Blog 6 - March 8

Designing a Digial Portfolio-Chapter 6
Digitalizing Traditional Work: Chapter 6

"In the end your portfolio is all about your work"
-not having the original at hand, people will judge you by two criteria, image quality-sharpness, cleanness, size, and speed and image appropriateness, whether what you've chose to show actually helps them judge your work
-be prepared to evaluate your work twice: before you scan it and when you see the scanned image themselves
-Jeff Kaphingst's portfolio: i liked Jeff's layout, he made things clear, and almost interactive, because of all the movement. the navigation is fun and clear, most importantly.

-photographs: scan vs. digitize
this section focused in on the method to use to upload photos. i have some photos that i like from my photography classes, however they arent printed, all of them are pretty much on my firewire drive, and can just be loaded up digitally. Baron focuses in on how to shoot your work, and how to chose the right camera depending on the work being captured. he says that a digital camera has better results, because you can see right away how it came out, and "reshoot until you are satisfied". a pivoting display screen makes shooting more enjoyable, and more effective. Baron refers to BBK Studio again, talking about how when you use a different color background, to set your images on, that it can effect the way the image looks.

Digitizing Flat Art:
This section, Baron focuses on a good scanner, why is that so important? He claims that "color, feature and time..a good scanner will read and reproduce more colors than a cheap one-with more fidelity to the original art". He gives hints on various types of scanners: flatbed scanning- clean the scanner (duh!), square up your art (you can do this in photoshop that he describes), watch for moire (the dots on the image, which are the product of the screens and pixels colliding). A moire is the fuzzy dots that appear on an image.

Building a Design Portfolio pg 0-40

"a design portfolio is a grouping of loose sheets collected in a portable case"

today we change that our portfolios have new forms such as:
-websites
-motion portfolio
-files on disc
-portable document PDF
-limited edition books/moographs

This book will help with resume, cover letters, assemblage of portfolios, presentation boxes, website designs and self presentation and promotion. "Students are advised to design a website during their studies in order to promote themselves as both print designers and website designers.
"Great work done in school or college is NOT a complete representation of the designer to come!"

I like this part, because I have often felt that my work, while being decent, can be A LOT better, and I rarely feel comfortable with presenting it to potential clients.

"An art director wants and needs to be assured that the new employee can produce the same caliber of work when designing all kinds of materials, from commercial book covers to text-heavy advertisements."

-There are many ways to approach portfolio presentations, as there are varieties of types of designers.

-The most important thing to understand is that SELF PROMOTION, while important, should not take up every waking moment, nor should it look like it took most of your time, it should not be so elaborate that it outshines the work you are exhibiting, or be self-indulgent

-"In the end, the perfectly designed system for displaying your talent will reflect you, your interests, your design skills and your unique creativity"

Making a Working Portfolio:
Portfolio: you can redesign it it next year or next week - knowing this can make a big project less intimidating!-yeyy. Your portfolio shouldn't be pretentious in a way that it overpowers your work, its a grouping of design pieces that composes a cohesive, unified whole.
-create samples in your area of interest, this kind of extra effort shows enthusiasm and initiative, and produces a solid portfolio that shows how you would solve a specific problem, never offer to produce free work as a way of getting a foot in the door

tone: tone of a portfolio should reflect the kind of work that most interest you. Take a unique approach to different pieces. Never have sloppy assembly or poorly trimmed boards.

range: have a wide range of design work, you dont need to have one of every item in the design lexicon, but it is wise for designers to produce portfolios with a wide range of design materials-more is better as long as the designer feels confident about each piece.

Portfolios in book Format: materials thematically or link them in a biographical manner, explaining different class projects, typographic exercise, goals and aspirations somewhat like chapters in a book.
-the book format is practical and keeps the portfolio fluid; with the availability of personal computers and high-end printers, making a limited-edition book portfolio is now feasible where it might not have been 20 years ago.
-some drawbacks- viewer cannot see the original size or experience the tactile qualities of the original materials, including three dimensional features such as foldouts, pop-ups or variations in paper stock

showing process: thumbnails, rough sketches, text pages that reveal the path taken to the final design solution, they explain the problem that was presented, restrictions that were imposed, or any specifications from the teacher or client

Presentation, Boxes, Cases, and Portfolios:
choosing the proper package:

The larger the dimensions of the portfolio, the less experienced the applicant

its funny that they have it, but the exact book that I bought last week, is here in this book. The portfolio that I bought has screws that undo to take out or add in sleeves of work.