Hi Everyone,
Thanks in advance for any and all comments and help. I am a industrial designer from New Zealand who has been traveling for the 4 years since graduating. I have done some freelance work and some of my own self driven projects, unfortunately nothing that has gone through to production. However its is time for me to return home and I am really wanting to get work within the design field so I have put together my portfolio and am currently getting in touch with companies back home. One of my major problem is that I am 4 years out of school with no solid references on my resume, and although what I have learned from traveling is of value but I dont quite no how to approach companies for work or if my portfolio is up to scratch to impress them.
My portfolio site is http://www.hamishdudley.com.
Thanks again.
Just my knee-jerk thoughts:
- “Today you are in luck I am currently looking for a job” cracked me up
- I think the site is way stronger than the PDF, in fact you may want to take the PDF down and format it a bit more like your site.
- Sometimes I have a hard time “getting” your projects. Some more straightforward views of the projects with clear callouts could help.
- Too much text on the site and far too much text in the PDF
- The solar lamp thing has too little content (or too many pages?), and the Mu thing has way too much per page, IMHO
- More images of the concrete lamp? It’s an intriguing project and a disappointing single page
- “About me” page is a touch braggy
Thanks Hatts for looking over every thing,
I did mean “Today you are in luck” to be funny but now you mention it I dont know if it is a good thing or not.
I already had the PDF made and wanted to cut down on the text when making the website, but I do need to edit it down even further.
Yeah the Mu pages are over loaded I need to bring them more in line with the rest of the portfolio.
The concrete lamp is still a work in progress, I need to try again making that one and add more photos.
Cheers This gives me stuff to work on for now.
Thanks for sharing your portfolio, and I think it’s great that you’ve spent time traveling. I’ll post my initial reactions as well:
Too many squares (rectangles?) in the All Designs page. Some of them are the same project, but just the concept and development pages split. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I want to be able to get a good sense of who you are and your skills as a designer before I click for more detail. I would also get rid of the handheld case project. I think one of your main projects should show that you know how to use CAD software; that project is a bit empty and unfinished.
With all of that said, I really like the Palletable Curve and I’m really into the sketches in the bike seat project. Best of luck to you, and I hope you get work in the design field soon.
Hey thanks awjj, thanks for looking, I am glad you enjoyed some of it. Your right about the handheld project, it was a one hour thing I was asked to do. I was thinking about also having a blog where I will put the smaller projects random sketches and other related things. But I don’t know if that is just a waste of time,and would show off things that aren’t really any good, like the handheld project. Not sure. I should add more cad work into the other projects because there is not a lot at the moment .
You know what you could do is, sketch out concepts for that handheld product, show the cad images, then do a few final renderings. That would make the project complete. It would basically flow like sketch-prototype?-CAD-final render.
Blogging isn’t bad (don’t take it from me though, I haven’t started a blog yet), but you should focus on making either the existing projects you have better, or starting a few new projects that surpass your current ones. Like I said before, fewer “squares” but with more depth in each.
You know what I didn’t see? A product that was directly influenced by your travels; something only someone like you could design because you’ve been there, interacted with the people and saw a solution. That would be a great tie-in to your traveling and how it supported you as a designer. Again, best of luck.