and reiterate that i am in no way claiming to be a portfolio expert nor did any architectural school said the things i'm about to say in this video explicitly to me these are just things i kind of picked up along the way as i was applying and had my time in bartlett and architecture school and just throughout my art design architecture journey so hopefully you'll find these tips useful too so in this video first i'll go through some tips for general portfolios first in general and then i will do a separate tips section for physical portfolio and then a digital portfolio depending on which schools you're applying to especially since some schools do require a physical portfolio such as the bartlett where you have to show your original work at the interview [Music] so first of all we have some general tips so number one you want to focus on projects that have very rich backbone which means there's a lot of research and thought that went into the whole process of creating this work and design because these are the projects that gives the tutors an admissions tutor interviewer an insight to who you are and how you work number two think about why you want to put this piece of work in your portfolio what exactly are you trying to communicate through this piece of work to the interviewer or the admissions tutor it should tell the person something about how you are as a person and how you work similar to my previous point that i just mentioned it shouldn't just be like oh this piece looks really nice it looks really cool or it makes it seem like i've got a lot of skills obviously you want to demonstrate that you have skills but it should be a little bit deeper than that and really tell people how you are as a person rather than just very surface level if you know i'm a good art student so what number three you want to present your work to other people i really need to emphasize this tip because i feel like i haven't done this tip enough don't be scared to show your portfolio to other people because it's your chance to get feedback from other people ask your art teachers your art friends art classmates even ask your family and friends who might not be interested in art or have no art background and see how good you are at explaining your work to an audience who might have no knowledge of anything design related and it just gives you a chance to practice your communication skills which you will ultimately need you know if you go into architecture school you need to be very good at communicating your ideas and the thought process behind each piece of work so this will be really good practice and honestly i really should do this more often [Music] so now let's get into the physical portfolio section which is kind of what i did for bartlett and for cambridge um so obviously with a physical portfolio you're going to need to i assume to bring your original work to an interview so that's just what physical portfolio means some people actually bind it all together as a book but because for bartlett they do require the original work so creating it into like a nicely packaged book didn't really make sense to me obviously i brought all of my work over to the interview so tip number one is go through all of your best works first so this tip might seem a bit weird because i know a lot of people say put your best work towards the end but specifically for bartlett i would say put all of your best works to the front please because it's highly likely that you're gonna run out of time when you do the interview with your interviewer which is what happened with me when i did my interview especially because if you're gonna start having a discussion with your interviewer about all of your pieces of work you're gonna go through your best work first to catch your interviewer's eyes right at the very beginning and give time you know for a good discussion because what happened with me when i did my bartlett interview is that i didn't really have enough time to go through some of my strongest work um towards the end but luckily some of my previous work was quite strong too so we had a really good discussion on one of those pieces and it didn't really matter that i didn't have time to discuss that but if i were to do it again i would definitely put the strongest pieces of work to the front so we could have a much more meaningful discussion way earlier compared to just going through like random pieces of work that might not spark an as interesting conversation as some of your more interesting works number two rehearse what you are going to say for each piece of work so obviously you're going to have to present all of your work at the interview so you really don't want to stutter when you present each piece of work and it means that you're also wasting a lot of precious time to have good discussions with the interviewer with about your work therefore i highly recommend you to just rehearse what exactly you're going to say for each piece before you go to the interview just so you can present your work in a much more clearer manner and this also goes back to one of my previous points saying to practice a lot with the people around you number three think about the access so once you figure out the sequence of which work should go first and then after that and then the whole order of it keep in mind that you know some of the work that you put towards the end might not even make it into the interview you might not get to discuss with them which is what happened to me you want to think about the scale of each work and how you're going to present them and show them to the interviewer especially if you have very large scales of work or you have a lot of 3d work so you really need to think about how you're going to bring them to the interview as well which is a problem that i face because i had a lot of 3d works and some of them were really massive they were like half the size of me so i struggled to take them and ultimately in the end i had to really sacrifice not bringing some of the work to the interview because they were just too big um and i guess that's kind of some of the risks and sacrifices you have to make when they require a physical portfolio i could only bring photographs over so keep that in mind also think about like what how you're gonna bring them like a portfolio case or are you going to bring a suitcase or um you know binders just really think it through like play it over in your head before you actually go to the interview and this prevents you kind of last minute panicking before that and realizing you don't have enough binders or cases to actually carry all of your work to the interview so if you think that's true and practice what you're gonna say it just makes the whole process a lot smoother and you don't have to worry about the logistics of the interview on the day you know and you can spend more time thinking about how you're gonna present them [Music] so now let's move on to the digital portfolio section so obviously for the bartlett people um i'm not sure how the admissions process is now i'm not sure if there's going to be a digital portfolio section since obviously um travel restrictions are in place but i think the digital portfolio this section is also applicable to people who are applying to other different uk archie unis or even in the us or i guess other other courses that require a digital portfolio so i hope this will also be helpful number one which is a little bit different to your physical portfolio i would say is put your best works first and last of a digital portfolio usually digital portfolios they give you some restrictions like you can only have x amount of pages x amount of photographs and you know different formats that you have to follow so for the order of a digital portfolio i recommend putting your second best work at the very first so it leaves a good impression on the admissions tutor and it keeps them engaged and interested to look through the rest of your portfolio and then you want to finish your portfolio off of the bang with your best work at the very end of your portfolio so it leaves a good impression on them and like that's going to be the most memorable piece of you that the admissions tutor is going to remember so that's how it lay out the whole order also keep in mind that the standard of your portfolio is going to be dependent on the quality of your least favorite or you know quote-unquote worst piece of work so keep in mind the quality that you want to have with your entire portfolio so really think it through which what the order is and obviously i can't tell you which piece of your work is the best you will have to decide and i think you probably know somewhere inside which piece of best and which piece is i guess the worst but i don't think any piece is the worst but skill set wise i think the quality you can show it but i would say that the one that has the most research and quality time spent on it and all the thought process behind would definitely be my choice of quote unquote best piece of work but obviously the quality of the work like skill set wise needs to be really good too number two don't describe explain the thought process so i emphasized this a lot in my previous architecture portfolio related video but the admissions tutor and interviewers are not stupid so they can see your work with their own eyes so you don't really need to go through the hassle of explaining how you exactly did your piece of work description wise like saying i did this and then i did that and then i did that they're not really interested in hearing that rather focus on your thought process behind the piece of work and the idea behind it and what drove you to create this piece of work and usually i think that's kind of the most interesting part of the work itself too when i have a conversation with some of my architecture friends so yeah number three layout the layout of your portfolio i think do matter to some extent because you are technically applying to a creative course after all so the packaging of your work is an evaluation of your skill set in some way to be honest think about which photographs and which pieces have more importance compared to the other ones and you might want to enlarge them then you want to keep the ones that might not have as much significance towards the side of the larger piece so the person who's looking at your portfolio knows where to look instead of just you know a whole range of um similar sizes photographs and it's very scattered and you don't exactly know where you're supposed to put your eyes and vision at so it could get a little bit messy also i want to say keep the style of your portfolio quite cohesive so people won't be confused about the sudden change of layout or sudden change of style so those are my top tips for creating a top tier i guess a good architecture portfolio for university applications um i hope these tips are really useful again if you want to see the portfolio that i got accepted into bartlett with please go check my previous architecture portfolio related video um i hope this is really interesting for you especially because i know that regarding my portfolio it's everyone's different so you really need to find your own sense of style and the way that you want to let your work out other people's work can only be a point of reference so i hope that these tips are more pinpoint and more useful in the sense that it can be applicable to your own portfolio so let me know if you have any more questions in the comments down below and i'm always really happy to help and thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to watch this video i really appreciate it and see you in the next one bye [Music]

Channel: Glory Kuk

Views: 9,885

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Id: NnEMGz8prmM

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 16 2021