On Design Portfolios

I was talking about design portfolios with our supremely talented intern Shawna a few months ago, and the subject of format came up. Her graduation was coming up in June 2009, and she was already thinking about the job hunt, yet another sign of how sharp she is.

For those of you reading who aren’t in the design field, a portfolio is how designers get hired (or don’t). It’s typically a collection of the 10-15 pieces or projects you’ve done that you think best represent your skills, and the work that you most want to do more of.

In the olden days, portfolios were pretty standardized: a large, zippered, overpriced 18×24 black briefcase containing clear plastic sleeves. Into these sleeves, you’d carefully place your best copies of your best work. Lots of people I know wore white gloves when assembling these “books” to ensure a complete absence of sweaty fingerprints or (gasp!) a stray hair spoiling a potential employer’s vision of you as designer’s designer. Some people tell the changing seasons by the appearance of leaves on pictureque college campuses; until about 10 years ago, you could do the same thing at most art/design schools in the country by the sudden appearance of these oversized black briefcases.

I was one of the people that tried to stand out from the crowd by doing something unconventional. When I was seeking my first internship, I put together 8 or 10 spiral bound books I oh-so-humbly titled “Little Golden Boy,” after a favorite childhood series of books. I photocopied illustrations from the book series, using White-Out to remove the book’s text, and replaced it with my own (done on a typewriter). I then painstakingly re-painted each of the illustrations with watercolor. On the reverse of each page, I glued small manilla envelopes containing slides I’d had taken of my work. There was a minor setback when the “glue stick” I’d used to adhere the envelopes catastrophically failed, requiring a re-do with rubber cement … As if all this wasn’t enough work, I made an audio accompaniment to be listened to while paging through the book, complete with “ding” page-turning sound effects.

When I moved to Portland in 2001 without a job, it was in pretty tough economic times. Most agencies were laying off designers, and I didn’t know anyone. To stand out, I put together a gimicky little web site called “FleaDesign,” (still visible online, but horribly out of date) a tongue in cheek way of promoting my diverse skillset as a do-it-all designer managing a team of talented, creative insects. “FleaDesign, Inc.” was just me and the fleas, and we put together “The World’s Tiniest Website,” something original enough to get me noticed by creative directors who were then being deluged with resumes. It got me in the door at a lot of places, and eventually led to my first job in Portland. The rest, as they say … is history.

Both examples were an attempt to stand out from the crowd of black portfolio-toting designers, and a way of demonstrating my creativity as a designer. My portfolio became its own work sample. “This is the kind of thinking I am capable of.”

Now on the receiving end of a lot of portfolios (our newest designer, Lorien Steele was selected from a pool of more than 120 applicants), I have a different perspective on portfolios, which I’ve reduced to this list of things I look for in a creative portfolio:

10 Tips for Creative Portfolios

1. Have a website. No, really. It’s 2009, and I can’t imagine there are people out there hiring “print only” designers anymore, just as I wouldn’t hire a designer who doesn’t grasp print on at least some level.
2. Make that website your own. Coroflot is great, I guess, but it seems kind of like a lazy, last-minute solution to me. Show me the kind of work you’re capable when working for yourself, without client feedback, and make it original.
3. Make that website linkable. Flash is awesome, and we use it a lot. But portfolios need to be linkable. Yes, deep-linking can be achieved in Flash, but few seem to take the time to build sites that way. Do so, or stick to HTML. Oftentimes, I need to send a particular sample to a colleague to generate buzz for you within the organization, and I hate taking screenshots of your work.
4. Make your work bigger. I am so tired of whipping out a magnifying glass to look at portfolio pieces. I want to read the copy, and I want to see your work full-size, the way it was (hopefully) designed to be viewed. Please don’t reduce your portfolio to a series of thumbnails.
5. Include a PDF. Here again, I usually shop your work around to other members of the team, and it’s nice if I can e-mail a PDF sometimes. Keep it small, though – remember that most e-mail administrators limit attachment file-size to 5-10 MBs.
6. No spelling errors. I don’t accept them in client work, and I would expect that you’ve had the smarts to proof what should be your best foot forward.
7. Have a personality. At a small agency like Pop Art, cultural fit is as important as any work you’re capable of. Show me how you think, what you’re interested in. Include a link to your blog or Twitter feed. I’m going to look at them anyway, so be proactive and include them. Probably it goes without saying, but avoid posting “I’m so wasted” or “this client sux” items. It’s unprofessional in today’s open communications environment to do so, right? Right?
8. Tell me about the work. What problems were you trying to solve with the example shown? Who was the audience? How was it received? How did it perform? Great work without context isn’t necessarily great.
9. No work for your friend’s band. I’ve written about this before, but I’ll repeat it, at the risk of drawing more ire. I believe anyone can do something creative without limitations. I want to see work that shows creativity within boundaries, be they client, budgetary or otherwise. Show me how you were the hero or heroine, not your mastery of sarcasm and juxtaposition for the band “Free Beer.”
10. Send a thank-you note. This is number 10, but I place a lot of value on people with good follow-up and the social graces to say “thanks.” Some people in hiring positions place less value on this than I do, but I don’t think an e-mail or note saying “thanks” is ever a bad thing.

More resources:

• Core 77’s guide for graduating designers
• Old Salty Headhunter: a heavy dash of sarcasm, but good tips