Portfolio in need of review

Hello fellow designers,

I am currently searching for internship/employment opportunities as a relatively recent graduate and wanted some feedback/ideas for improving my portfolio. Last Fall I was given the opportunity to intern in New York, but it did not turn out to be what I expected. In the past several months I have gotten a few interviews but no call backs, so I am sure that along with my portfolio, my interview skills need quite a bit of work as well.

At any rate, here is my current portfolio -

Pages are basically meant to be seen as spreads, but I think I need to heavily consider an entire redo of how I present my projects.

Things I am currently working on with my portfolio:

  • Hierarchy (several pages are way too cluttered with information and need to be more manageable for the reader)
  • Page size (currently using 8.5x11 for ease of printing and handling) open to size ideas
  • Necessary information vs. fluff
  • Color palette (rather bland currently)
  • Length (technically each project is about 5 pages long (as spreads), but given the page sizing it is relatively long)
  • Misc. projects at end of portfolio has been up to debate among reviewers. I think I will drop them for now and create a separate file for them.
  • Regarding tech. design skills (CAD, sketching, rendering, etc), I am probably considered mediocre to okay by most designers so of course I am trying to continually practice and improve myself.

Thank you and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Hey Paul,

The first thing that I might change is to add a resume/about me/skills section in the beginning, even if you are sending this along with a separate resume/cv, I think it would be nice to have this info in this portfolio document in case they don’t look at the other file or get separated and it gives you a chance to introduce yourself a bit and make sure they have your contact info.

I like the direction you went in for the Muse project, I think that it might be worth building a 3d model and rendering up some nice detail shots. The physical mockup is great for showing the human interaction and scale but I think in order to really sell this type of project you really have to zoom in close and show off the details, materials, finishes, etc. Right now it still feels like I’m missing a page or two of final shots that get me excited about the device. Also I only now just realized that it’s supposed to be a Blackberry product after looking over it again, so some branding might help.

I think the Ferrari watch feels like a bit of a miss to me right now, sorry if that’s sounds harsh but it just feels like it’s still in progress and doesn’t have the type of refinement that I would associate with Ferrari and the 458 particularly.

I think it’s great that you went back and redid the model, but it looks like you skipped the sketches for the second version and designed it in Solidworks

I think the shoe box project could have more impact if you showed more examples of it in context of the home. The final shots are of it only in a retail context, might be nice to balance that out with shots of it as an in-home storage solution as well.

Hopefully some of this is helpful, all the best on your job search.