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
p40-p74



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.