PORTFOLIO RESEARCH
PORTFOLIO LIST One of the first things I did for this was I created a list of work that I would want to include in a portfolio to showcase the most current and relevant work.
STRUCTURE Title Page – New Illustration for the cover? Contents – Numbered pages for quick access to particular sections About Me – Introduction to me and my work, education, technical skills and previous experience Final Major Project – This will be the major initial focus of my portfolio, showing the final piece as well as some smaller progress photos and sketchbook development. Folio Society Competition Pieces – Showing the three pieces I entered for the competition as well as the poems to go along with them. Eco-Anxiety Editorial Piece – Display editorial work without having an entire section dedicated to it. Screen Printed Bandanas – Showing the process of hand printing the bandanas and selling them at the winter fair displaying practical skills and interaction with customers and selling a product. Fresh Meat Exhibition – Exhibition displays as well as close ups of individual pieces and sketchbook scans of plans (Include Wanderfest). Dead Rose Zine – Displaying the use of the risograph machine and putting together a zine and again making it a sellable product. Also include UCA wanting to send it to applicants. Penguin Student Design Competition – Wonder book cover with 3D mock ups, talk about brief.
Titan Maga zines 3-month Internship – Show scans and photographs of the ads that I created and were used to show working on live briefs. Lauren Babic – Turning fan art into a product for Lauren and finding opportunities within my work. Farnham Knights – Logo design, photos of merchandise and website usage. Kingdom – Displaying printmaking skills and using the resources at university, really good progress photos of the tools. Print Section – Showing the variety of prints I have created over the years to sell at fairs and on Etsy including: •Banner Risograph •Wildflowe r Risograph •Fresh Meat Screen-print •Chalice Risograph (Ollie Terry Photo) •Magnificent Beard •Officer Hutch •Bones •Pink Rose •Retro Boy •Neon Drifter
ISSUU EXAMPLES When we were told that we now had to upload our PDF documents onto Issuu I started to look deeper into it as I had heard of it but had not used it before. Once I had signed up I found that you could search for content so I did an initial search for illustration just to see out of interest what would show and I noticed that quite a large amount of what showed up was digital illustration portfolios. I started to look through a lot of them just to see what kind of work was being displayed. I then started to notice certain things that I liked and disliked that I would like to take note of for when it comes to me putting mine together. I know that there are a lot of website portfolios but that is something that I want to look into setting up in the future after graduation.
PORTFOLIO 1 – 2020 PORTFOLIO BEIBEI http s : / / i s s u u . c o m / z h o u b e i b ei/docs/portfoilo_2020_beibei_zh ou
The first one that I instantly took note of as a badly thought out structure and design was this portfolio by Beibei Z. The dimensions of the pages are incredibly long and when yo u flip through the pages even on a decent sized Mac screen it is nearly impossible to identify any of the artwork let alone the bulk chunks of writing without zooming into it. Also for the most part the images are incredibly small in an effort to s how as much as possible, with only a few pieces enlarger for a better view. Whilst a lot of the work isn’t bad, it is definitely not as appealing due to the way that it is presented. If they were to reduce the amount of images per page and to change the dimensions of the document it would make it a much more visually interesting portfolio.
PORTFOLIO 2 – Portfolio Graphic Designer https://issuu.com/ssbagul15/docs/portfolio_copy
I felt that it was equally as important to look at other kinds of portfolios other than just illustration ones to compare ideas and compo sitions. This is a great example to compare with my advice for the previous portfolio. The design in this is great and you can see that by having fewer images that are displayed t o be the main focus of each page it just changes the way we interact with the whole portfolio. I really like the consistent minimalist style throughout keeping small sections of text but nothing that takes away from the images, as that should be the main focus. The one thing that I noticed that seems pointless is the title that runs along each page where it says Design Portfolio along the top of each page. This is a design choice but something that to me just comes across as repetitive for no reason and doesn’t add anything except taking up possible space. This portfolio is overall proof that a simple and clean layout can be a very efficient way of displaying your work.
PORTFOLIO 3 – Illustration & Graphic Design Portfolio 2020 Abiyasa Adiguna h tt p s : / / i s s u u . com/abiyasaadiguna/docs/illustration_portfolio_2019_abiy a s a
This is a good example to show the kind of layout that I had in mind for my portfolio. I really like the way that each section contains a main large image with smaller close up detail images that include a title, date and short summary about the work. It is a really clean layout and gives you all the information you need without having a whole chapter of writing. I know that I will want short descriptions with some of my projects so it is really helpful to see a good example here. Pages 8-9 are the perfect example of this. Something that he does in this portfolio that I find really helpful is that he identifies what each piece of work is for, so he identifies what work is personal work and what work is for a specific project output. I really like the way that he has made it work really wel l in landscape view and as I was planning to have mine in portrait this gives me something to consider as it looks really great here.
PORTFOLIO 4 – Graphic Design & Illustration Portfolio 2019 Angel Ecube https://issuu.com/angelecube/docs/portfolio_catalog
This is an example of a portfolio that has gone above and beyond on the design and layout elements to make it a real showcase of their work. The portfolio becomes another way of showing off the design capabilities as you can see that a lot of work has gone into the way that this all looks. It isn’t just images places in a document, they have thought about the images being shown and examples like on pages 16-17 where they have created the effect of hanging posters just to give it a bit more flair. It is also great as it leaves the viewer with no doubt that this individual is confident in their graphic design capabilities. It also presents a first professional impression on any potential client that interacts with this which is great. I plan to display some examples of the way I work in the presentation of my own portfolio by adding some small illustrated elements around my work.
PORTFOLIO 5 – Kapitan Ketchup Illustration Portfolio 2020 h tt ps : / / i s s u u .com/kapitan_ketchup/docs/kapitan_ketchup_portfolio_ 2 0 2 0
This p o rt f o l i o i s v e r y b a s i c a nd I am including it to show why I wan t e d t o do m o re o f a p u b lication portfolio instead of doing a web s i t e p o rt f o l i o. I f e e l l i ke with website portfolios where you show c a s e y o u r w o r k o n a s i t e with nice layout and a nice way to navi g at e t h ro u g h t h e w o r k , but ultimately I feel like it ends up just look i n g l i ke a g a l l e r y, a n d I feel that a portfolio should prov i d e m o re i n f o r m at i o n t h an what is given in just images. Some of m y p ro j e c t s t h at I p l a n t o show will need context as to the brief and w h y c e rt a i n t h i n g s a re t he way they are and you lose that when you d e c i d e t o j u s t d i s p l a y i mages. Whilst this portfolio is nice visu a l l y h a v e f u l l b l e e d i l l u s trations from front to back, it loses the poin t o f h a v i n g a rt i s t i n f o r m ation and additional information like whe t h e r t h e w o r k w a s p e r s o nal or for a brief, whether it was creat e d l a s t m o n t h o r l a s t y ear. All of this is important and som e t h i n g th at I a m a w a re o f when it comes to creating my own. That i s w h y I f e l t l i ke I w a n t ed to create a digital portfolio now for this h a n d i n a n d a w e b s i t e a fter graduation because they are both desi g n e d t o a c h i e v e d i ff e re nt things.
PORTFOLIO 6 – Recreating Life in 100 Slices https://issuu.com/tianran_q/docs/thesisbook
I stu m b l e d u p o n s o m e t h i n g I wasn’t expecting to and it turned out to h e l p m e a l o t a n d g i v e m e a few ideas for my portfolio. This is an idea b o o k f o r a n M A s t u d e n t ’s project and it is similar to the refle c t i v e j o u r n a l s t h at w e d o where it is used to document our proc e s s a n d s h o w t h e w a y w e work and how we built to the final outc o m e . I rea l l y l i ke t h e t h ought of a portfolio being able to give an in s i d e l o o k i n t o a n i l l u s t rator ’s process. I think it serves as an imp o rt a n t e l e m e n t a n d i t i s something that I would be interested to s e e i f I w a s a n e m p l o y e r l ooking at this, I would want to not only see t h e f i n a l p i e c e b u t t o u n derstand a bit more of the person beh i n d i t a n d t o g a u g e t h e i r idea generation capabilities. It is som e t h i n g I w a n t t o h a v e a n element of in my portfolio but only piec e s h e re a n d t h e re j u s t t o give some context to certain projects or p i e c e s . A l t h o u g h t h i s i s n ’ t being put out as a portfolio, I would argu e t h at t h i s g i v e s a b e tt e r representation of their work that som e o f t h e o t h e r s t h at I h a ve previously mentioned. In terms of the d e s i g n a n d l a y o u t i t a l l works incredibly well and it really nice to fo l l o w a l o n g .