Portfolio Review!

Hi everyone,

I would love your set of eyes to view my (never finished) portfolio. The first three projects (digital scale, salad spinner, cookie crafty kit) are farther along than the rest so you’re welcome to prioritize those and provide feedback. Any comments related to content, quality, layout, continuity and flow of pages, etc., are always welcome, along with any grammar and spelling mistakes as well.

http://www.sharonyyoo.com/

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Hi Sharon,

I love the cutting-edge feel to your portfolio. I don’t like the term but you can do a bit more personal branding. The overall layout and header makes for a bit of a generic first impression.

It is clear that you are a great designer who is used to working very efficiently towards real products. Your sketches are top-notch, if I can give you one advice is to become just a tad looser, for some types of sketches you can make more use of approachment where you approach a form with lightly set lines rather than fully premeditating the right one. This results in slightly more sketch lines but overall your form and overall presentation will be better. Minimal use of sharp, subtle and complex highlights is what can make a sketch pop. Rembrandt was a master at this. Also using contrasts of warm and cool colors on opposite sides of the sketch work very well, Scott Robertson’s sketches are good examples of that.

I like your ‘Fisher-Price meets Apple’ aesthetic. I always like to think of the space as a whole when designing products. These products look nice in themselves, but people would not want the kitchen as a whole to be designed that way. In the kitchen, people desire more sophisticated forms and materials. Take notice of some architects who also designed consumer products, such as Stefano Marzano.

@KenoLeon Thank you for a great review! You hit the nail on the head about needing to be succinct in project description. I tend to over-communicate my involvement in each project. I was involved from A-Z of development for all projects, so you can understand the struggle and my overt enthusiasm to showcase that. Definitely agree about needing to curate the sketchbook selection more carefully. I haven’t invested ton of time and effort into it and I think it shows.

@ralphzoontjens Your expression of Fisher Price meets apple aesthetic is what I wholeheartedly express in work, albeit unintentionally but naturally. I’ll take a look at references you mentioned above to continue to brush up on my execution style. Loose sketching technique is something I’ll experiment along with varying lightly set lines. And personal branding/highlighting the ‘about’ page is something I always shy away from, to let my work shine instead, but in the end, it is a personal website. :laughing: I have some ideas brewing so will be chipping away at work.

Thank you both for a constructive review! Always helpful to receive feedback to keep the momentum alive.