I’ve recently been looking for new work; I’ve had traction at some firms that have lead to interviews and practical assignments, and I’ve heard nothing from other firms. I figured lets throw the ol’ portfolio up on Core and see what people think.
I’m positioning myself as an industrial designer who loves taking concepts to production. I have a love for the detail part of ID. The “guts” of a product fascinate me far more than the user research that helped developed the concept, or the pages of sketches that helped refine the design or the initial renderings used to sell the concept.
Many of the projects I’ve worked on have been taking other designers concepts and developing them into final tooling ready designs. This is the part of design I love; figuring out just how something is going to work, go together and be mass produced.
I consider myself an extremely talented SolidWorks modeler; I’ve presented at the past two SolidWorks World Conferences and have received almost perfect user ratings from people who have attended my sessions.
Based on my portfolio, have I demonstrated the above? If you were looking for a mechanically oriented designer/ CAD expert/ design engineer, would this be enough to get me in for an interview?
Notes: I’m at a consultancy, I’ve been working for multiple clients. Unfortunately, lots of clients haven’t given permission to show work on their behalf. Some have granted permission assuming that their product’s can’t be identified publically . Hence the limited number of projects and pixelated graphics on certain pages.
Many of the projects I’ve worked on have been taking other designers concepts and developing them into final tooling ready designs. This is the part of design I love; figuring out just how something is going to work, go together and be mass produced.
I think you should add what the input to your work was, and how the iteration proceeded. Did you get a foam-model and did all the CAD, or did you get a Rhino-file and added some supporting ribs? Big difference. That way one could judge how well you translated the designer’s intent into production. And If applicable, throw in some design-iteration down the line, that would communicate how you can cooperate to get to the finish line.
I would def interview you for a design engineer position. But if I were you, I’d think about founding a one-man consultant firm that can work at customer’s offices, with your own laptop and SW license. From a a client project manager’s POV there’s so many times you want someone to jump in and “finish shit off”, without starting to question the design that’s already over budget. “Just take this idea and implement it the way we envision it, but have enough design-sense to overcome minor roadblocks”
This is almost universally getting CAD models without draft/ thick sections/ other manufacturing issues from various software packages or terrible modeled parts in SolidWorks and remodeling them from scratch in SW with a clean feature tree, draft, proper manufacturing details, etc. I would also remodel parts from scratch just so future design changes could be parametrically implement instead of trying to hack and slash at a client supplied model.
I’m sure I can find some examples and include them. Maybe not as a whole project, but just as a general SolidWorks modeling page?
Engio is right, it’s not clear what was your role in the projects.
I also think the presentation could be improved. The portrait orientation it’s odd, as it’s better to have a landscape orientation, it helps visualizing the whole thing (It also makes the pages bigger while navigating on a screen without having to zoom in).
I also believe the layout of the different projects could be improved. I’d leave the different manufacturing techniques and the solidworks workshop stuff for the end, focusing first on the projects. A short explanation of the projects and the goals would help understanding the whole thing. I find the pages too busy, you have too many images per page and texts are in general too long and too small. It’d be better to have less text but bigger and easier to read, as I would just go through the whole thing, not paying much attention to the text unless is something very interesting.
Other than that, projects show a nice skill set and experience and a wide range of projects. If you are looking for a position as a design engineer or as industrial designer focused on manufacturing, you shouldn’t have much problems finding something.