Product Design Subscriber Portfolio Critiques

hey I'm salmon re-design and in the video today I'm critiquing your portfolio's this is a video that you guys have been asking for for a long time and I thought to kick off 2019 I will give you guys what you want and I asked you guys last week to submit portfolios to me so that I can go through them today and give you some friendly critiques and some friendly advice on the portfolios like I said when I asked you guys on Instagram to send me your portfolios I don't think I have any authority to tell you guys what is a good and bad portfolio but I am a recent graduate now in a design consultancy job and I'm finally on the other side of the desk and I'm actually looking at applications for my job as well so I thought that this series could be helpful to sort of take you through my thought process into selecting applications or not so today's video I've got five portfolios for you guys I have got four undergrads submitted to me and then a super exciting portfolio for after that which is a mid-weight designer portfolio which was submitted really helpfully to show you guys that sort of difference that you can expect as you progress through your career as well so let's jump straight into the portfolios and we'll see what we see I'm gonna start off with Rajat let's open up the resume and we can see here just a quick glance it's nicely laid out it's implemented with some hierarchies so we've got the headings here nice and bold I can see straightaway the different segments of the CV here it's interesting to add a picture or not to a CV that's sort of 50/50 camp for that one I personally don't in mine but it's nice to connect with the person who sent it in here so it was quite well black and white photo it is a little bit pixelated on here I don't know if you'll pick this up on the video but yeah maybe a different resolution photo I did say to keep the file size down for the upload so I get that but that does look quite pixelated on there moving down you can see the skills and there are some attempt here at some images but again the icons here are a little bit blurry so it's different export settings like that which reminds me I should probably do a video on export settings for CVS and portfolios I'm gonna add that to the list hold me accountable to that guys moving down as well yeah it's great to show general interest stuff like that so you really connect with the person as well so that's a great thing to have on there so yeah the things that I would change to this portfolio in particular is the image quality and if you're gonna do icons in particular make it really eye-catching make it really stand out because I don't want to read all of this stuff I'd rather see the logo if I'm honest down here because I will understand the logo more so than reading for example Google Sketchup so that's a great CV to start off with let's move on now to the portfolio so the first page is a portfolio view and enter full screen okay so it asks guys to blur around any personal information that you guys didn't want to show online I'm gonna suggest that I will blur this out because this has got your phone number and email address on here so hopefully that doesn't crop up too much like the video otherwise that's a lot of work for me but you might want that on display for the public just in case I wanted to offer you a job but for the purposes of this video for the first video I'm gonna blur this out a little bit later on and it's from now on is that your discretion if you want your personal information online like this don't blur it out but any future videos blur out the contact details if you don't want to get spam and stuff like that later on so we'll go through with the first page it's got some sketching on here as well portfolio 2018-19 okay cool right yeah mm-hmm yep okay okay so at the end okay so that quick sweep through is what I would always do when looking at portfolios you need to really make sure that you impress in that first sweep that's gonna take a second to slide if that the first thing I noticed about this portfolio wasn't the work itself it was a layout this layout is it's it's laid out in spreads which means that it was probably dedicated for a book and now it can't be a book because it's got ten pages it's not divisible by 4 so this portfolio is laid out side by side which means it on a screen I'm only seeing a real letter box type viewport here if that's intentional fine but I wouldn't do that for an online portfolio so first things I would say is sort out the spreads versus pages and you want to export as pages if it's gonna go on on the online like this on a screen like this sorry so I'm looking here and I can see a desk organizer prototype you've got some prototyping down there okay so this is a one project so I can see some hero shots here a coupled with some prototypes down here as well and the thing that I would say for this project is you've got yourself a final finished product here I would really want to see that in context context is absolutely King so it's it's it's nice to see that you've got some progression going on you can see the CAD work and how it comes into the final product here but being in this super white studio where you clipped off the image slightly here and image here and it's not quite white here I'd like to see this in a nice room I'd like to see this where it would go what type of desk is it for what type of person is it for is it for a student is it for a family of five you know things like that I'd like to see in context in a setting and I think that's going to be similar to the sort of things that are going to crop up time time again is it's always important to show context in your shots so this one here the next one is the bamboo design for a luminaire call you're showing it I guess this is CAD stuff here with render it's on it's working you've got some Mac shots in here to show some details cool yeah I like this project it would have been great to see some earlier work as well to show the progression up to this but that's again that's fine oh here it is okay so ideations yep course are there's some really rough thumbnail sketches and then working it up towards a pedestal lamp see it looks like you've got it here in context you've got it in a room here I would say these should be the hero shots when it's in the final room you've sort of smushed these all on to a page together that's a really interesting shot seeing it through the doorway this would have been really nice on the opening page you always want to open with the best hero shot you can for each project so you've got the order the right way around so always open on the hero and then explain how you got there later if you if you open on explaining how you got there the person who is looking at your portfolio isn't gonna know where you're going right so you need to open with the leading hero image which you've done which is cool some more sketches this is just general sketches I guess this work isn't as good as the other work that you've put in in fact this is pretty decent down here but this is tiny so I would work on the layout sort of integrating this better if you wanted to have some sketches in there but yet we'll move on panel project so another thing that I would say for this one is the heading of each page changes with every single page right so I don't know where I'm looking for the next piece of information what I'm looking for in particular is the heading I'm not going to read any of this I never do so this should be ideally in the same place every single time so I know every single page that's where I can see the heading and then I can see the rest of the content down there as well if you look at things like website design you'll know that people read in an F shape that's how they tend to read so I would put or in Western countries they tend to read F shape so putting the title in the top left and then having the subheading and then the rest of the content will mean I always see the heading whenever I need to see a new project so moving on again it's gonna be the same sort of things these are I can tell some less work through projects so you opened up with a really strong one you go through to the end and it is less developed again with the sketching in here some quick thumbnail sketches this page works better than before but this isn't very finalized or realized so this could do with some just push it a little bit further just to get something like this but again context how big is this there's no hands in here so I don't know how big it is or you know show it in context so I can get the whole story behind the image prototyping call for some toys for three to five year olds so this project can be really cool to include some research so how do you know that these toys are appropriate for three to five year olds at what point in their learning progression are they at and why would this sort of thing help maybe a few infographics would help with that okay thank you rajat for that portfolio this is the first time I have done one of these videos guys so I've been talking now for 11 minutes I'm gonna try and cut this down per person but let's go now to Josh and your CV is here cool you've segmented it again not so clear on the definitions of the hierarchy so I'm having to look a bit a little bit more the first thing that I'm drawn to is the color over here I can see how I spend my free time so that's cool that you've highlighted that again to connect with the person the next thing I'm drawn to down here is the bar chart of programs that you're skilled at or intermediate at this is really common for students to put this sort of five stars four stars one star sort of thing in their CV and I can see where you're coming from you want to tell me that you are blender than your the new are at key shop so you want to say that you're better or more comfortable in key shot the difficulty was saying the word skilled is I've now been in the industry for a year and I would say I'm only just starting to understand key shot when I would have done the exact ly the same thing here while I was a student but the level of learning is gonna be different right so I would suggest and not to put the word skilled or intermediate but put something if you really want to show that you're more comfortable in what's up one thing than the other then I would say comfortable or beginning or something like that because the person that is looking at the portfolio will be the one judging how skills you are not you I don't mean for that to sound too harsh it's that's just the way that this thing works the other thing that I've noticed here is you've got on a three CV which is interesting and I can see--we don't you wanted to add a lot of text on here but notice I haven't read any of this text I've looked at the infographics and I've looked maybe at the headings sure so I would say number one there's too much text on here number two the reason why I would suggest a CV should be a four is because companies will print them off and pass them around so you need to make sure that your CV is printable and it's principal and will look good on the lowest quality setting printer paper possible because companies won't want to waste money on printing hundreds of portfolios and CVS out every day so you need to make sure that it's legible and works well on an a4 sheet of paper because that's how they get passed around the office from department to department so I would say work on condensing it all down into one page CV okay moving on to the portfolio and we'll go to view and to full screen so we've got some interesting stuff going on here we've got some typography stuff going on with the signature and logo yeah cool okay so November update so it's like an issue of a magazine I like it we'll move on forward project so we've got a Content page here on two three four and then we'll go through okay yeah mm-hmm okay okay so that's the end so going through the thing that stuck out this time again the projects sort of took a backseat its these blank pages I thought that my computer was frozen I thought it wasn't loading so I actually it made me scroll slower than what I would have normally done because I thought I had to wait for the computer so you might have tricked me there by giving blank screens I guess this is to show the difference the differentiation in projects to go from one to the other I would I would say you don't need those that's it's a little bit confusing I can tell that this is the contents page and you go straight into Google this project that you you've thought of here so I would say ditch the blank pages and use these hero shops as your differentiators differentiators in the projects so moving forward again you've got renders again you've got your hero shop I would move this shot here on the desk to be the hero maybe a nice full bleed one going on here it's it's not the best shot to show the form so maybe this angle is quite good but have it on a desk have it maybe blow it off into the distance just to show context and then as I move forward I'm not reading any of this that's fine you've got renders how someone would use it showing scale that's good moving on again you shown prototypes yeah so the rendering could do with some work I like this where you show one two three this is how it works so you plug it in and then it pulls off that's quite a good way of doing it okay so that's that's good and again this is you start from the hero and then work your way back personal projects so this is a fire extinguisher I can tell by the signal here but I can't tell by this this looks like maybe it's a snow machine you've gone for in context shot and really blurred the background so I can tell it's sort of on fire but you know I can I can see you've tried there this is a bit weird that it's doing a little bit of a step just in terms of the layout and then an oxygen mask at the end okay I'm confused by this paid you so you modeled an oxygen mask okay so it's one and two okay that's I get it it's just so different that this one has got sort of three pages one two three and then this one just has one tagged on at the end maybe these could be two separate projects I don't know okay so Amazon target again you've got okay so straight away I was going to think they're not really in context but I can tell from the name and from this that I can get the context from that so I'll let you off okay yeah so you're saying that you want to gamify throwing stuff away yeah I get it I wasn't quite sure what this was because I thought this is obviously not your work so where's it's coming from but you're using it as an example that's cool yep here we go here's the context shot this would have sold it so much better and I like the cardboard mock-up cool next main so what have we got here I don't get what it's for oh okay so it's excrete okay this again this would have been perfect for showing the context of what it's about so it's a desk tidy with a screen cleaner I like the idea but you should always show the hero is first because otherwise I'm not going to know what it's about until I get to the end like I mentioned before this is going to be a theme that keeps cropping up I'm going to keep saying it but cool stuff anyway deliver ooh okay this is an interesting project I actually even looking at this page you know I really enjoy this project or I did a project similar to this at university where you pick a company and then design products for that company to fit within their brand guidelines and already I can see delivery they're always on their bikes and you've done a bike tool that fits within delivery guidelines straight from this image that's all I need to know cool I like it you've got some different concepts going on yeah so this project I would say is your strongest so far in your portfolio I think you should have led with this one because you should lead with a great project and finish on a great project as well without having too many full of projects in the middle so what was your first project your first project was the mouse yeah and I don't think the mouse the realisation of the mouse was quite as nice as this one image this this one image has sold this project to me already so we got to the end of the portfolio and great work and I think you're onto a winner well done to Josh this is a long video guys I didn't know how long this was going to take next we've got Francesco we'll open up the sorry that was the portfolio we want their resume cool another image here let's see so we've got a nice hierarchy going on and again skills it's tricky because this tells me that you're almost the world leader class of rhinoceros and you might be I don't know you might be but putting it on like this I guess it wants to show that you're better rhinoceros and premier also what would be the order of this why is it if it's not enough of basically it's not in skill level how come it's in this order I don't know these things are always tricky for me so I would I would recommend not putting them in unless you're absolutely hell-bent on it but cool yeah the rest of it hierarchy cause some white space up here this a little bit strange how we've got tiny gap here big gap here when we've got so much white space in the middle that would be nicely balanced if you change that a little bit but the rest is cool I like this what I was gonna say I like this box because it houses all of your contact information but then it also houses your skills which I would say is more relevant to this section so I'm not quite sure about what's going on and why you've separated that from the page but cool oh I shouldn't have scrolled so much because that's going to mean I have to blur all that out super different difficult Lee anyway cool let's move on to the portfolio and view fullscreen okay cool let's see okay yeah I've got a sketch yeah cool okay cool so I can tell that you enjoy sketching I think I've seen some of your stuff on Instagram before so call the thing that I think would help this is if they belonged to projects so I can tell here that you're sketching okay 23 minutes so I can tell here that you're sketching individual things which is cool to look at but it'd be cool to sort of build out a story of why you've you've done this why this is designed what it helps same with this because the portfolio is all about telling the story right so that's what I would say for this this is where you start to show your larger project so sculpt oh call I think this is something to do with 3d printing isn't it I don't know something to do with modeling which I think the renders are nice I think you know I just need some more context for that cuz I'm not quite sure what this is I'm not going to read the materials okay so these yeah so I guess this is like a handheld tool and uh you really forced me to read that text and I didn't want to read that text cool I like these hero shots again context would be amazing it's an LED lamp in comes in different colors cool gufo cardboard this is really cool here and it's a VR call this project is really nice I like the the model here I'm just gonna comment as well I like the heading in the in the same place each time I mentioned that earlier on this one I think you should have led with and I can see your you're decent rendering as well so you know maybe lead with those projects instead cool okay yeah so graphic design you're showing here as well yeah so I think the main takeaway for this portfolio is context so I know exactly what each project is for is that are just a nice pretty image like you've got here cool who have we got next thank you to Francesco who we got next we're going to do common next and Connor sent through this portfolio here industrial design student at Georgia Tech cool so this is kind of like a CV and portfolio all in one I guess so view fullscreen so we'll go through here yeah cool cool yep okay so this is a great example I think of showing context showing progression and telling a story all in one I didn't even look at the projects too much but you can see here that straight away you've got model and a finished product a finished product further back which is a weird way to D but it's kind of artistic and I like it in this instance this was the image that I was this was the page that I was super interested in because you've got a sketch that you've done here a really rough sketch and then you've taken it into CAD and then you've built the model and it's literally it's kind of like the evolution of man you know that image where they were all getting slightly bigger that's exactly what this image is we've got an Ikea vibe going on here but it's telling you how it goes together that's cool yet context this image I was drawn to it straight away on a page full of this sort of same color this image with the pop of blue I think should have gone as your main image just to show it in context you have a human connection which is really important in a portfolio okay so something for feet cool we've got a scan here I'm not too sure what's going on here remove before flight remove before flight some cool sketches going on here some cool modeling going on but I'm still not quite short of projects for so something to do with feet I'm a sucker for not reading things but yeah no context in there I'm not gonna read it sounding on joints using passes I know okay so you're inspired by the past arts and crafts move and call sketches of hats I think you're highlighting in green things you like but this is like in-between two sketches so maybe you're saying this and this I don't know not sure but you've got modeling and you can see the progression moving through yeah cool like that okay again another nice shot here I'm not quite sure what the things what the what the bags and suffer for until we start to see models and stuff are they are these banks for anything in particular or just nice bags that's fine if it's nice bags cool okay and we've finished thank you very much Connor okay so okay so thank you to all of you guys who have sent in your portfolios and now I know it's a super long video but we've got one more from David and David is super helpful because he has sent in his CV in portfolio as a mid-weight designer so this is completely different to that style of portfolios that you've seen so far you can see here using the logos and using the companies that he's worked at instead of telling me the the stuff by words he showed the logos so I just want to I'm not gonna comment so much on on David's because he knows what he's doing obviously so so let's go to into full screen so we've got a nice minimal opening here we'll go through some renders and in the email that he sent to me with this portfolio included he said this was from two years ago so this is already out of date this is all of his work from two years ago different companies and obviously he's progressed a lot more since then as well so again you can see already you've got so many more you've got so many concept shots and in context shots altogether you've got some research and some analysis in there as well so yeah this is a super-long portfolio 65 pages and again I'm not want to say it's too long or too short but it's a long portfolio but filled with super nice stuff so that's fine cool and he did say that there was a nice closing page at the end but that was full of his contact details so he took all those out as well so you can see the difference in the fidelity of the projects you can see the difference in the context shops you can see the difference in the modeling and you can just tell that more time went into this as well not just of putting the portfolio together but more time for the projects more time spanned for more projects as well and you can really see these these hero shots that sell it you know they're super nice so I thought it was really nice of Dave to send this through and I'm really grateful I can share it with you guys so thank you so much for sharing this middleweight designer portfolio and I think I've been talking for long enough now guys that I should probably stop talking if you made it to the end of this video this is probably going to be my longest video ever if you made it to the end thank you and if you want to submit your CV in portfolio you can find out how to do that on my website on my contact page I really hope that this has been helpful for you guys it's been really interesting for me to go through portfolios and give you some help as well so yeah if you enjoyed this video don't forget to like it if you learnt anything in this video don't forget to let me know down in the comments if you want to find videos like this in the future don't forget to subscribe and hit that Bell button and I will see you guys in the next video bye your paper because that's how they get passed around the office from Dept to pop dude

Channel: Sam Does Design

Views: 34,789

Keywords: design portfolio, product design, product design portfolio, portfolio review, portfolio, design, graphic design portfolio, ux design, ux design portfolio, product design portfolio review, industrial design, graphic design, design portfolio examples, ux design portfolio review, product designer, portfolio design, ux design portfolio reviews, design career, design school, designer, portfolio for product design, graphic design portfolio interview

Id: s49paiT0J-M

Length: 29min 52sec (1792 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 08 2019