Building a Design Portfolio, pgs 1-40
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All right, we have a new book this week. On the outside the edges of the pages are shiny and on inside it has tons of pictures, and as everyone knows making things shiny and using loads of pictures are two surefire ways of grabbing attention. The first part of this book focuses on physical portfolios. I made one of those once, it was a pain. Reading through this section about binders, presentation boxes, and cases makes me think about how I'd be much happier keeping everything digital. The kind of work I want to do, web and Flash design, will always be on screen anyway which makes me question how useful a physical portfolio would actually be.
There is some helpful information in there though that's not specific to printed portfolios. There was some more about knowing your audience, similar to what I read about in the last book. The author also brought up tone and range. A formal, elegant look is a more appropriate tone when dealing with an investment firm for example. In terms of range, you want to show enough variety so potential employer won't think you're a one trick pony. The last thing is showing process. Not everyone will want to see the process you used to get from the start of a project to the end result. Sketches, mockups, storyboards and the like are still good to have in there though. They can be off tucked away somewhere so those who do want to see them can see them.
And finally, the shiny edges of the book, I don't like them anymore. It was cool at first, but that was before my fingers were covered in tiny, metallic sparkles from turning pages.
Designing a Digital Portfolio, Chapter 6
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A chapter on digitizing traditional artwork, for me my portfolio right now this information is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Well there might be a sketch or two left to scan, but that's the beauty of IDD, we've got the digital part covered pretty well. I suppose we'll have look at what goes on with digitizing anyway.
If you have work 3D work or 2D work that's too large to scan, you can photograph it. How the photograph is taken matters. First, you want it well lit. Second, you don't want to be shooting pictures of your work propped up haphazardly on your kitchen table. Third, a good camera is needed. A digital camera makes more sense if you're trying to digitize your work. If you just have 2D work, a scanner will do nicely. When scanning you should clean the scanner and make sure your work is square when you scan it in. Also watch out for moiré, usually software can help you out with this problem though. If you have negatives, it's better to use a dedicated film scanner. With all of these methods, you don't need super-high resolutions. Computers screens are only 72 dpi, but it's recommended that you use double the pixel dimensions of what will end up on screen (i.e. scan in at 1000 pixels wide if you want to display something 500 pixels wide). Lastly, there's digitizing VHS tapes. I've never had to do this, and reading about, I hope I never have to. It takes a lot of time and generally doesn't work that well.
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On another note, looks like I'm going to ditch my idea of making my portfolio in Flash. Instead, I'm going to go with CSS, it's what all the cool people use. I'm going to try really, really hard not to use any tables too.
I've been looking at some non-flash portfolio sites now, and while they may not all be made with CSS, it still gives me an idea of what other people are doing in terms of interface and layout. I've been spending a lot of time pouring through CSS Zen Garden. One that I liked was this one, it has a nice color scheme and the persistent clouds are a neat trick. Also, this one is awesome. After all it's hard to go wrong with ninjas.
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