SUPER FANTASTIC COMPANY CO.

DESIGNING A DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
CHAPTER III
AUDIENCE



Fantastic. You have decided to create a portfolio! Now you can put in all your spiffy projects and work into a neat and happy bin on the internets. But OH NO! WAIT! Who is going to be looking at your portfolio? You have to figure out exactly who is going to be looking at your portfolio. If you're trying to get a job at a company, you have to tailor your portfolio exactly to that audience.

For example, you probably don't want the same portfolio that was used to get you in college to get you a job at SUPER FANTASTIC COMPANY CO.



Also, if you're trying for a specific job that is looking for a good 3D artist, then maybe its a good idea to put some of your best 3D in your portfolio, hmm?

Your portfolio has to represent who you are. If your forte is in webpage design with CSS code, and that’s what you really want to do as a career, then you have to emphasize this. You don't want a company hiring you, later finding out that the webpage designer they hired doesn't know anything about making them in flash.

How easy it is to navigate your site also impacts different companies in different ways. If you are going for more of a technical job, than artistic, then your portfolio should be very clean, readable, and straight forward. However, a design company would be more accepting of a creative and exciting portfolio that truly shows the individual's artistic talents.


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HOW TO BE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SOUL
CHAPTER 5
RUNNING A STUDIO
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Last chapter was about creating your own studio, and what fun that was. I bet you all thought that was it. No more stuff about studio's after chapter 4. WRONG. Chapter FIVE goes even deeper into the wonderful world of studios.

Focusing more on the business end, this chapter explains how to employ workers, how to assign specific jobs, and how to keep them happy.

One of the problems that comes up is growth. If your company becomes successful will you suddenly have to lose all your free time to keep up with it? Will the publicity go to your head and lose all your friends? Maybe. BUT! A company must grow. Without growth, the company will go nowhere and workers will become tired of restrictions.

Just like men leave a smart awesome woman for a beautiful woman, good creative workers will leave for better companies. ): So when choosing workers, you must always be aware and prepared for the fact that the good ones won't last.
However, this always allows for fresh talent and new ideas, which is just what a design company needs. Something irks me about this though. It conflicts with the first idea too much. If a company is always growing, then a good worker should be content enough to stay. Also, if said worker is really good and you don't want to lose them, then there's that nifty thing called raises. hmm.


CHAPTER 6
WINNING NEW YORK



WOO! NEW YORK IS MINE!!1

What the chapter title really means is: creating work that will 'win' over any company to buy from you.

There're many factors to watch out for. People tend to chose based on taste. So to counter act this, one might show different types of work to a potential buyer.

A little nifty idea Shaughnessy comes up with is whenever writing a letter, it's a super idea to write the address out by hand. It will stand out more than a computer printed one and adds some personality. I agree and disagree with this. It's great to make it stand out, but it might stand out for the wrong reasons. Example:

Employer: "Does this dude not know how to print on an envelope? Not technical enough for MY company!" *throws letter away*