Documenting a very large project in portfolio? Examples?

Hi all,

I’m about to wrap up a professional project that is extremely large in scope, where I was involved in a lot of phases from concept, to prototyping, to design for manufacturing, and also manufacturing support. I’d like to start documenting this in a portfolio format, so I won’t have to scramble to remember what I did in future, but there’s so much to show, I wouldn’t want the viewer to be overwhelmed, confused, or bored.

Does anyone know of any good examples of very large projects documented well in a portfolio?
Would I break it down by process phases? Or parts of the design I had major input on?

Thanks for any help!

The thing about “large scope” projects is that they’re impossible for another person to truly appreciate without having been there. So there’s no sense in forcing them to understand it. Plus, many of us have done massive projects, so it’s not particularly novel.

If you present the info clearly, and show the stages of the project, it will be evident to the viewer that the project was deep and lengthy, and that’s all the conveyance you could really hope for. And separating by project phase is a good idea.

Just peeked at your folio and it seems your NASA section summarizes your experience nicely. Why not do something along those lines? Minimal text, large imagery, clear subtitles.

Although your IPEVO work is conveyed clearly, the organization is less efficient. There are a lot of pages that could be combined or scrapped (you don’t need a whole page to explain that the iPad can swivel on the stand.)

It’s going to come down to careful trimming of material. You’re just gonna have to leave many chunks out. First trim the tasks you weren’t particularly involved in, then trim the stuff that’s hard to understand without tons of text. Nitty-gritty details/decisions are a large portion of our day-to-day tasks as designers, but the sad truth is that they make for extremely boring folio material.

If I had an example of a well-documented large project I’d post it here but unfortunately it’s 5:30pm on a Friday so beer is calling my name.