ID Portfolio Review

Hi everyone,

I’ve been out of the game for quite some time (2yrs), trying different kinds work in other fields, but I re-routed and decided that my strongest interests lie in ID. I’m looking for my first ID job or an internship out in Hong Kong (in-house or consultancy). So recently I devoted a lot of my time to rework my student, personal, and my best professional pieces.

Here’s a link to my 2014 portfolio.Behance


Thanks for reviewing, I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Good to hear you’re back in the game.

Nothing wrong with sending out PDFs as an attachment when you are applying via email.
However, to get people to look at it here, I would strongly encourage you to upload it to a web viewable platform such as Behance.
It will be hard to persuade forum members to download your portfolio.

Make it as easy for your audience to review and share your work.

I think Bepster is right, I had to ask for permission to see your portfolio but not everybody would do that. If you had it in coroflot or behance, it would be much easier to just take a look and give you feedback right away.

Thanks for your tips!
Whoops, there was a problem uploading a PDF, and I didn’t forsee those gdrive issues either. I’ve edited my previous post and included a link to behance, I hope you’ll take the time to give me some feedback. Thanks again.

Hi all, I’d just like to ask again, if you have any suggestions/improvements/thoughts about my portfolio, I’d really appreciate your time.

I have gone for a more direct, to the point type of portfolio, as my audience are OEM/OBM/ODM type manufacturers and design consultancies like to see CAD renderings, form development process, and some materials/manufacturing knowledge. If I were targeting companies like Philips, I’d try to focus more on story telling I think…

If you’ve any thoughts to share, it’d be really great to hear!

Thanks.

Sorry Daniel, I was on holidays and couldn’t reply before.

First of all, I’d limit the number of projects, you have some like Energy or Revive that aren’t well explained and lack of a clear and appealing presentation. If this is a portfolio you’re going to be sending to companies, I’d include max 3 - 4 projects.

I also think that in general you need to improve the layout of the presentation, putting bigger images, a sort of guidance for the viewer though the pages and put more images of the sketches, process and layout. The dyson and collaborate projects are interesting but, in my opinion, the presentation lacks fluency.

Thanks Alejandro.

Yes, I’m putting together a portfolio to send to companies, so I’ll try and bring up the level and add better ideation/refinement sketches in 3/4 projects, and save the other projects for meetings in person.

I’ve looked at how others are presenting their work, and have seen a lot of great examples, but have personally struggled to readjust into my own. I’ve gotta get a lot of work done now!

I’ve put together a few recent projects I completed on my behance, hopefully you can take some time to view my work and share some feedback on the content! :slight_smile:

Hi Daniel,

I think the process needs to be explained better on the 2 new projects.

The pet treat launcher is a cool idea, but you have shown what it is and not why it’s this way. I like the explanatory image with the dog, it tells me that this is something to reward my pet with and starts the story. I would make this the first page and make the caption more bold. A page following this showing why its a good idea would help link this into the story before before going into concepts.

It seems like you designed what you had already thought of and didn’t really explore very many other possibilities. The concept exploration page needs to be stronger to communicate your ideas. The sketches are washed out and don’t pop out to me, and they are a randomly placed on the page without a hierarchy, which doesn’t give much indication about why you chose the selected concept to move forwards. The renders look nice but an in-context shot of you using it (it doesn’t have to include a pet) would benefit the project.

Ditto on the crane tower, you haven’t shown any process. The images you do have communicate the finished result of the project well thought.

Hi Daniel,

You’re very much on the concept side and your designs and sketches are good.
You can refine your designs much more focusing on details and proportioning.
I would like to see some more depth in your portfolio, either towards understanding of target markets, manufacturing or ideation skills.
The crane toy is great, a more photorealistic rendering would have been good showing the actual look of the materials. Also for the Chanel sketch, it’s good but more detail and realism would be great.
For the dog toy I wonder if there is a need enough so people will buy this rather than a gimmick - for example you can also convert the design towards a children’s toy and get faster ROI as well as create an interesting game for kids.

Thanks AndyMc - good points, though this project was actually an inhouse project and basically a re-skin hence not exploring other possibilities. But maybe for the sake of the folio I could diverge further.
I thought for a while whether to show these projects as portfolio pieces or not, as they were mainly re-skinning existing toys. Not sure if you’ve been in this situation too? Or maybe it’s better to show other self initiated projects instead is my other thought.

Cheers for the advice Ralph and interesting ideas! How would you show understanding of manufacturing?
p.s. As a child, I wouldn’t like to be shot by this toy!

It just needs more context to make it clear that this is a re-skin. Perhaps show the old product, the existing tech pack and what you made different or improved and why, and go from there. I haven’t myself just yet, but I think it would be quite common to design around existing internals, so the project has merit for showing DFM understanding.