Designing a Digital Portfolio
Second Edition
Designing a Digital Portfolio, Second Edition
Cynthia L. Baron
New Riders
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New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education
Copyright © 2010 by Cynthia L. Baron
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-63751-2
ISBN-10: 0-321-63751-8
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Development Editor
Becky Morgan
Copy Editor
Scout Festa
Production Editor
Hilal Sala
Interior Design
Cynthia L. Baron
Cover Design
Aren Howell
Indexer
FireCrystal
Communicationss
Proofreader
Suzie Nasol
Notice of Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact: [email protected].
Notice of Liability
The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.
Trademarks
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.
About the Author
Cynthia L. Baron is Academic Director of the Digital Media program at Northeastern University in Boston, Cynthia has been active in the creative community for most of her professional life. Previously Associate Director of the Multimedia Studies program and Technical Director and Lecturer in the Department of Art+Design, she holds an MBA with a Marketing concentration and was the executive vice president of a Boston-based graphic design studio for over a decade. She has written for many publications, been a series editor for Rockport Publishers and a contributing editor to the magazines Critique and Computer Graphics World. She has edited, authored, or co-authored over a dozen books, including Adobe Photoshop Forensics: Sleuths, Truths and Fauxtography and The Little Digital Camera. Her 1996 book, Creating a Digital Portfolio, was the first title ever published on the topic.
Acknowledgments
I was truly blessed with great people and much support in writing and producing the second edition of this book. Although I can never say enough in thanks to all the people who helped me along the way, I can at least formally acknowledge their input and contributions.
In a project like this one, a lot depends on who you know, and who they know in turn. Nancy Bernard knows how much in her debt I am for the first edition, and therefore all subsequent ones. In addition, I owe a big thank you to my dear friend Dan Peck for playing yenta on the first edition. He led me to Roz Goldfarb, whose foreword graces the book’s beginning, and to Rita Armstrong for spot-on talent searching. Thanks to both of these astute women for helping the second time around.
In this edition, two colleagues were instrumental in helping the book take its present shape. The first is Terrence Masson, whose opinions and knowledge of the animation and special effects worlds provided great quotes and inside knowledge. The other is Jay Laird, who went way beyond tech editing for Chapter 7, thereby saving me at least one week of agony—and my deadline.
A quick read of Appendix B reveals what a talented, savvy, and articulate group of creatives contributed to this book. I think it says quite a bit about the quality and creativity of my contributors that most of them were extraordinarily busy during what has been one of the worst economic downturns in recent history. Yet from the established stars to the brand new talents, they were all unstintingly free with their ideas, opinions, and time.
As you might expect, I owe a lot to the publishing team. In particular, I want to thank my friend Becky Morgan, whose career has moved well beyond that of a development editor. But nonetheless, she graciously made time for this book in her busy schedule. As always, it was a pleasure to work with her. Becky’s feedback was invaluable, and permeates every chapter. In addition, many thanks to Scout Festa for her attention to all the niggling details—especially those tedious commas—and to Hilal Sala for her help and counsel in production issues.
A special thank you in memoriam to Marjorie Baer, for supporting my initial book idea, and for making the first edition happen. You are still remembered.
And, as usual, thank you Shai. After all these years of being married to a classic Type A personality, he remains the unconditional One—my very best friend. I am a most fortunate woman.
Foreword
I often speak to student or professional groups about career, marketplace, and workplace issues. An overwhelming number of questions relate to the structure and content of portfolios. “What should the format be? How to demonstrate different forms of work: two-dimensional and three-dimensional? How should the work be viewed? How should it be delivered? How much work should be shown? What samples should be included?” There is no other topic of such critical significance, because everyone recognizes the role portfolios play in capturing work. And thus, the importance and relevance of Designing a Digital Portfolio.
A digital portfolio is now the professional standard. It is without question the most important and mandatory vehicle to demonstrate an individual’s skill and accomplishment. It is the first introduction to a future employer, the first foot in the proverbial door. The portfolio is also a repository of past work, a personal archive to be maintained, treasured, and properly backed-up.
In developing a presentation portfolio—and many professionals have strong opinions about their “correct” or preferred method—ultimately the portfolio is a marketing tool. To successfully function as a marketing instrument, the portfolio should be as unique as its owner. This is the most difficult challenge, and this book will help in that crucial process.
Our design and interactive culture moves forward at a lightning pace and, as always, the pressure is to keep up, be current, look cool. However, I would suggest that sometimes it is also valuable to look back, for otherwise we lose perspective. Bells and whistles are not a substitute for substance. We need to make sure, in our fixation on the latest, newest and hottest, that the fundamental emphasis on content is not lost. Portfolios were constructed of 2D or 3D printed material, or on 35-millimeter slides. At the end of the day, the actual deliverable object was important. Today, some old forms may be obsolete, but there is still a need, and a place, to experience the quality of a final printed piece, to touch and smell the final result.
Designing a Digital Portfolio is unique as it offers, with clarity and logic, the process of developing a portfolio—along with personal experiences that add first-hand information. It respects traditional values, while successfully tackling the digital challenge on all issues relating to the choices of structure, content, and delivery. I believe you will agree that it fulfills a tremendous need. And, hopefully, it will aid you in fulfilling your future potential.
Roz Goldfarb
President, Roz Goldfarb Associates
August 2009
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Assessment and Adaptation
Portfolio highlight: Luke Williams with Jonnie Hallman | Partnering
Portfolio highlight: Will Scobie | Primary directive
Portfolio highlight: People Design | Know your market
Portfolio highlight: Emmanuel Laffon de Mazières | Form and function
Part II Collecting and Preparing
Chapter 5 Organizing Your Work
Organizing samples and artwork
Portfolio highlight: John Locke | Left brain, right brain
Chapter 6 Transferring Physical Media to Digital
Shooting 3D and oversized work
Digitizing slides and negatives
Portfolio highlight: Triboro Design | Applause in translation
Chapter 7 Repurposing and Optimizing
Portfolio highlight: Thom Bennett | Optimal detail
Chapter 8 Creating Written Content
Explaining your creative thinking
Portfolio highlight: Sandstrom Design | Get your words’ worth
Chapter 9 Structure and Concept
Choosing a delivery technology
Developing for web or portable
Portfolio highlight: CloudRaker | Experienced design
Chapter 10 Designing a Portfolio Interface
Portfolio highlight: Layla Keramat | The master plan
Portfolio highlight: Metaversal Studios | Reel life
Chapter 12 Copyright and Portfolio
Portfolio highlight: Noa Studios | Fair share
Chapter 13 Presenting Your Portfolio
Packaging a portable portfolio
Portfolio highlight: Ken Loh | A hand in the game
Introduction. Why you need a portfolio now
For many people, a portfolio is their collection of financial investments. For those of us who are artists or designers, portfolio also refers to a collection of material we’ve created. The two types of portfolios are not actually so different. Both represent the fruits of hard labor. Both are the result of choices made to maximize potential. And poor decisions with either one can spell the difference between long-term success and failure.
Unfortunately, when not actively job- or client-hunting, we tend to ignore our portfolios. This nasty habit can start when we’re students. Although the portfolio looms as the single most important factor in their future, students often are so caught up in class projects or part-time jobs that they don’t prepare their portfolio until after graduation—too late to take advantage of a portfolio seminar or faculty review. Unfortunately, when the market for creatives is inundated not only with a new crop of graduates but with seasoned pros, competition can be as intense for entry-level design and support jobs as for managerial ones.
Procrastination continues into our careers. In a busy office, client deadlines take precedence, sometimes for months or even years. “Why spend the time on a portfolio? I have a job,” is the argument. But creative professionals who experience an economic bust learn that the job you have on Monday can end with a pink slip sans parachute on Friday. On the following Monday, the lack of an up-to-date portfolio becomes a serious strategic error.
If you’re a freelancer, and particularly if you are a recent graduate hoping to use freelance work as a road to your own studio, you don’t need just any digital portfolio. You need one filled with recent work and wrapped in a current approach. But when every billable hour counts, it’s hard to justify the upkeep. Unfortunately, if a prospect checks out your site and sees the dust practically shake off the page, they won’t call you with a sensitive critique. You will never know you lost a job. When you’re trying to remain competitive, owning only a vintage portfolio is as useful as having none at all.
No question about it—creating and maintaining your portfolio is a serious and complex self-marketing issue. It deserves your best effort: creativity, attention to detail, planning, and sometimes time-consuming production. Knowing that a good portfolio doesn’t happen overnight, you should be working on it long before your need becomes critical. No excuses! If you have time to do freelance or personal projects for fun or extra cash, you can make time for your portfolio.
With the acknowledgment that a portfolio project is overdue, it’s time to figure out what that means for you.
What kind of portfolio should you have?
If you need a portfolio at all, you need a digital version. But what form your digital portfolio takes depends on a number of factors that center on who you are and what you want your portfolio to do for you.
A digital portfolio can be a PDF, CD or DVD demo reels, a slideshow on a laptop, or, most frequently, a web address. In fact, if there is anything a wide-ranging tour through today’s portfolios shows, it’s that there is no longer a standard format for a portfolio.
Portfolios come in a dizzying number of styles, concepts, purposes, and forms. Over less than a decade, the template for an online portfolio, initially based on the formal book with perishable objects in plastic sleeves, has evolved. Portfolios online range from linear slideshows in the traditional mode, to intricately cross-linked artifacts, to walks through a Wonderland-like experience. Even more exciting, creatives are escaping the single-form, single-focus portfolio through posting unique portfolios at multiple addresses that allow a reviewer to jump infinitely from one collection of work to another like stones in a stream. There is more agreement that a portfolio can grow with its creator, changing focus and gaining maturity.
With the expansion of form comes a democratization of digital presence. Having a digital portfolio doesn’t have to be hard. Graphic design, architectural walkthroughs, video, and animation are already produced digitally, and the files can be modified for online use; some 2D traditional work can be scanned; and large 2D and 3D work can be photographed. Plus, today there are a growing number of sophisticated publishing sites, some of which specialize in serving visual creatives, that can make it easy to translate a print-based portfolio into a sleek digital entry.
Your personal expectations depend on your specific creative area. A fine artist working on canvas may need only the simplest presentation on one address. An interactive designer will definitely need a sophisticated presentation on a personal site and will likely have at least one other outlet. Most important, each version of your portfolio should have different subsets of content or modes of presentation that capture all your targeted audiences. Knowing yourself, nailing your category, and being familiar with what others in your profession are doing is crucial to fielding the right range of competitive portfolios.
Should you maintain a physical portfolio?
Portfolio expectations vary, depending on the nature of the work you intend to show and who you want to see it. Even in professions where digital portfolios are a standard, some employers or clients will insist on seeing printed work in addition to the digital version.
Traditional portfolios may still be required for:
• Galleries. A digital presence is necessary, especially as part of a first-pass weeding process. But a physical presentation or on-site visit remains the expectation before any gallery decides to show or represent your work, even if that work has a digital component.
• Environmental or product-based design. Industrial designers, graphic designers specializing in packaging, architects, and interior designers almost always still create a traditional portfolio first before they tackle a digital version.
• Print designers. A digital portfolio has become a must for making the first cut, but a traditional portfolio of printed samples may still be necessary in order to examine your decisions on typography, paper, ink, and texture.
• School applications. Some educators, although they may be perfectly comfortable with computers, frequently require slides, not CDs or websites, for an admissions portfolio.
• Security. In some cases, your contractual agreement with a client may prevent you from putting a project into a digital portfolio. If you want to show it, you might have to present it in person. See Chapter 12, “Copyright and Portfolio,” for a detailed discussion of this topic.
Why this book is for you
This book is a resource for the creative who needs to develop any form of digital portfolio. It examines the portfolio process from beginning to end with a fresh eye, in the context of the increasingly virtual world most art and design professionals now inhabit.
For established professionals, I offer some critical how-tos of digital portfolio development and creation. Perhaps you have been presenting your work for years and have a very good sense of your profession, your skills and talents, and your local market. But making your work competitive in digital form demands new criteria, new technical skills, and maybe a fresh look at the work you’ve done and your assumptions about it.
For the technically adept who might be less well-versed in self-marketing and presentation, I offer digital portfolio development as part of a larger scheme. This book will give you a good overview of the portfolio process, lead you through the concepts and issues from basic to complex, and help you to develop a portfolio that is right for you.
Either way, this book should make the process of developing your new portfolio a little less painful.
Assumptions
Although this book has plenty of useful hints and specific technical how-tos, its focus is on process and results. You’re free to use your favorite tools. If you don’t have any favorites yet, I’ve suggested some good step-by-step books in Appendix A, “Resources,” to help you master the software basics. Throughout the book, I recommend specific applications for different types of presentations, offer guidelines on how to use them most effectively for different stages of your portfolio project, and help you assess which tools will help you meet your goals efficiently.
I do assume that you have artistic talent within your chosen medium of expression and that you don’t need definitions for basic art terms such as scale, proportion, figure, and ground. If you do, you should consider reading the discussion on partnering in Chapter 1, “Assessment and Adaptation,” before you do anything else.
I admit that I’ve tilted the topics in this book toward graphic designers, because their portfolios generally require the most complex preparation. Design portfolios also carry the most demanding expectations, because the people who judge them look at the thinking behind the portfolio as much as the highlighted work within it.
But, to a less strenuous degree, the same holds true for portfolios in other disciplines. Today, almost every creative professional is expected to have work online. With so many portfolios vying for attention, a portfolio that displayes an understanding of basic design principles does a better job of showcasing the work within it.
A well-designed portfolio is a way for illustrators or photographers to boost their work out of the excruciatingly competitive world of clip art and stock images. It’s a way for an animator or other moving-image artist to present work more accessibly and with more finesse. It raises the visibility and the stock of fine artists. Most importantly, it allows you to show the world that you value and respect your work—the first step in making sure that others do, too.