1/1000 = 79/x

Building a Design Portfolio, pgs 140-End
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Well, there are many more pictures to look at this week, but this time of nontraditional and interactive/online portfolios. Looking at pictures sound easy, but if you use the old picture to words conversion, this was around 79,000 words, plus the captions. That’s a lot of reading.

Just like the section I read last time, there is again a lot of really amazing work shown here. I want to focus on the Web portfolios, but there was one in the nontraditional section that I found really interesting, Chris Dimino’s metal cube. The way the cube unfolds and acts as a light box for displaying his work would easily stand out among more traditional portfolios, and it appears that once opened, focus will shift from the portfolio itself to the content.

As for the websites, some of them translated from Web to print for the book better than others, but despite this it’s still clear what the designers were trying to accomplish. Eramos Tantos’ site I liked because it looks as if it the different elements were put together by hand and then tacked up for display. The different textures used create something that looks tactile, which in turn adds to the site’s appeal. The portfolio site of Mayo Bucher in contrast to the previous site is incredibly sparse. Featuring only minimal amounts of type and solid backgrounds, the pieces being shown really stand out. In this regard it is somewhat similar to the Mike Essl’s site. Instead of a completely empty page however, there is now a collection of thumbnails on the side for navigation. It’s not as minimalistic as the previous site, but the thumbnails, in addition to providing easy navigation, also begin to show the range of Essl’s work and do so in just a quick glance. The one problem with the thumbnails is that they’re all just shrunken down versions of the originals. It seems to work for some of them, but the majority would likely be better if they just displayed a portion of a larger piece.

Designing a Digital Portfolio, Chapter 10
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All right, so this chapter covers some of the development basics for a Web portfolio. There’s some basic information at the start and it’s pretty boring until the author begins discussing metaphorical concepts that most portfolios tend to follow. Designing a portfolio from the outset based on a metaphor such as a gallery, a diary, or a spec sheet can help figure out how you will organize and present your work. A metaphor can also help when you begin thinking about your concept for the site.

I didn’t like the way the whole section on concept was written, but this is what I got out of it. Concept is not the same thing as style. Style is the how a portfolio looks on the outside, a concept is more how and why things on a site are down the way they are. Your concept should be consistent, should enhance your work, and should not be driven by style. It’s easier to pick out what makes a concept bad then what makes one good, and some things that are bad are difficult interfaces, interfaces that take too much away from the work, or sites that are difficult to add to and update.

After reading this, I think I’d have to say the concept I’m shooting for with my portfolio site is “awesome” and for a metaphor, I think it would be “please hire me.” Now I have to finish trying to pull that off.

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I’ve been spending a ton of time in Flash recently and one thing I was working on reminded me of some of the weird little Flash toys at zefrank.com. There’s a ton of neat stuff here, but my favorite to play with is still The Scribbler.