Portfolio Crit.

Hey Guys,

Can you do me a favour. Can you Critique my portfolio. All comments are helpful. Just always looking to improve and change my portfolio.

Here is the Drop Send link. Couldn’t add a PDF. Sorry for the inconvenience however here is the link:

http://myaccount.dropsend.com/file/3c667eb4bc5c0a1d

The file is called Kasra_Sadeghian_2013.PDF

Once again sorry about the link. Just be brutally honest about what you think. As you know all designer have rhino skin.

Thanks All!

The link appears to no longer be working. It states
“We’re sorry - each file can only be downloaded 10 times. Please contact the sender and ask them to resend the file(s)”

ok it appears to be working now

Hi, I also just gave it a quick glance through, a couple things:

On the first page your contact info is rasterized and blurry. Try and export the vector text directly as a pdf or increasing the quality of the pdf when you save it.

In the Nike Swimming project the white text on the red background is quite difficult for me to read.
If you are going to include the research such as a mind map maybe do one up nicely in illustrator as well as the sketches and make it fill most of the page and let it help you tell the story. Right now I see the mind maps but they provide no new insights to your story or how deep you did your research.

I would also like to see a nice ‘hero’ (Context) shot of your final product development. Maybe simplify the last page in the Nike project down to 2 or 3 images- a nice rendering showing the screen on, a big photo of a swimmer wearing it with a nice photoshop job to make it look like it’s actually real (Your current context shot could use some improvements) so this big photo could form the main visual, supported by a nice clean render of the device with the screen on and maybe just have call-outs to tell us the features of it.
Maybe try lay it out as clean as your coat rack project- that one is really nicely done, tells the story in a concise manner without too much visual clutter. Nice job on that one!

Also you seem to have a pretty good understanding of perspective in your sketching, so that’s great to see.

And you might, depending on what this portfolio is for, want to take out those pages of photographs. You can display them on your website or elsewhere if you feel they show a valuable skill, but I would keep your portfolio as concise to Industrial Design relevant work as you can if that’s what the intent of this is.

Overall you’ve got some good projects, and with some tweaks and presentation improvements you’ve got a solid portfolio on your hands.
Keep up the good work!

Hi Skoshbox

Thanks for the info. What you say all makes sense. Reviewing after reading your comments, it all makes sense. I will make those changes tomorrow. Once again thanks!

Any other advice from anyone?

Hey K.

+1 on "Overall you’ve got some good projects, and with some tweaks and presentation improvements you’ve got a solid portfolio on your hands. "

Nice job at doing a lot of research behind your projects, and looking back at what Skoshbox said, I would definitely organize it in a way that cleanly guides the story, make it bigger, or re-do it in Illustrator (preferably). The same could be said for your sketch pages, the drawings are small and close to the same size, try increasing the size of the more important ones which will help draw the eye around the page better. 54 pages is a lot, see what you can do to condense the material, I agree with taking out the photos. Organizationally, I would definitely move that EDIT: travel pack project about the coat rack project as that shows your skills and process a lot better. If I am counting right, there are 5 projects in there plus some miscellaneous stuff, I would really concentrate on getting 3 really outstanding projects done showing your process and maybe have another set of good sketch samples you do as well. Also, Try to differentiate between your projects either with different color schemes, I found I kept passing final result of the nike project and went right into the next one without knowing it, or give each project a unique cover image that really marks the beginning.

Another thing is; don’t let your page dimensions dictate how you show your work. Yea it may look cool and different, but if they can’t read your work, whats the point? Personally, I have a similar format for my resume and sketch samples but my portfolio I went back to a more traditional size 11 x 14 or 11 x 17 as it allows me to more efficiently show my process not to mention it will help to condense a project down. Personally my limit on pages per project is 4-6 depending on the complexity but that is just my personal limit.

Best of luck.

Hey Traftos,

Thanks for the feedback. It was really helpful also thanks for the kind words. I understand what you mean. I will have to reduce some pages. The Nike project is a thesis so there is a lot of info and difficult to condense but I will try it out. Also I think I can get rid of some others. Such as the travel case.

Thanks for the help and I will post the changes once I am done.