SUPER HAPPY PORTFOLIO TIME

DESIGNING A DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
CHAPTER EIGHT
REPURPOSING AND OPTIMIZING



Most of this chapter is about organizing your print work. Having the older versions of the finished product might be useful so you can show your thought process and development.

Having different file formats in your digital portfolio is nessesary. For example, if you have a video you'd like to show, you would want to make it downloadable in Flash, Quicktime, and Windows Media Player. Doing this insures that the person looking at it can make their choice based on preference or on what programs are already on their computer.

There are a lot of basics that are reviewed:
-Don't make your video pop up in a window that's bigger than everyone's sceen size.
-Don't make the file sizes of everything so huge.
-Don't make bad navigation.
-Have enough content to call it a portfolio.
-Don't make a bad site.
-Don't fail at life.

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Ok so this ISN'T a web portfolio. But it's an amazing webcomic. The artist has the most beautiful color pallets and style.
http://normallife.livejournal.com/



I've always loved her work, and very envious of her tabelet she works with. I would love to work with one, if only they didn't cost so much! Unfortunately, her previous work isn't viewable currently for some reason.

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BUILDING DESIGN PORTFOLIOS
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Woooooo! It's page nintey four dude!

Anyway, about this part of the book: It emphasizes that you really want to have a web portfolio thats exciting, new, and awesome. Meaning, that you want to have something stimulating to gain the audience's attention.

Lets put it this way:
The more they like your portfolio, the more they like you, the more likely you'll get the job, the most likely you won't starve to death in your early 30's.

So make an exciting and happy portfolio ^___^

I know i've said it like two posts ago, but I LOVE how this book actually has examples in it. Not only that, but they're GOOD examples. Very temportary, very modern, which is exactly what's in style in the design world. Its just nice that finally one of these books can tell you what to do, and SHOW you what to do.

Something that the book mentions that I've heard many times before is, if you're gonna have music in your portfolio, you have some choices:
-Have a way to turn it off.
-Don't have it start automatically.
-Don't put music in your portfolio.
-Work at Wal-mart.

I was so happy to see Chip Kidd's work on page 87. I LOVED his book "THE CHEESE MONKEYS" any graphic designer (ESPECIALLY STUDENT) needs to read it. It's absolutely hillarious and creative writing, yet very informative about the real design world. But it does get very (VERY) weird at the end, but go read it anyway, its one of my favorite books.

ZOMG ITS: AN UPDATE

DESIGNING A DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
CHAPTER SEVEN
CLEANING UP



NOTICE:
I am very sorry for the lack of silly pictures/humor in this post. I went to Arizona for this spring break and my Saturday flight back was canceled D: and the next flight I could get was on Monday NIGHT. I got back at 5am this (tuesday) morning. So I'm all suped up on Mountain Dew and ready to blog away.

This is a continuation from Chapter 6 - Digitizing Art. After you scan/photograph/other means of digitizing your art, you might want to touch it up a bit before considering it finished.

Problems that you might see in your digitized work is
"Tonal problems
Combining and editing
Size and resolution
Sharpness"

TONAL PROBLEMS:
If you scanned your work, then most likely than not, it lost some contrast along the way. So that should be the first thing you look for. Fixing this is super easy in photoshop. You can either go to brightness/contrast and do it that way OR go to the histogram and toggle the settings there.

COMBINING AND EDITING:
If your art was SO BIG that you had to scan it in segments, you'll have the amazingly fun time of stiching it together. You have to make sure that all of it is relative size, color, contrast, and everything. I've done this a few times before and its pretty hard to get it EXACTLY right. It usually needs a lot of photoshop love to look good in the end.

SIZE AND RESOLUTION:
Of course the scanned/photographed size is going to be way off what you really want. Make sure you keep the original scan when cropping and resizing.

SHARPNESS:
I've never liked the sharpen tool. It always tends to make things look grainy and gross, but like the book says; only use the sharpening tool if you absolutely need it.


BTW I had no idea we had to have links IN the posts - I thought we had to add links to the side bar. So here's the first link of the blog:
SQUARE I
Great design company. Its almost like a portfolio, in that it IS the portfolio. The flash animations used throughtout the site are just awesome, and i love LOVE LOVE the theme its just so cool. My judgement might have been turned by my love of airplanes but who knows. Go check out of the short clips of each designer, they're great.

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BUILDING DESIGN PORTFOLIOS
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The mountain dew is running out, hopefully I'll have enough awareness for this next part.

Something that was mentioned before was to have 'flexible content'. Meaning, you can add and remove peices easily. This is almost vital to any portfolio, because it's never complete. You will always be adding and removing peices as you grow, and being able to easily do this will make your life much better.

Portfolios are all about presentation. Your work might be mediocre, but if it's in a super cool portfolio thats innovative and creative, that might make your crappy work look a lot less craptacular.

This book suggests that your first peice shown must be eye catching, but not nessesarily your best peice. Probably becuase you want to get your audience interested, but have something later to WOW them again and hopefully get their attention once again.

First impressions are very important, whatever they see first is what they most likely will relate with you FOREVER. So make it a good one.

Oh yay it talks about JOB HUNTING
I've worked on my resume like 10,000,300 times. The text is set for the most part. Seriously, I've had everyone and their monther check over my resume, including career advisors, so I'm set, 4-sho.

But now I have the lovely task of putting it together with my letter head. Wee.

Something that I've been thinking about a lot is PROMOTIONS. Having something small to give to the employer to remember me by. I remember that Pattie Belle told us that a past student handed out paper cranes with her logo and info on it. I just thought that was so awesome. I really want to do something like that. I was thinking: since my logo and theme is airplanes and clouds, that i could make a unique paper airplane with my info and stuff. I used to make my own variations and models of paper airplanes (that really flew) so I figure I'll give it a shot at least.

AUTOBOTS DIGITALIZE!

DESIGNING A DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
CHAPTAH SIX
DIGITALIZING TRADITIONAL WORK



Well, look at you. You've done work in the computer AND outside too? Hot damn you've done everything. Or so you thought.... What is truly awesome is putting the two together into the computer world or 'digitalizing' (which I didn't even know was a word).

There's a few ways to go about this. Wrong and right ways.

SCAN
If it's a flat painting or anything 2D, it's a good idea to just scan it. Some things come into effect here. First, if it doesn't FIT in the scanner, you can either scan it mulitple times and photoshop it together, or just photograph it. Also, if your scanner is pretty old/terrible/my scanner you might just want to go to a professional company like Kinkos or something similar.

Another bummer is that scanners usually don't do fantastic with a large value range, so you might have to touch it up in photoshop after scanning it.

PHOTOGRAPH
If your work is 3D, you will do much better with using photography to DITITALIZE it into your computer world. How the picture is taken is very important. In a sense, it has to be creative and interesting (aka: photographed well). Make it a composition, setting the object(s) in a certain manner that works best for the item.

For example, if Starbucks wanted to photograph their coffee, they're not just going to put a cup on a table and take a picture of it. They're gonna poor coffee beans arround it, put coffee bean bags with their fantastic logo on it next to the cup, and set some other items with it to make it a composition.

The background it important too. Don't forget about your negative space! It has feelings too! Something you might want to think about is to make the background consitant with the other pictures your taking if they will all be on the same webpage.

Another thing: If your digital camera is old/terrible/my camera you might want to buy a new one or borrow a good one.

DIGITIZING VHS TAPES
Thank god I don't have anything on VHS becuase the convertion to DVD looks painful. There's a lot of equipment you have to buy and software as well. (although if you do have work on VHS you ... probably have these things already). If you don't have the equipment, your best bet is to go to a company that can do it for you.

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BUILDING DESIGN PORTFOLIOS
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This book is pretty rhombus - the cover is MAGNETIC and the pages are lined with shiny metalic ... stuff. Trust me, this image above doesn't show the awesomeness of this book. AAAAND the cover doesn't even describe how totally algebraic the contents of the book are. Sara Eisenman puts tons of imagery in this book, just flipping through the pages is inspireing.


AND FOR JUST 40 BUCKS
YOU CAN ADD THIS WONDERFUL BOOK TO YOUR LIBRARY

Something that eased my thoughts was that Eisenman notes that when first making your portfolio, it does not mean it will be your final one. You'll be redesigning it and editing it FOREVER BWAHAHAHA - which is a good thing. Because even if you're not entirely happy with it initially, at least its done, and you can then focus on improving it.

This segment shows the different methods and mediums of book like portfolios. This is really great and also really initmidating. You not only have to come up with a really eye catching idea, but also you have to MAKE IT in most cases.

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In other news: My kitten got neutered last week.

Poor Samson.