My Senior Graphic Design Portfolio (With Tips!)

guys welcome and welcome back to my channel if you're new here hi i'm dina i'm a graphic designer digital artist and content creator and i make videos about art design and my life as a creative so a little over two years ago i made a youtube video showcasing my graphic design portfolio when i was a sophomore in college and i had told myself that i'd film another one when it came around my senior year and i graduated eight months ago so this video is long overdue so here i am finally filming this i may be eight months late but you know what better late than never so since i graduated during covet times we didn't get to do a physical portfolio book like we normally would so i'll be sharing a pdf flipbook version instead i'll also be sharing some tips and things to consider when creating your own portfolio so i hope that you will find some of that information useful before we dive into my portfolio i'd like to say a quick thank you to today's video sponsor y stamp which is what i use for my email signature ystamp is the leading online email signature generator that's used by professionals worldwide another great thing about ystamp is that it's free to use here's how to get started with creating your own email signature first visit ystamp.com and start filling out the info of things like your name title website and email address the next tab is to add all of your social profiles so people know where to easily find you with the click of a button there's a lot of social profiles you can add here but make sure not to go overboard i think around four or five is a good amount to have at most the template tab has a handful of options that make it easy for you to choose how you want things to be laid out once you have that head over to the design tab here you can really customize your signature details to cater to your brand you can change things like the fonts colors shapes sizing label styles and other design elements lastly the apps tab allows you to enhance your signature even more if you wanted to add some extra features or call to action here there's so many options to choose from so feel free to explore around and pick one that you want to add to your signature once all that's said and done you can probably show off your new email signature click the done button and create your free profile if you have not already your email signature should easily integrate to your preferred email platform with the simple click of a button i also made a few more different signature versions here but it's that simple so be sure to sign up to y stamp to create your own email signature today with the link in the description anyways let's get into it so starting off with the cover it's pretty straightforward it just has my logo my name and then kind of what i do so who i am and what i do and then it's covered in this muted pastel blue color which is my brand color looking back at it now i probably would have added the date 2020 somewhere on the cover as well given that um throughout the next few years i'll continue to update my portfolio so it'll just be like a good way to keep track of things so when you open the book you'll see that the first spread is an introduction about me along the left page i have a brief paragraph of who i am and what i do along with the headshot image to complement on the right i thought incorporating some playful hand lettering elements to my headshot image was a nice touch to share more of my personality and other interests which leads me to my first tip your introduction spread is your chance to really showcase your personality and differentiate yourself through your copy and artistic style so create one that you feel represents you the best also side note for many of these projects i'll also be showcasing how i display the same projects on different platforms such as my personal portfolio website and behance you want to diversify where and how you showcase your projects on different platforms because you never know who could see it and what opportunities could come your way okay let's dive into the projects this first project was for my visual identity systems class and we had to create a completely new made up brand from scratch for projects with this kind of creative liberty i typically lean towards designing a brand that i would personally use and be a consumer of as for the visual approach the way i decided to introduce it was through a full bleed spread with that i have elements in the foreground and background to create this push-pull effect which i thought would be more visually intriguing and feel more immersive for the viewer i chose to create a roman mythology themed supplement brand that sells protein bars protein powder trail mix and vitamin pills on other pages i'm pulling back by laying out multiple images where some bleed out from one edge and you'll see this as one of the themes throughout my portfolio i think that adding this sort of depth is a great way to strengthen your projects and have them visually stand out even more you'll see that when i introduce a new project in my portfolio book i have this consistent treatment of displaying the enlarged project number underneath the project's name i've also indicated where the project number and page number are with the dashed line that bleeds off the edge of the page further project information is laid out on one long line found at the bottom of the left pages when creating your portfolio aim to establish a theme through layout typography and other design elements a consistent theme and clean layout helps to communicate structure and also displays professionalism so the way that i decided to introduce this project on behance was as a one long page scroll which is another interesting way to present a project on behance i like to focus on the breakdown of the creative process a little bit more versus on my portfolio website i break up the images in order to allow for more breathing rooms to give more context about the project info and just present more of the polished images instead the second project in my portfolio is a passion project this passion project is a social awareness campaign i created called this is america where i use a mix of digital imaging and photography to produce these works this series was meant to raise awareness on systematic racism discrimination and prejudice against minorities especially in america if you have passion projects you've done on your own time and you're really proud of it i think it's important to show it off it demonstrates how you're really passionate about your work beyond just academic purposes this also unexpectedly went viral across social media and taught me so many valuable lessons if you're able to share statistics or numbers or some sort of result from your project i highly recommend including it this shows that you're thinking beyond just the visual aesthetic and being more intentional about measuring its impact so when i first completed this project i knew that i wanted to add it to my portfolio but i felt like i didn't have enough content to show i wanted to build it out to feel even more like a campaign so by adding context to the social awareness aspect i was able to create these banners and then like mock it up as a gif and kind of showing how it would look as a billboard to add onto that i also decided to film a youtube video and just kind of sit down and talk about my experience on how the series went viral and kind of the key takeaways that i learned people are intrigued with stories and so infusing some form of storytelling in your work is a valuable skill set to have train yourself to see those gaps and opportunities on how you could continue improving the project even if it's quote unquote done ask yourself how could i create more depth to this project and add some form of storytelling behind it for this third project we had to do a rebrand for my professional preparation class i really enjoy the aspects of branding and so this project was very exciting for me you should focus on showcasing projects you really love are proud of and want to do more of remember quality over quantity i also decided to be extra and film a youtube video of my creative process for this rebrand and i thought it would be an interesting way to kind of show people a look inside of my process and how i brainstorm from a to z i personally love to see other people's creative processes because it makes me grow a deep appreciation for what they do for one two you never know what you can learn and what new insights you could gain on behance you'll see that i've laid out this rebrand project as a one scroller page as well similarly to my first project the great thing about behance is that you can also link your videos on there too so of course i had to plug in my youtube video the one on my website is presented in almost the same way but just without the breakdown [Music] so last year i decided to challenge myself to create something every single day and i was able to do that for a couple of months but there was a phase in that challenge where i was very into hand lettering and illustration specifically on the ipad through the procreate app and so i decided to compile some of my favorite pieces from that challenge this next one was another passion project dedicated to the lgbtq plus community i created in honor of pride month last june [Music] okay i think i've shown enough passion projects this next project was one i did for my publication design class where we had to recreate book covers i chose to redesign the hunger games trilogy book series i wanted to try to challenge myself by thinking outside the box and seeing how i could make these covers engaging and interactive something i try to keep in mind is to put yourself in the shoes of the person who's going to be viewing your work and create things in a way that gets the viewer excited and intrigued since the main character of this book katniss is an archer the book spine is a reflection of her quiver and arrow which also functions as a storage area to slip the bookmark into when you lay out the three covers together each of them connect like a puzzle and show the entire cover as one completed piece this one's definitely different than most of my other projects in my portfolio but i really enjoyed the hands-on aspect of this all right introducing another rebrand project this one was for my visual identity systems class where i rebranded a bowling slash arcade place called round one i went for a really geometric and isometric theme for this and you'll see that throughout the different applications here [Music] [Laughter] and last but not least project 8 is dedicated to ui mobile app design this was for my professional preparation class and we were tasked to create a project that's currently not present in our portfolio this definitely challenged me in the sense that i knew i had to create a project that was way beyond my comfort zone or like any of the previous projects i've done challenge yourself with projects that's out of your comfort zone it's a great way to see what you could come up with and push you to find creative solutions that you normally don't explore much of which overall will make you a better designer and it's ironic that this has literally become my top performing project on behance and it's led to me getting a handful of inquiries about potential clients interested in hiring me for their mobile app so that's just to reiterate on my tip earlier i think that was tip number two on how it's beneficial to expand when you upload your projects and diversify your platforms i always recommend putting more of your work online because that increases the chances of it being seen by more people which equals more opportunities this was also around the time that i started to get into the art of meditating so that was kind of the inspiration behind this meditation app the apple raw is very like illustration heavy and focused especially with the onboarding screens and i also built out some other screens so designing like the home page and how to navigate um along with like a journaling tab and a personal profile and i finished it out with some website landing pages as well as you close the book the back has my social medias just really small in the corner and that kind of concludes my portfolio so when your portfolio is ready to email to potential employers and clients i always recommend proofreading it and having an email signature it might seem like a little thing but trust me it's so important to have especially if you're trying to come off as a creative professional or land that job it'll show that you're serious about what you do so be sure to sign up to ystamp to create your own email signature today with the link in the description and that concludes today's video i hope that by walking you through my portfolio you were able to gain some kind of valuable insight learn something new or you just simply enjoyed watching let me know if you have any questions comments or concerns other than that thank you so much for watching and i will see you in the next one peace

Channel: Dena Nguyen

Views: 909,798

Keywords: dena nguyen, graphic design student, graphic designer, design student, art, art student, designer life, designer student, graphic design artist, graphic design is my life, artist, portfolio, business of design, design business, senior graphic design portfolio, graphic design portfolio, design portfolio, student portfolio, design portolio tips, graphic design tips, portfolio tips, student design portfolio, senior portfolio, senior design portfolio, portfolio design, designer

Id: A22TQsr7Aew

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021