Creating & Choosing Your First Design Portfolio Format & updating it over the years

Being in field of ‘Design’ where person identified by his work… So documenting your own work in some kind of portfolio or just collection of well designed Artworks will work for Artist & his career.

In today’s world of digital art having portfolio in tradition form like printed artworks on fine paper sticked inside leather jacket & having own domain name & website dedicated to showcase portfolio online will build credibility to artist’s professional career

First I will describe what details that portfolio should describe on his portfolio

  1. First Page with Introduction to Artist & his Background
  2. Title of Artwork
  3. Brief Given
  4. Method of Approaching to Work & some details
  5. Nice High Quality Screen Shots of work
  6. Nice Layout & Arrangement of Artworks
  7. Year of Design
  8. Copyright Notice
  9. Artist’s Contact Details
  10. Credits
  11. A Thank You Note

Here we look in to two ways of building portfolio, Digitally & in Traditional printed form.

Digital Portfolio
A Digital Portfolio may contains of two platforms PDF (Portable Document Format) PDF is Open Standard of Document Exchange, (I will not recommend PPT – Power Point Presentation as it needs Microsoft Powerpoint installer on display machine) & HTML (Website)

Portfolio in PDF File
You can design portfolio in Raster Format through Photoshop & then export it to PDF or Design Portfolio in CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign & then export it in to multipage PDF. Having consistent user experience will definitely work to identify you with your artwork.

Showcasing your work with Professional Portfolio Sites like Creattica, Coroflot, Krop, Flickr will work but disadvantage of this would be limited amount permitted to showcase number of Artworks through their service or you have to buy professional paid account to showcase more artworks, so it is in a way costly

Using Blog sites like wordpress.com, blogger.com, tumbler.com will work as is there is no maximum amount of post or image numbers for free account but it has disadvantage that your parmalink will work as subdomain which has less branding attached to portfolio design

Showcasing your artwork through Forums like deviantart, conceptart, cgtantra will work but there is no freedom for different layout to your portfolio page you have to use same layout of page as others are using

Showcasing your Artworks through Your own Domain Name & Own Website will work definitely in your favor as You will have freedom to use unique design & layout for your website & again you will have full control over it to use free services like Google Analytics to know how much traffic you have monthly & how many times your artwork has been viewed & again you can start blog with your website to write your design experiences & tutorials etc. & you will get lot more exposure for your artworks.

Offline Portfolio or Printed Portfolio
Your original artwork or photocopies of your artwork arranged in plastic or leather folders will work but it has down side attached to it as it has to travelled by you with you where ever you go & you have to carry it with you in every job interview… but I don’t know why but printed portfolio has been left behind with the time as digital & computer age has come up in design industry

So this are the notes I would tell my fellow designer about portfolio showcase may be it online or offline…

Thanks & Regards
Mandar Apte

Published by Mandar Apte

Mandar is a Mumbai-based multi-disciplinary designer with UX/UI, Logo, Symbol, and Brand Identity design expertise. He currently runs his Mudrkashar Linguistic Apple iPhone, iPad, and Mac app business in the heart of Mumbai city.

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2 Comments

  1. Thank you mandar..well written article ..i was planning to start my portfolio this week..thanks a ton

    1. Hi Arun, Thanks to You Also…

      It is always great to hear from friends like you…

      Be sure to come back again to Brilliance of Design blog to read more articles like this in future…

      Thanks & Regard
      Mandar Apte

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