Repurposing, Ranting & Raving

DDP Ch. 8:

In Ch.8 of Designing a Digital Portfolio Baron discusses Repurposing and Optimizing, two distinct and important tools when gathering your work and getting it ready to showcase in your portfolio.

Baron gives us great tips on repurposing with PDF’s. I know that I’ll show most of my print work in PDF format so it’s important that I follow all of her steps especially since I’m really not good at repurposing and end up breezing through all of the pop-up options, etc. I won’t do that for my portfolio though, I’ve learned my lesson. Baron also talks about optimizing image files and the basic process one needs to go through. I’m good at optimizing my files and will do so for my web designs,etc.

I checked out Gunnar Swanson’s web site after Baron raves about his “tastefully” done animations and other effects in his portfolio. I, on the other hand, think his portfolio looks like crap. He has these absurd animations that look like they’ve been drawn by a 12 year old in photoshop that lead to each of his pieces in his portfolio. His work is good, especially his print/typography, but it’s overshadowed by this ugly site with horrendous animations and a very poor layout. This site definitely needs to be cleaned up and redesigned- there’s too much going on at once and you can barely navigate through the pages.

BDP pgs. 74-94:

The reading in Building Design Portfolios this week was really helpful. Eisenman talks about creating your web site and shows us some great portfolios that got jobs. Eisenman discusses how a web site can be quite a dangerous proposition because you just don’t know what kind of method the person is viewing it at. So it’s important to have many options, including Flash and HTML. A benefit of creating an online portfolio is that it allows you to organize all of your diverse work in a clean and maintainable fashion, rather than just having a print portfolio.

The gallery of portfolios showcased some really nice print portfolios by people who got jobs from them. I LOVED Jim Drobka’s book. Everything about it, from the different textures of the cover and pages was beautifully done. I would like to include transparent pages in my book (if I ever create one) because it would go perfectly along with my serene fluid-like logo. Making a book is expensive but definitely worth it I think, especially if it can get you a job.

I went to Hull’s Art Store over the weekend and checked out their portfolios. In the back of the store there’s a little room that is full of all different types of paper and every kind of portfolio you can think of. I found one I really like by Art Profolio, and PB was right, if you want a good one, you’re going to spend at least $50, and this one was just that amount. I’m going to check out if they have an online store or if I can find something similar to it for cheaper online. Wish me luck.