Selling yourself… (not in that way kind of)

In todays class we were given an introduction in portfolio making. Sounds a lot better than selling yourself. This class gave us tasks in groups of two to break down an article and pull the important information off them then present it to the class. My partner today was Adam Finnerty. We decided to split the work each taking one chapter as we had a very short time restriction.

My side of the article explained what most employers would look for in a portfolio. I found this to be a very interesting topic as personally before this I had no idea how to really make a good stand out portfolio. After reading this article and from hearing about the other articles that the rest of the class had to deal with, I found myself with a much greater understanding of how-to layout each page to really highlight my strong points and strong designs. This knowledge also helped me in understanding how to make better final posters to really showcase my work in a more professional manner. At the end of the day that’s it really sowing your work in a professional manner so employers can see that you have the know how to produce something that can really benefit their company.

A quick tip that stuck to me was that nearly all portfolios should be made on InDesign and as this was a software that I was not too familiar with I would like to improve my knowledge on this software over the summer and really try to build up a great portfolio for myself as a designer rather than just for the company’s. I feel like making this portfolio will be a huge task and getting some direction with it is always a benefit to you.

One big point for the portfolio is something that we learned all the way back in week four and that’s about story telling if you really want to showcase a piece of work that you made giving it a sense and a place where it really fits in like an in real life scenario helps give it that extra boost in looking a lot more professional in my eyes and in the eyes of many others. It gives the product meaning and something that makes you that bit more interested into why its there and how this could benefit your work.

Here is a little snippet from that PowerPoint that we made, but don’t be quick to judge as we were under a short time constraint so we could carry on with the rest of the class.