Portfolio Critque

Hi All,

For the past 4 years I have been doing freelance ID here in San Francisco. While it has been enjoyable i’m looking to make a change and get back to working with a team and keep growing. I have found it difficult to grow when I work alone. For the past few months I have been compiling my work and sharing it with people to get feedback. Love to get some more perspectives. Along with my freelance work I run a small company called BASE which has been a good outlet for some more creative endeavors especially the things we have coming out next. If anyone is going to ICFF in NYC this year please come say hi would be great to meet some new people. Will be part of the Design Milk section :slight_smile:

Back to my portfolio, trying to show a good showcase of work that visualizes my experience. My background was originally in fabrication and prototyping, was a welder for awhile, then i went back to school to get my ID degree. Anyways could really use some feedback or thoughts. Anything help is greatly appreciated.

thanks!

Here is the link:

https://issuu.com/markkelley4/docs/mk_portfolio_final__high_res_5f4f3725dcfd60/1

Any thoughts? been struggling to connect with potential employers and am not 100% sure why

thanks!

Your Issuu link isn’t loading for me. (Nvm, after refreshing a bit, it finally loaded.)

Work isn’t bad, just isn’t presented in a terrible exciting way. One thing that I could see helping you get a but more traction in SF consultancies is upping the sketching pages a bit.

Pages like this are what you should be trying emulate/ get too. (These are pages from SF consultancy designers that were still in school when they were made.)

Same with renderings, You just need to step it up to the next level. The base skill is there, just need to add excitement to it.

agreed, I think the work is there, just needs a bit of polish and pop.

One thing I think you could add is a project with more complex form. All of the forms are pretty straight forward. The one exception is the LED strip tool, but the form does not seem as resolved there. It feels like the result of what you could model vs what great form and surfacing is.

Thanks both for the helpful feedback, really does help. Been hitting a wall a bit. Definitely been hearing my work skews a bit more on the mechanical side when i would like it to be more form developed. Will keep pushing

thanks!

not the best example, but I did a quick overlay to show how maybe that could be a little bit more formy. I don’t like what I did with it, just a 5 min exercise trying to integrate shapes.

diodeled2.jpg
It’s not a bad portfolio, your skills are there and to me your sketching and rendering skills for concepting are just fine.
I can see that you can come up with various ideas in short amounts of time and don’t overly spend time visualizing - I know, that’s one thing you learn as a freelancer.
Your portfolio is just a bit one-sided and you don’t show much depth in your research/design thinking. Like with the eclipse lamp, I would have been eager to see much more exploration as to what it could look like and research towards lighting just as well as towards product. Instead you already show detail sketches on the first ideas page, as if you had already determined the product before exploring the options.
The idea reminds me of Arnout Meijer’s work - http://www.arnoutmeijer.nl.

So I’m missing a bit of story development as to who you are as a designer, your vision, how you approach projects and your way of problem-solving.

I also did a small take on the strip applicator leaning towards a more organic shape

ok thanks to both of you for the helpful feedback. Im working on incorporating all these great critiques. Definitely difficult designing things as a freelancer without others to help push you more and I think that is my biggest struggle. So much of my work has been relatively form less design work unfortunately, perhaps thats my own fault for not pushing more. Majority of my projects have been with startups who just want something remotely decent looking which i think i have accomplished, but i want my work to be much more.

One of the things to consider is that when consultancies pitch their concepts to their clients its not just “here is the work. Pick one.” Theres a great deal of story telling behind why the product looks the way it does and how that translates over to the brand/consumer.

Hard to find examples of these presentation online, because they always stay internal.

Ive always been a huge fan of one of my professors styles of work. (This stuff is really old, but still amazing)

But notice how his sketches pages aren’t just about the form. But also show details to its use/construction. These are the types of pages you often ship to a client at a consultancy. A nice 3/4 overview and some sketches out details as to why this is more than just a form exercise. Repeat for the next concept.

@sain thanks so much for sending that, really helpful and inspiring. Will be incorporating this idea

thanks!