It took 6 months into my freshman year to hear the words "portfolio-level project." I was in a visual concepts course when a classmate was expressing their satisfaction with how their sculpture project turned out. I looked down at my Birkenstock shoe sculpture and thought to myself "There's no way on earth I'm putting this in my design portfolio"
For those who have completed a bachelor's degree in the arts, the first year often appears deceptively easy. While many of my non-art peers were completing assignments in chemistry labs and writing infinite series equations, I was drawing 20 logo variations and taking photos around campus.
The first half of one's undergrad journey is the time to adjust to the college workload while figuring out your academic interests and career aspirations. It is a time to identify personal strengths and weaknesses, refine passions, and align talents with professional goals. In my case, graphic design was always my primary focus, so shoe sculptures and photography classes felt pointless. The hours I spent working on these kinds of projects could've been better utilized by learning more UX/UI skills and designing in software like Figma.
It was when I entered my Junior year that I delved into more specialized design courses, engaging with tools like InDesign, Illustrator, and After Effects, and working on typography projects. These constituted pivotal additions to my portfolio. However, a notable frustration arose among my peers; we hadn't started our portfolio. In fact, we didn't officially start creating a portfolio until our final semester, giving us less than three months to craft a polished, digital portfolio essential for securing employment.
What initially seemed a straightforward task of curating past projects into a website proved challenging, involving meticulous structuring of project pages, crafting professional-grade mockup images and videos, and composing concise project descriptions. The most painstaking part for me is the mockups. This process is meticulous because my mockup images must have all of the following;
Must like the overall look (including patterns and background colors)
Must be the exact dimensions of the project
Must be a Photoshop file for projects with movement like brochures, books & magazines
Must be free (because I'm not paying money for something that could be free)
Just searching for a free Photoshop file can be so time-consuming. I could write a whole blog post just on mockup images.
Once you get to a point where you're satisfied with how it looks, you probably get to enjoy it for a month before contemplating the whole design. There are an infinite number of ways to design a homepage and organize your work. I'm constantly questioning myself when categorizing projects under distinct design disciplines like Graphic Design, Illustration, or UX/UI. When I was in search of a full-time job, I reached out to graphic designers and alumni for advice on my website. The responses I got were incredible, every single person knew exactly what I was going through, and so many gave great feedback.
I'm constantly looking at ways to modernize and simplify my website, but is there etiquette around website updates? How soon after implementing significant changes should you publish a revised version? While such considerations may be less critical for static portfolio displays, platforms incorporating interactive elements such as shops, blogs, and podcasts demand a more judicious approach to avoid disruptive alterations. This is one thing I wish I learned as a student.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Instead of doing random GD projects in senior year, we should've had a course where we solely focused on making mockups, writing resumes, and building/critiquing our portfolio websites 😔
Crazy that they did not teach more about portfolios in school.