Portfolio Tips – Reviewing YOUR Design Work – Part 1

what's up everyone I'm Matthew and Sina and today I'm joined by a very special guest patrulla over on titus you've seen around the show before and today we're gonna review your guys's portfolio so we're gonna break down your portfolio's give you guys feedback so that you can go out there and crush it so just in case you don't know who I am I'm Matthew and Cena I'm gonna create a professional now for about 15 years been a creative director at blind for the past eight years and prior to that I've been freelancing for about seven years so I've been on both sides of the table both as someone who's trying to get a job and get work as well as hiring staff and freelancers and patrulla I've been a graphic designer and an educator for over 25 years and I have really designed business in Los Angeles and I've been teaching at Art Center College of Design and my role there is to help students get ready for what's going to be expected of them both creatively and professionally and I'm really happy that matt's asked me to come today because one of the courses I teach us is specifically on developing your portfolio before we dig into the particular portfolios I just wanted to give you guys a framework of how we're going to be looking at your portfolios and how we're going to be measuring them so for me I'm particularly looking for three specific things one is the first impression so when I land on your site do I know right away what it is that you do and is it presented in a professional way number two is it consistent do you have at least three to five examples of consistently good work and is it presented again professionally and solid is there clarity and context so when I dig into each of your projects do I know what the project is about what the challenges and goals were and what your particular role on this was what was your POV on this right because I'm mostly on the side of hiring people I make my decisions right away so when I look at portfolios I usually have about like 10 or 15 seconds before I decide whether or not I want to spend more time on that portfolio or just move on because usually just like this episode we get hundreds of entries for a particular position and then patrulla I don't know I know you work at Art Center and you help students work on their portfolios are there anything else that you look for in terms of ways that you can tag arrays or break down somebody's portfolio I think what I'm looking for is to make sure that when somebody like Matt is seeing the portfolio he's really aware of your uniqueness and that you're giving him a context in which to take a look at your work it's not just here's my work it's here some of my goals these are the things I like to do so he can actually start placing you and one more another part of his company I think without that context what can happen is the portfolio is just viewed in a decorative visual way where they are actually hiring the person that has the ideas and understanding of the problem so I want to I'm gonna be giving a lot of input as to how to present things beyond just the imagery that will appeal to either someone like Matthew in a design consultancy or for a recruitment manager at a company like Nike so what are they looking for that's different from something that Matt would be looking for right well I think we could start digging into the portfolios so first up we have Harsha Lani you know I'm gonna butcher all of your names I'm gonna apologize for that ahead of time his goal is to get freelance work and a little about um hi I am harsh Jelani from India I am paper and identity and packaging designer and I'm working as a freelancer for the past one year my portfolio is a mix of personal and client work so let's jump in here so first impressions well my first impression is Behance is really good at the visuals so I'm just having a little bit of difficulty understanding whether harsh is looking for work internationally whether he's looking for work specifically in India whether he's looking to work in smaller with smaller businesses or larger businesses there's a lot of questions about context Behance gives you an opportunity here's the about me porn but he's pretty much just saying the same the same thing because and I would really want to know I'm interested in form design that would be interesting cuz he's doing packaging I'm interested specifically in beverage industry which seems like what he's doing apparel beverage industry because I'm looking to know what his expertise is and I'm just not positive yet how to place him my first impression visuals very nice and clean nice and colorful so already it's a delight to look at so if we were to click into one of these this is for your branding and packaging so we land on this thing and we see a couple of the examples here it looks like packaging mock-ups this would be helpful Matthew if he let me know what this was yeah well here we go from the Himalayas your was born as a search of pure Indian flavors blended with energy and health so that's about the product but it's not about what you've worked on on this project so as patrulla has been saying there's no context for this job at all for this project so it's all visuals it's pure visuals and if I'm looking specifically for a packaging designer then it's maybe this will work okay but the fact that you know it doesn't say what was the brief for the project what were the challenges and the goals and then what was your unique solution on this thing the kind of thing I would want to hear is is it a rebrand does this project exist and he's rebranding it mm-hmm what is he trying to do that's differentiating it from other kinds of of project products in in the let's say in the supermarket aisles it's a mess right right so I don't see it I see how it is the same or different or maybe and the other thing that is a little confusing to me it's his Cola and lime mm-hmm and I don't know that that's pure Indian flavors with energy and health I don't I don't quite understand the relationship of that statement to Cola and lime so there's a little bit of a disconnect here for me in regards to again the context he is giving me and also on that I always like to know whether this is a real project or not he stated that he has been freelancing is this a freelance project or is this one of the projects that he's done independently let me ask you why do you think that that's important from your POV because doing work for clients is much more challenging doing work for yourself so if he actually produced this for a real client I would be really impressed right if he's producing this for himself I'm impressed but not quite as much right because this kind of you know this is this is a good project but it's really impressive if he actually if this thing's out on the market right so I think for me I don't really care if it's a real project or not but because I have no context in terms of what you actually designed what challenges did you solve so whether that's fictitious or not like I need to know that as somebody who's hiring a designer because all design is is problem-solving its visual communication and problem-solving so because we only have the visuals here I have no idea if you've actually solved the problem or not so the context that patrulla was talking about what we normally call like a competitive audit if this is packaging for a beverage product on the shelf how does this stand out was that one of the challenges that needs to stand out there on the shelf look does it need to communicate a particular thing I don't know any of these things because there's no context on the website so regardless if it's a real client project or not and client projects yes can be a lot more difficult all I want to know is just how you think and it's not represented here let's look at another project you I'm kind of drawn to this coffee thing I love coffee so neuro coffee so again he's I think he's just writing about the product but not necessarily about his role in the project again beautiful images I love seeing the contextual stuff these overhead shots love seeing the coffee just cut in between here because it just helps give the context of where this product might be placed and kind of like the production value or level of clientele that this might attract because this definitely would attract me as being a an avid coffee drinker so I want to give my impression of harsh okay just by what I'm seeing here I believe that he's a very competent designer I believe that he has a really high skill level in regards to attention to detail that's showing up in both the way that his mock-ups look and how he's very very careful about these things i I'm really confident about his design skills and his ability to understand this particular market I like the coffee the beverage so if I had a project like that I would really feel like he would be a great designer to work with but I also want more information because I'm gonna be working with him giving him a brief he's gonna be responding I wish there was something that showed me a little bit more process so I could see how he works something that helps me know how he researches I believe that by the quality of the work that I see here he does this right I just need to see it right I was gonna say it looks professionally presented right so that's that's well done but we as somebody who might hire him I have no idea how this person works and that's scary because now it looks like a risk yes and people hire the least risky option right and so when I look at this it looks beautiful but I might be taking a risk because I don't know how you work if I were to give you the real creative brief from a client I have no idea how your thought process is how you might go about solving that challenge to get to a design solution here that's well thought out I'm happy that you brought that out when I'm talking to students about putting a portfolio together I say okay the problem to solve is and they all think it's about something else and I say the problem to solve is to instill trust because hiring a designer is a frightening thing there's so much we don't know and especially when it comes to us from another country we like the work we're just not sure about one thing or another the time difference I mean there's just so many things if harsh let me know that he was working outside of of India too and since and he's done freelance work let's say in the US all the sudden I've got some more trust I know reddit he's ok with time differences and he can handle that so just your job is to instill trust right if I were to land on your site as a potential employer if I'm looking for somebody to do branding and packaging I would stay and invest and dig deeper to find out more but because I don't have more of that contextual information I would probably bouncer put you a little bit lower on my priority list on who I might hire versus somebody who's very good at describing their work describing the context in which I'm viewing the work in I would prioritize those people over over harsh but in terms of technical it's all there ok shall we move on let's do it right now we'll look at the portfolio of a Rohit Raj this person's goal is to get freelance work and synopsis is I am a self-taught graphic designer that works on freelance projects currently I work on branding logo design projects and now I'm looking to go more deep as a brand strategist to solve problems better thank you for context yes so now we know how to evaluate this portfolio right so just by that it's telling me that I'm I will find that here correct right that's your expectations expectation has been set now it has to follow through and it also tells me that Rho heat wants to be a little bit higher up in the food chain okay so he might not be the designer is just doing all the work he's the designer that I can depend on as more of a senior designer or an art director versus just a designer that's where I think I'm placing him now right okay so now that that's our expectations first impressions when we land on this thing I mean I think the visuals are pretty simple they're straightforward I have a very high expectation of you Rho Heat when you see projects in a specific order do you always click on the first one first my assumption is that the top left is the best project that's the premium real estate right there okay so I'm assuming that this person has put their best project in the top left wherever this exists okay yeah so I'm gonna click here first removing communication barrier open-book forget this woman who's reading a six-tier book and look so there's contact hey let's read this okay the mission open book is an English teaching agency in Japan it's looking forward to influencing people to learn English and remove communication barriers among them so Medellin spelling punctuation like little things in there if that's the goal so I just need to say spelling errors will eliminate you immediately as a candidate that's it should we move on what why is that why is that because as a creative director I need to trust you that you can look at your own work and you can spell check your own work because we've got we're communication designers so we're dealing with copy all the time and I can't have that nagging feeling that you're going to put client work out into the world that has spelling errors in it there are so many ways easy ways to spellcheck this is a problem right now the issue here is the word barrier is spelled correctly right so this wouldn't necessarily be picked up by a spellcheck but it would be picked up in let's say Microsoft Word as a grammar error right or grammerly any of these things where they're looking at grammar yeah and I just I cannot say this enough creative directors need you to have this stuff handled and if you find that this is a difficult thing for you you've got to have someone who helps you that you can trust because we need to trust you right okay so so it's all about trust it's all about trust and you don't want these little things to add up and erode the trust right so service is brand identity brand strategy research on target audience this is great I love the context outcome after understanding the inside of the agency we developed the audience personas that targeted the people interested in learning a second language and also gave a brand refresh to increase brand loyalty okay I want to stop and say that there's a we here and I don't know who we are is this a team project if so what is his role in the team right so again I love the context but you've got to make sure the context is clear right okay so the impact after the launch of the fresh identity more than 100 people visited the website and around 20 to 25 people registered for the class anyone yay so I love this because what even though I haven't really seen much of the design yet I am very clear on what the challenge was and what your impact was based off of this project and that's more important than the actual form of the design right it's more about the function its function first has to work before it can be beautiful and you know so when I read this stuff it gives me context knowing that you've thought through a problem and that everything I will look at is moving towards accomplishing that goal so important keywords so they're highlighting some of the key words English friendly publishing world peace of this kind of like a brainstorm the process move board and sketches can we go into any of those it's I don't think so not and yeah well kind of okay because it especially with the sketches I'm just having a hard time see yeah I think if you're gonna throw them in there show them right don't make it so small just a zoom in on one or a couple in there so that we might see it or talk about that yeah and I think the mood board is slightly disconnected with the key words I'd like to actually see the key words and the mood board because those are things that supposedly influence one another and that will help me to see them you want to connect the ideas like if this is his brainstorm right here how do the words influence the thought process of what's coming out visually right so sketches are taken out open books helps English language to various size industries and schools in Japan it's beneficial to have knowledge in a global language to remove communication barrier and help them work or move it again I feel like this is a little bit of a missed opportunity here because it feels like it's more talking about the project in a big way instead of now that we're in it now that we've gone down further on the page what was your thought process in connecting the words that brainstorm at the challenge into what you've highlighted here what I would expect to see here mm-hmm is that something has been selected and why because this is a detail and so I would want to know about that detail but I do like that he's at least doing this if there was a way that he could even circle the things on the mood board that influenced the sketches that then becomes here okay hey open book so I'm assuming that's like the cover and the logo now he's talking more about the process it took me more than two weeks to research and create a customer persona talk to a bunch of employers and instead of asking whether they're interested in learning English we ask them whether they're interested in learning a second language and if yes what's stopping them so man I thought this is gonna be a little bit more about the I don't know I'm a little confused when I read this stuff yeah for example I think it could be that I would want you to tell me what these forms mean I make assumptions about what these forms mean right but and it might seem obvious to you because you're the creator but having you be able to articulate why you're using blue and red what the star represents why there are two forms there right and you know this the way that the the the Hat is working it feels a little awkward I think visually there's there's some design issues with the logo I'm assuming this is the logo that was developed here but aside from that I think again yeah giving some context as to how did we arrive at this mark the thing that I really like that he's done is he's put a human hand in here he's giving me some sense of scale a lot of times especially with dimensional objects books packaging um I I don't know if you know I know what this is because it's a pen but but sometimes I'll see things and I have no idea if that thing's this big or this small so scale especially when you're dealing with virtual kinds of presentations is crucial it is that scale important because of the fidelity of the mark in different contexts Azure what is the I like scale because these things are for humans and I'd like to see humans interacting with them and I also judge graphic design success by the relative size of things you know with that without that hand this book could be tiny and that might be why the logo is so large the logo seems quite large here and it's still a little confusing as to what's inside that book as a book cover right I'm actually struggling with it right okay let's keep going so I don't know what this is it looks like it's a quote from Nelson Mandela but I don't have no context like what is what are we looking at here and that's you can see the difference here of scale we have no idea if that's the size of a business card I'm assuming actually this card you are in terms of the scale I would say that's probably a page in that book I see but I don't know that right what I would recommend for this designer is that make the information he's got on here slightly more condensed but then add how the design did that how his choices correct the design choices he made then are consistent with his findings as a person who does research right that's a really good point and I think that was the thing I wasn't able to articulate or earlier why I was confused because he's giving you contextual information and he's telling you here's the problem but he's not telling you how he arrived at the solution on the other side so he's just telling this part and I think that's just a little bit of a missed opportunity but we kind of know why because he's trying to really emphasize his brand strategy right aspect right something but even with brand strategy you're recommending solutions right a designer he's the designer and he's the brand strategist I think I'm not sure because he's got that word we write so maybe he on this project didn't do the design mm-hmm maybe he just did the brand strategy and someone else did the design right okay so that's the end of this project so I want to say that I think the context could use work but it's helpful at least you know going from your initial submission into this website knowing that you want to do brand strategy it helps me frame and understand the work from a very particular lens now that one we got in I think they're just a bunch of spelling things a little bit of connecting the dots in terms of what you thought of and how you've come up with a unique solution those are the things that are lacking right now let's do one of the last projects I'm always interested in what they determine is last so this one is branding for a Daily Show for a Daily Show or The Daily Show okay so I made a trip tip date owed a tip sorry date tip on what does it say rs square media so now when we were just crazy although the Gothic there's no context at all for this woman brand-new for today so that's it that's the whole project so what someone will do when they see this is they will evaluate it decoratively so I'm I'm now taking a look at well you know I'm looking at the kerning I'm looking at at the the forms and the relationship with the forms like I'm just I'm looking at it from a pure visual point of view I don't like those type those fonts together mm-hmm I don't think this is working very well at all as a billboard because it's hard to read even when we can we have it so clearly here I can't imagine being a car flying by right there and actually understanding anything whatsoever about this project so it's a great point so when we were coming in here we were looking at it with a particular frame of mind and now that there's no context or story now we revert back to well does it look pretty does it look good are we just looking at aesthetically and you pointed out there's some contrast issues in here even even with us parked on this I had a hard time reading r-square underscore media so that's a very difficult typeface if that's going to be it's not a typeface to use on a billboard or know the environmental signage so Rho Heat I think there's a there's a bit of work to do you are a good designer and it's just a matter of figuring out more about communicating the things you want people to understand both about you as a designer and the strategy I'm really appreciative that you showed us your process but I want you to show it to us better and take us through it what happened happens here is that you're you've got to in essence substitute for being sitting next to somebody and showing them that work you wouldn't just go here Matt here take a look and you'd bring it right you need to guide you then through the guidance is super important connect the dots for us have a sense of empathy that we are afraid we don't know you we are afraid to hire somebody we don't know it help us by by getting this organized because I think you do terrific work all right let's move on to the next person so let's look at the portfolio of Kevin Lawrence Kevin Lawrence's goal is to get a job I'm assuming that's an in-house position and let's read about him I'm a designer from Scotland my career has been mostly as an in-house designer and I hope to get a job at an agency or web agency my work is a mixture of in-house freelance and personal projects my work is mainly web design however a I have a strong background in print design - it sounds like this person is on a kind of transition in a transition have done some development and then some design work as well so just by the context that Kevin's given us mm-hmm I know that this work has probably been more difficult work because he's dealing with clients especially in-house so I'm looking at this now really differently than if he was just graduating from school and he had all these self initiated projects so you know this is it's it's not even comparable to some of the ones that we had seen so first impressions I mean I like the big bold images here these are helpful nice little snappy animation on these things so this is fun let's click on this top left because it I always assume that this is the favorite team J physique founder of team Zeke Jo Parrish approached me several years ago to work on his first website this initial website shortly grew out its Houston he started to expand his business as the business grew I was tasked with creating team J physique online as well as showcasing the new online coaches that had joined the team this new website required a full members area and that clients and paid members could access remotely over the course of six months I worked very closely with Jo to help reach his vision to become Scotland's number one online body composition consultancy team Wow and then the process this is kind of cool to outline this discovery research prototype design build test and then and went live and his the clients highlighted here the services branding and web design so in terms of context this is awesome this is great at first glance it gives me a peek into what the challenge was even feels a little personal I I get the sense that you know Jo Parrish for whatever reason or maybe just the way that it's written it feels very personal so I'm kind of drawn in a little bit to understand okay now show me how did you solve this this challenge as we go here so I'm assuming this is the logo the mark for it again probably need a little context maybe on one of these pages on the top left it could say logo design colors and type it just looks like it's all a design system and this is the website okay so now he's starting to show off some of the features for the website one of the biggest challenges in website design is is the quality of the content that you're working with so what influence you had in that whether maybe you were helping them ride it or where you are working with a writer either one is fine I just I always like to know and I'm assuming this is a wireframe so again a little context because I like the overview at the very top where it gives me the broad overview of what the project is but as we scroll down something you need to still guide the viewer on the thought process at the evolution on where you started and where you're getting to or give context for what each of these pieces are because I'm gonna start inventing my own story about what these things are and you may or may not like it if you could even highlight two features this website is going to do this because of this reason that we found it or the app unlike the website the app does this because I I really like to know how you've leveraged the ability of these different media types to convey the brand helps me know that you understand the attributes as you go from social media to app development to signage these are all different media types and you understanding the affordances of that media type gives me a lot of confidence in you right and I think to that point for me I'm just more interested in if I look at the process upfront here it's a discovery research prototype so these things makes me feel like you had spent some time understanding the user the goals of the business and how that aligns into what the visual result is here at the end both as a website and identity so the thing that I don't know is how did you arrive at the solution because what I get is the overview here and then straight to the solution this is just all solution but it doesn't tell me what were some of the decisions that you have made you get here because there were a couple things that you highlighted let's see the goal was to showcase the new online coaches he had that joined the team and required some kind of login area for full members and clients so I mean I have to go back up there to understand that maybe this that it's this area but we don't know right it would be nice if it was just highlighted here captions just small caption mall captions to highlight the coaches we use this type of directed photography here and we're showing the logo in context of the trainer right so those are little things that if you just add these little tweaks it will help me as I'm scrolling down because by the time I'm all the way down at the bottom of the page I forgot what I'm looking at so just reminding me every point let's take a look at him talking about himself the Disciplinary designer with nine years of experience digital design marketing I get geeky about creative stuff we'll jump at the chance to scuba dive and in another life I would travel the world practicing jiu-jitsu I really like this it's concise it's friendly if you could add Kevin in this that you're really looking forward to taking the understanding that you've gathered from working in house to be able to work when outside consultancies if there could be something that tells me that you now are really excited about broadening your base of client that might entice me more to understand oh okay this guy is really ready and there are certain things that you're gonna learn from an in-house process that I think are going to be crucial to those brand consultancies you're going to have a view of projects and process internally that we don't so you got to help us know the value of you beyond just a designer well because his goal is to go work in how some right to go at an agency or web agency but when he goes from in-house to an agency I mean he's gonna have some insight about how to get projects approved what some of the processes are that kind of thing right yeah I think this is a good about statement but if he wants that goal some that needs to be clear so you're saying that he should have some essence of what his goal is rather than just talking about him and the present tense in the past maybe this is okay for the website because he might still want to consider some in-house work but if he did a cover letter that gives somebody then access to the site in that cover letter he can be only specific about what his goals are somehow I need to know that mm-hmm let's take another look at her another project okay so I'm gonna click on this flesh up I just clicked on it because it was bright and colorful and it had an interesting markup flash up when I arrived at CLG they had begun using a loyalty card for several years giving customers discounts and deals at the various venues I suggested that this loyalty system should be revised as to so as to keep up to date with the advances in mobile technology I suggested that the company switch over to an app in order to appear more modern while retaining the loyalty point system for customers okay go stop there okay empathy mm-hmm I have no idea what CLG is right I guess that's the client the client is CLG but I think I don't know what it is CLG is a it can be super simple right I flash up doesn't really tell me anything CLG like there no context personally if I'm in a hurry I will click off of this project right sorry because it's like if you are a designer lacking empathy you're not going to be able to do your job very well okay browsing events access to special offers and booking a table or function or some of the key elements when designing and developing the app for CLG user experience and functionality were considered at very early stages and throughout the build process I work closely with development a development firm to progress design ideas and functionality in line with what was achievable from a developer standpoint it's the same thing that process is outlined here you know one little tip that I would say Kevin when you're doing these overviews it could be good to just break it down by overview challenge in goal just for for us like for me I'm reading it out loud for the sake of the audience but in real life I would not read this much you know I just need the bullet points and I kind of assess very visually so I would be scrolling through this very quickly because I wouldn't spend that much time to actually read this stuff okay so now we're on sketches some brand identity I always like to know why I appreciate that you're telling me all these formulas for your colors but I find that much less informative than why those colors were chosen right and the relationship of those colors to CLG whatever CLG is correct I I'm the same way again just context just dig in a little bit deeper like why were these chosen and what do they mean for the brand so a little bit of story goes a long way otherwise might as well not show this stuff yeah and then some wireframes so you scan a QR code and then you gain points I guess then these are screens of the still not produced to have any idea what CLG is I have no idea what CLG is so without knowing what CLG is or does I can't evaluate this at all right okay sorry yeah I mean the visuals are the visuals are very nice as we're getting through this like I like these mock-ups and these webpages and the colors from a visual standpoint we revert to that right because it's all we can evaluate it on otherwise I have no way of understanding like you said if one of the things that designers believe is that this work speaks for itself and I I don't believe that's the case at all I think that because you know it so well you think it speaks for itself but it took you a really long time to understand it and you had to understand it deeply to be able to design with it so I think that's a kind of a cop-out I hear it a lot from young designers like I just want the visuals up people just the the work speaks for itself no it does not you speaking for your work is really important to me if I'm gonna hire you and if Matt's gonna hire you he needs you to be able to explain your work really clearly to either us the team or outside as clients he has to have enough confidence that he can take you on a client meeting and that you could actually explain your work and even though the clients might understand it because they understand their company they need to know why the designer was so important in the development of this you could it's not it's kind of like you gotta prove your worth you have to have a fluency about the ability to speak about the creative process and its importance no I think that's really good because as we continue down this path where there are more and more designers out there who are very competent technically right we're getting there were the tools are becoming easier to make beautiful things the difference between you and someone else is the value you might bring to a particular client or a company that you work for so I think what patrulla said there is like what did you bring to the table that might be helpful to this particular situation and the more you can highlight that the more you can tell that story as you're as you guys are building your portfolio pieces and case studies is gonna be more helpful for me so if I'm hiring you're evaluating you I might know that what value you might bring to me okay another thing for you Kevin is you're calling your company armored digital which is fine and what I assume is that you've got a company so my company or met or blind or the future would be hiring armored digital not you because he's kind of saying I'm a I'm a design firm mm-hmm so it's a little awkward if I'm gonna then if you want to actually come and work with Matt as an employee mm-hmm because he's gonna he would be hiring Kevin Lawrence not Armour digital so there's a little does that make sense yeah yeah so your perception of him is that this is a he's put his he's put a commitment that he is now a studio and I would be hiring a studio right and I don't know that that's what he's doing because he said his goals were different than that to that point your perception is that it feels like he has he's committed to video to to his own firm which is called armor digital mm-hm and I would not think he was up for being hired so the way to fix that is that this would say Kevin Lawrence mm-hmm web web specialist you know he can even give himself a title so you know I'm on the fence on that thing I don't necessarily fully agree with that I don't mind if people go buy an aka but the perception which I share with you is that this is a studio and that it's not an individual so it doesn't feel like you're right it's it's like we're competing now right we're at the same level instead of hiring a potential staff person here you know it's so there is a disconnect there but I don't mind if somebody uses an aka where it's not there at their name um I want to comment on photo I'm not criticizing Kevin looks I'd like to make sure that people understand the perception of the photos what do you think about Kevin what information does that photograph of Kevin give you he's a guy that likes to smile and he's he seems super pleasant and nice to work with yeah he does and he's got a he's in a work environment he seems early eager smart for some reason he looks like he would really listen to me and care what I had to say and he looks like he's a bit more mature he said he's nine years of experience so that helps me to just the idea of some life experience under his belt I'm really positive like I'm feeling very much like he's a peer of mine okay let's go to contact cuz that's something you were very much wanting to you you had come easy to contact yeah that was what's been easy to contact yeah his emails right here and then he has a form I don't think that you need both but that's alright so when I when I land on here if I assume that the work is good I can see the work is great we did a little bit of about I think this is one area where we can dig in a little bit deeper like you were saying like what are some of his goals and he could really expand here because in the footer actually there's more information about them in the footer than there is on his about me page right so these are all favorite food favorite place inspired by Krishna to your coffee coffee all the way by the way being inspired by Christo is terrific because it tells me that you actually care about the business of design and I really care that good designers care about the business of design so and you know a level of self-improvement I think that was a good move so assuming I go through all of this and now I'm ready to contact Kevin pretty clear to me shows all the places where I can find him if I wanted to dig in deeper so this is pretty straightforward yeah I don't I don't care for these forms I want to make it as easy for people to contact you as possible so I think putting up an email is great I I think also he could give me a resume and that resume if it's that I'm linked to I might want a phone number on there just to have more ability to quickly get in touch I don't like to fill out forms and send them at all I don't I don't know I'd be really curious what the statistics are about how many people actually use this they appear a lot in portfolio site templates as an option but I this is it yeah I'm kind of the same way I would rather have an email address to contact somebody directly and then continue the conversation they're the only reason I would see the need for a contact form is maybe you do different things and you have different dropdowns here to say I'm getting in touch for and then there's a subject that might help sort it on the backend but that's usually for people who is like if you have a business which assume are more digital is is that you need a way to sort and vet clients but if you're doing that as a freelancer it kind of doesn't make sense unless you're just getting emails like 20 potential leads a day and then you need some way to pre-vet the clients and that's when you would put up a contact form some information maybe some like minimum level of the engagement but that's only when you're crazy busy and you need to choose some people away and put a wall up and I wouldn't do it Kevin really good work let's let's highlight in recap so some of the things me and patrulla were debating whether or not you should use your real name or a fictitious name for a studio regardless it I I'm okay with using an aka but the thing is the perception is that you're a studio so it doesn't seem like I could hire you to be an in-house staff person so that's number one that I feel like is going against your goal right now number two as we look at each of your project breakdowns just giving us a little bit more of a guided step by step as we're scrolling down through these because by the time we get to the bottom we forgot what was at the top so just using captions or just breaking up your explanation and guiding us through each step that you took to get to the final result and then lastly I think we had some talk about the About section in your footer and your about page I think if you're able to go a little bit more deep on your about page and just tell me a little bit more of your goals or what you're aspiring to do I think this is a perfect opportunity to do that here but we're all really good work all right everyone so we've reviewed a ton of portfolios and we've given you advice all around so this is the time of the episode where we're going to do a bit of a recap so that it's very crystal clear to you guys how you can apply these to your portfolio so that you can go out there and crush it in the real world I think tip number one context context context context is king because it frames the viewers eye whether this is a potential employer or somebody who is considering hiring you it gives them a sense of what they're looking at and why some of you have missed opportunities to give these moments of context and other view have done very well but I think context is very important so that we know how to evaluate what we're looking at so we're really asking for written statements that either can be in the beginning of a project or in the beginning and then captioning other images in the project who is it for where does it exist what is the nature of the business and why should we care I would also add you could put in the context how we should look at that from your perspective as to what you think this represents about you the best I'd like you to look at my experimental typography or I used my imagery in in this to show how I am both a designer and an illustrator so next thing is consistency I think consistency is very important so when we land on your website is there at least three to five examples that shows consistent professional work because if it's all over a place maybe you might have one really good piece in the top-left and then we go to the bottom right your very last piece and it's not that good you might as well just edit that thing out it's nice to have a couple of really solid consistent examples so that me as the employer we can develop trust in you as a potential person to hire on our team I want to encourage you if you don't have let's say six complete finished projects maybe you can put a section that is projects and that has three or four and then put a separate section on your website that says experiments or studies and in there you can put these things that are fairly unfinished or more spontaneous and will appreciate them as these unfinished pieces and experiments so the next thing I think some of you are under estimating the power of sequence and I think sequence is very important from the moment somebody gets your email that you send out to them when they land on your site to going into your projects and then digging out to see how the story of the project unfolds to somebody else so it's very important to have a clear context upfront an overview and as you dig deeper into any particular project you have to hold the person's hand to guide them through your thought process how you identified the problem the users and how you solve that in your design solution you have empathy for us when you're using acronyms or things that you might be familiar with we don't know we don't know what XYZ is so help us out right right just make it clear next thing I think patrulla landed on this a couple of times I think it's a nice opportunity with your portfolio's in your work to share your unique POV I think it's important because there are so many designers out there looking for a work why should I hire you over someone else what is the unique thing that you're gonna bring to the work and is that clear to me now when you make that unique point of view it may be something that is more important to me than it might be to Matthew but at least we'll understand how to place you within the context of our different design offices and I'm not talking style I'm really talking a unique approach to the work that you're doing and you're a unique combination of skills that you'll be able to bring to the project I heard a couple of things I heard that you want somebody to have a wide range of skills but then also somebody to have a unique POV because I'm reading it a different way than maybe the way that you're describing it so when I think of unique POV which I also think is important when you have your own voice in the work I'll give you an example if we had Jonah shoot an event and then we have Ricky our other editor videographer shoot the same event their footage are probably gonna look very different in terms of what they found valuable from that particular event so that's literally their POV from their camera their lens and how they choose to document that and we can craft very different stories based off at the same exact breech or the same exact content right so if an example here is I'm going to rebrand this lock system like what is your POV on that what is your take and how did you connect the dots that's interesting from your POV that another designer might not have done and I think that's why it's really important to share that thought process and and that POV on things I don't know that were that we're thinking that differently right okay another tip here that I want to highlight for you all is that it's very important to have a clear goal so as you're sending your portfolio's out if you have a clear goal of what you want to be doing and your portfolio is representative of that then you know how to talk about the work in a very clear and direct way so that me as the employer on the other side who has limited time to evaluate potential candidates I know that I could take this square peg and put it in the square hole because that's how I'm thinking I'm looking for a designer who's very skilled at typography so I need to see that in the work right so it just needs to be very clear when you present your work and what it is that you want to do and what you're good at that that needs to be represented across your portfolio you have the opportunity to talk about your goals in the about me statement or in a Behance form you can just put it as the description on the bottom its it shouldn't be sort of vague and general it should be really specific I'm I'm really interested in working with cultural institutions doing brand identity development and exhibition design so be really clear about what you want so we know how this person is a specialist yeh it's what I want right be very clear about your specialization whether that's in a niche market or a specialization in skills either way make it clear to us so that we could place you and you'll improve your chances of getting work if you're looking for a job job versus just some freelance work there should be something on your side that links to a resume and that resume can be part of the website itself or it could be a link to a PDF file the PDF file works really well because people sometimes print those out and stack them up and evaluate them as a group I think a resume is extremely important it should be well-written extremely like meticulous in spelling and grammar so I think it's important I like to see where people have gone to school I'd like to see some of the experiences they've had even if those experiences aren't related to design I like to see what you're you declare your digital expertise at if you have some analog or craft skills if you if you speak more than one language and what some of the interests are you that you have that really are relevant to the way you approach design I have a completely different take I don't believe in resumes and I almost rarely look at resumes when I hire people but I think it's industry specific so if you're going to let's say at Google I believe resumes are probably pretty well what happens at companies that are different than then then blind or the future is that your work is looked at by the human resources of group okay so a resume is super important if your resume doesn't pass the portfolio isn't actually given to the creative director or director at all so you have to separate audiences if you're going in-house it's really important that you are really looking at the HR manager what they're looking for it's different than what a creative director would be looking for right and you've got to have both audiences in mind if you're interested in that kind of a comment right and it will be very clear for you if there's a prompt out there for a request for a particular type of employee or freelancer they will tell you what the requirements are so you just have to read the requirements very clearly to show what it is you need to provide as evidence that you can do the job so sometimes it's as little as a portfolio sometimes it's more like a cover letter resume and portfolio because you have to go through those layers did you like today's episode and do you want more of help us out by leaving a timestamp comment below and identify some of the things that you guys were liking from this particular episode were there any tips or particular reviews that you like this helps us shape a future content so we deliver more value to you guys if you need extra help developing your portfolio and making it stand out in the market check out the resources I left in the description below and as always don't forget to Like comment and subscribe it really helps us out we'll see you guys in the future [Music]

Channel: The Futur Academy

Views: 600,480

Keywords: futur academy, the futur, disrupt design education, chris do, design challenge, design tutorial, graphic design, how to design, diy design, futur brand, how to portfolio, how to make the best portfolio, what to include in your portfolio, how to make a good portfolio, what should i have in my portfolio?, graphic design portfolio, portfolio designer review, portfolio review, portfolio, critique, designer portfolio, design portfolio, how to get a design job, web design

Id: VFAkgNpAVSo

Length: 54min 17sec (3257 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2019