Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody Do Your Share

DDP Ch. 7:

This week Baron talked about the subject of cleaning up ones digital files and the different techniques one can use to edit their work. I won’t go into more detail about this because it’s basically information we all already know and have learned since freshman year. But Baron does make it helpful by including examples and tutorials of edited images and how to go about it for those that need to be refreshed.

BDP pg. 40-74:

Having a strong portfolio (and I’m referring to the actual carrying-type) is vital when presenting to employers. Your work can be alright, but if your portfolio is unique it can become a great showpiece to exhibit your work in.

Eisenman discusses how to present each work, the pace you should go, and the order that it should be in—first piece something engaging but not your best, and last piece being the icing on the cake. She says to “think of your portfolio presentation as a piece of music; you’re the conductor, setting the tempo and rhythm.”

A great piece of advice Eisenman gives us is for recent graduates to not be too specific about their class experiences when on an interview. It’s important NOT to say that, “yeah, this is an AD I made for my Advanced Typography, IDD 370 class” and to INSTEAD say what you learned and enjoyed doing work when creating the AD.

The promotions in this reading are really great. I like Odgis + Company’s promotional piece because it’s simple and very effective. I also love de Vicq’s letterpress book, Men of Letters. I’d love to flip through that book. I found de Vicq’s web site and it’s a clean site but I’m not a fan of how his navigation is set up. He has a skinny vertical bar with different colors to distinguish between each of his projects and next to the bar are very small dots that you must exactly line up with your mouse arrow to be able to click on—a little annoying. But nonetheless, he has outstanding innovative work.

I need to seriously start thinking/sketching out ideas for my promotional piece right now.