Hi everyone,
I have been checking core77 for a long time but never took a look at discussion boards. This place is amazing! Full with very useful information and also entertaining for a design student. I sure will hang out here more.
What is better than checking someone’s portfolio to get to know him. So here is mine :
These are works of my first 3,5 years in uni. Of course it is “unfinished”.
Thank you very much for your feedback.
Hey Balkan,
Glad you found Core77 and hopefully you can learn a lot from here!
My best piece of advice for your portfolio is “simplify”. Your portfolio seems very busy (probably a lot of great stuff going on!). Make it easier on the eyes to follow the visual hierarchy of your choosing by cleaning it up and simplifying. Most portfolios only get 30 seconds to a couple minutes of time. Sometimes when you say too much, you end up not saying anything at all.
On the flipside, I dig your final spread the best and appreciate your logo.
-Pb
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This is just my personal opinion. But i absolutely hate reviewing portfolios done in Issuu and if this was a job applicant, i probably wouldve stopped considering him on the spot. The reason? Its impossible to see anything without zooming in… and sadly nobody’s got time for that… which = a terrible reviewing experience for the reviewer. With that out of the way…
Field-Max - Redesign of a model D-Max for a secondary usage.
You’ve already lost me.
Think of a portfolio like you are telling a story. Imagine yourself telling a story about the D-Max to your friends. How would you set up that story? You would probably tell them about the the characters in the story, the environment, their lives, etc. Imagine each of your projects as a short story , write it/type it out in word then use the story to help you visualize what needs to go into your portfolio and in what order and with what details to clearly communicate to the reader what it is you want to tell them.
You can PM me if you want more feedback.
[update]
You are still in school right? I would highly recommend that you show your portfolio to at least 10 of your classmates and 10 of your instructors. Ignore any feedback from anyone who just says “hey this looks good, not bad, just work on your sketches a lil.” Cuz that doesnt help u in any way. If they do say something like that, make sure to ask questions. Ask what in particular looks good to you, and what do you mean by working on my sketches? Can you show me an example of a good sketch or good portfolio? Ask questions and ask alot of WHY? questions.
Hello Balkan,
I would agree with pretty much everything sketchstone said, especially the first first piece of advice. Isuu is a terrible interface for showing a portfolio because you have to zoom in to see anything and then when you turn the page it zooms all the way back out. Plus it takes a while to load.
I never thought I’d say this about a portfolio because brevity is king, but I would advise drastically increasing the number of slides so we can actually see what’s going on and have some visual/psychological breathing room. As it stands right now, you have about 4 or more different pieces of information that are all critical to understanding the concept on one page, and it’s so cramped that it’s hard to understand what’s going on. For example, for the D-Max (I still don’t even know what a D-Max is, as sketchstone mentioned earlier), you have brand identity, user research, inspiration, conceptualization and some scarab beetle infographic all on one page! That’s a LOT of info. Each of those pieces could have their very own slide. You can then take out any extraneous info and edit it down later.
Thank you very much PB! I take them seriously and appreciate a lot. I think this is also to KenoLeon’s question, yeah I’m never offended by criticism, I know you say all these things for my sake.
Sketchstone and Mauriello, I see your point and can’t believe why noone has ever told these kind of things. Maybe its because people who i showed my portfolio was only my instructors and classmates who already knew everything about projects. To be honest, I don’t even like my FielDmax project, but because there is so much effort given and it was the most composite project we have done, so i thought yea i should probably make this my first on the portfolio so it can be seen what im capable of. Probably i was wrong You have been very constructive guys. Thanks.
Gonna change from issuu to another platform(any suggestions?). Gonna make a story out of all these. Get more simple and expressive. Read all your comments 99 times more and think and ask WHY. Please if there is more, even for details I wanna hear them.
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Issuu has definitely been a wrong choice. You’re absolutely right Keno, I’ve gotta learn web design. I’m slowly realising there is just infinite things to learn about design. Hope will improve myself in time and check out your template. Thanks a lot! Also the book looks very interesting, i might order one.
Personally i would not worry about creating your own website right now. You are gonna spend a ton of time making it look all pretty and then realize you dont great content. No matter how great of a web designer you are, its not gonna mean anything if your work doesnt communicate properly and there is no substance to it.
Before you do any graphic design of typography, color, and layout. I would start writing down all the text per project in a Word document, and then start wireframing out the content and text together… in fact when you start wireframing it out i would post it here in the forum so we can help you along the way!
Well yeah @sketchstone I know what you mean, and i agree that i will spend sooo much time on web design but i think thats also a skill i need to learn in long term. For now, yes! what you say might be a great start point because i will of course need a hard copy of my portfolio. So I hope we all can see some progress here. Thanks!
No what im saying is not to do it he hard way and create your web portfolio from scratch. You are a product designer, you dont need to be an expect and web development or design. Instead there are thousands of free templates on wordpress or great portfolio sites like squarespace and behance that you can leverage without makingn a website yourself.
Thanks a bunch Keno! I owe you a beer