Hi everyone. I just finished putting together my professional portfolio. I am looking for freelance/side jobs right now, and I would like to know how it looks to professionals such as yourselves.
On Coroflot, I have the same setup, but a few more projects shown. I am on the fence about whether or not to include them, because many of them are old or don’t have a lot of content. I want to boil my portfolio down to only my best stuff.
Please let me know if you think I should include any of the extra projects in my main portfolio (any project that doesn’t have the orange text is one that is not on my professional portfolio).
I was about to post my portfolio, and then I saw yours, small world. Really digging your logo.
Looks really good, you’ve come a long way. I think it was smart of you not to include all those projects from coroflot, they don’t fit the style of the rest of your work. However, I do think you should add more projects that go from concept to a final design rather than breaking them into skill sets (sketching, rendering etc). The skill pages are nice, but I believe showing more process work would be beneficial.
The x-head project looked like fun, however there are a lot of images to go through. Maybe combine more concepts onto one page? Also adding call outs on your work would be nice, it would help explain your design process on how you reached your finished product. Just pointing out specific areas that you would like to highlight, whether it’s a function or an aesthetic that makes you stand out from the rest of 'em. Who did you work for? An employer would add some legitimacy to your work.
To start I would be curious who you are trying to reach with you portfolio. You mention that you are hoping to go after freelance/contract positions, but would you be approaching design consultancies and other designers, or are you hoping to approach potential clients directly?
The reason I ask is because it can impact how you present your portfolio and can also help determine what projects or images you might include.
From my experience when approaching clients, you don’t necessarily need to showcase the entire process. Some quick images to illustrate preliminary work can speak volumes, but clients are generally more concerned with the end product. In that case it is more important to show final renderings or images of the final product solution. Images like the 3D scans of the x-Head project can scare a potential client off, because they may not fully understand what they are viewing, and only see a blurry/blobby image that looks unresolved.
If you are approaching someone that is familiar with the design process, they may want to see images of the entire process. They are going to want to see that you can sketch and work through preliminary form development, build digital models and produce renderings that are clear to read and inspiring. In this case the screen-shots of the 3D scan are nice to see.
With that said, I do think that you could be more critical about what images you chose to include in your portfolio. For example, the e-Go project looks really intriguing, but I am not sure that you need to include 5 pages of sketch options for the cockpit layout. The fourth page especially can be paired down. Pick your favorite 4-6 options rather than show all 20, combine those with other perspectives from some of the other pages so that the page is not so monotonous. The same could be said for the next 4 pages of modeling that all show very subtle variations (similar comment to the one made by Sangoma about the amount of content on the x-Head proejct). The e-Go renderings look a little flat. I would to see those be a bit more impactful by possibly incorporating a sky or more intriguing background. Those should likely be some of the last slides in the sequence. It seemed odd to end that project on a photo of a rough, full-scale mock-up.
Overall, there is some really nice work in your portfolio. I think you might want to go back and re-work a couple images for better content. Hope that was helpful.
Hey dude! Thanks for the crit man. I think my biggest issue is that I lack full projects; that’s why a lot of my work is broken into the skill sections. I’m going to try and build that up more with new projects.
Re: Your comments on the X-Head project…I’ll try to implement your suggestions.
Architorture:
Thanks for taking the time to write all that out! I honestly never really considered it; I guess I always assumed that I would be going directly to potential clients, but…hm. I’m not sure which I would want to target, now, and whether or not I would have to create two separate portfolio profiles for that?
Duly noted about the extra content…I’ll definitely pair down the projects.
Thank you guys so much for your comments, they’re extremely helpful!
EDIT: I’ve shortened up the X-Head project by merging lots of files into a single image. Now on to reworking e-Go.
