Portfolio Tips – Reviewing YOUR Design Work – Part 1

What's wrong with everyone? I'm Matthew and Sina and today I'm joined by a very special guest patrol on Titus that you've seen on the show before and today we're going to review

your

guys'

portfolio

so we're going to break down

your

The

portfolio

gives you guys feedback so you can go out and crush it , so in case you don't know who I am. I'm Matthew and Cena. I'm going to create a professional now for about 15 years I've been a creative director at blind for the last eight years and before that I've been freelancing for about seven years so I've been on both sides of the table, as someone who's trying to get a job and getting a job as well as hiring staff and freelancers and patrol I have been a graphic

design

er and educator for over 25 years and I have actually

design

ed businesses in Los Angeles and I have been teaching at Art Center College of Design and my role there is to help students to prepare for what awaits them.

They are expected to do so both creatively and professionally and I am so happy that Matt asked me to come today because one of the courses I teach is specifically about developing your portfolio before delving into

part

icular portfolios. I just wanted to give you a frame

work

of how we're going to look at your portfolios and how we're going to measure them, so for me I'm

part

icularly looking for three specific things, one is the first impression, so when I get to your site, I know. immediately what it is that you do and whether it is presented in a professional manner number two whether it is consistent do you have at least three to five examples of good

work

consistently and whether it is presented again in a professional and solid manner?

Is there clarity and context? I delve into each of your projects. I know what the project is about, what the challenges and objectives were, and what your particular role in this was. What was your point of view? Because I'm mainly on the side of hiring people. I make my decisions. right away, so when I look at the portfolios, I usually have about 10 or 15 seconds before I decide if I want to spend more time on that portfolio or just move on because usually, like in this episode, we get hundreds of entries for a particular one. position and then patrol I don't know, I know you work at the Art Center and help students work on their portfolios.

Is there anything else you're looking for in terms of ways you can tag arrays or divide up someone's portfolio? I think what I'm looking for is to make sure that when someone like Matt sees the portfolio they're really aware of your uniqueness and that you're giving them a context in which they can take a look at your work. It's not just here is my work, it's here. Of my goals, these are the things I like to do so he can begin to place you and another part of his company. I think without that context, what can happen is that the portfolio is just seen in a decorative visual way where they're actually hiring. the person who has the ideas and the understanding of the problem, so I want to give a lot of feedback on how to present things beyond the images that will appeal to someone like Matthew at a design consultancy or a recruiting manager at a company like Nike, so What are you looking for that's different from something Matt would be looking for?

Well, I think we could start digging into the portfolios, so first we have Harsha Lani, you know, I'm going to slaughter everyone. their names I'm going to apologize for that in advance their goal is to get freelance work and a little bit about um hello, I'm tough Jelani from India. I am a paper, identity and packaging designer and I am working as a freelancer for the past. One year, my portfolio is a mix of personal and client work, so let's jump in here, so first impressions. Well, my first impression is that Behance is really good at visuals, so I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding if Hard is looking for work. internationally, whether he's looking for work specifically in India, whether he's looking to work in smaller companies with smaller companies or in larger companies, there are a lot of questions about the context.

Behance gives you an opportunity. Here's the porn about me, but he basically says the same thing. because and I would really like to know that I'm interested in shape design, that would be interesting because he's doing packaging. I'm specifically interested in the beverage industry, which seems to be what he's doing in the beverage and apparel industry because I'm looking to find out what his background is. It is and I'm still not sure how to place it. The images of my first impression are very nice, clean, pretty and colorful, so it's already a pleasure to look at, so if we were to click on one of these, this is for the branding and packaging of it. we land on this thing and we see a couple of examples here, they look like packaging mockups, this would be helpful, Matthew, if you told me what this was, yeah, well here we go from the Himalayas, you were born as a search for purity.

Indian flavors mixed with energy and health so that's about the product but not what you've worked on in this project so patrol has been saying there's no context for this work at all for this project so everything is visual, it's purely visual and If I'm specifically looking for a packaging designer, then maybe this works well, but the fact that you know it doesn't say what the project brief was, what the challenges and the objectives were and then what was your unique solution. this kind of thing I'd like to hear is if this is a rebrand, if this project exists and he's rebranding it mm-hmm, what is he trying to do to differentiate it from other types of project products in, say, In the supermarket aisles they are a disaster, right, right, so I don't see it, I see how it is the same or different or maybe and the other thing that confuses me a little is their Cola and lime mm-hmm and I don't know that they are pure Indian flavors with energy and health.

I don't quite understand the relationship of that statement to glue and file, so there's a bit of a disconnect here for me regarding the context it's giving me and Also, I always like to know if this is a real project or not. He said he has been self-employed. Is this an independent project or is it one of the projects that he has done independently? Let me ask you why you think that's important. from his point of view because working for clients is much more challenging to do for yourself, so if he actually produced this for a real client, I would be really impressed, if he was producing this for himself.

I'm impressed, but not so much because this, you know? This is a good project, but it's really impressive if it actually comes to market properly, so I guess I don't really care if it's a real project or not, because I have no context. in terms of what you actually designed, what challenges you solved, whether it's fictional or not, I need to know that, as someone who's hiring a designer, because all design is problem solving, its visual communication and problem solving, because we only have the pictures here no idea if they actually solved the problem or not so the context in which patrol was talking about what we normally call a competitive audit if it's packaging for a beverage product on the shelf how do you stands out? that one of the challenges that must be highlighted on the shelf is to communicate something in particular.

I don't know any of these things because there is no context on the website, so regardless of whether it's a real client project or not and client projects yes, they can be much more difficult, all I want to know is how you think and don't is represented here, let's look at another project. I am attracted to this coffee thing. I love coffee, so neuro coffee, so again, he's me. I think he's just writing about the product, but not necessarily about his role in the project. Beautiful pictures. I love seeing contextual material. These aerial shots love to see the coffee in the middle because it helps give the context of where this product could be. stoned and I like the production value or the level of clientele this could attract because this would definitely appeal to me as an avid coffee drinker so I want to give my impression that it's okay, just from what I'm seeing here I think He is a very competent designer.

I think he has a really high level of skill when it comes to attention to detail which shows in both the way the models of him look and how he is very, very careful with these things. I have a lot of confidence in it. your design skills and his ability to understand this particular market. I like coffee and drinks so if I had a project like that I would really feel like I would be a great designer to work with, but I also want more information because I'll be working with him giving him a brief, he'll respond.

I wish there was something to show me a little more of the process so I could see how it works. Something that helps me know how to investigate. I think because of the quality of the work. I see he does this well. I just need to get a good look at it. I was going to say it looks well presented professionally so it's well done but we as someone who could hire him I have no idea how this person works and that's scary because now it seems like a risk yeah and people hire right the least risky option, so when I look at this it looks beautiful, but I might be taking a risk because I don't know how it works if I gave you a client's true creative brief.

I have no idea what his thought process is like, how he could solve that challenge to come up with a design solution that is well thought out. I'm glad you brought that up when I talk to students about creating a portfolio. together I say, okay, the problem to solve is and everyone thinks it's something else and I say the problem to solve is instilling confidence because hiring a designer is a scary thing, there are so many things we don't know and especially when It's about We are from another country, we like the work, we are just not sure about one thing or another, the time difference, I mean there are so many things, if they are tough, let me know that he was also working outside India and Since then he has worked as a freelancer.

Let's say in the US, I suddenly have more confidence. I know Reddit is okay with time differences and can handle that, so his job is to instill confidence, if I were to land on his site as a potential employer. I'm looking for someone to handle branding and packaging. I'd stay, invest, and dig deeper to learn more, but since I don't have more contextual information, I'd probably put it a little lower on my priority list. who I might hire versus someone who is very good at describing the work and describing the context in which I'm looking at the work.

I would prioritize those people over the tough ones, but technically speaking, it's all there, okay, let's move on, let's do it right. Now we will see Rohit Raj's portfolio. This person's goal is to get freelance work and the synopsis is: I am a self-taught graphic designer who works on freelance projects. I am currently working on brand logo design projects and am now looking. to go deeper as a brand strategist to better solve problems thanks for the context, yes, now we know how to evaluate this portfolio correctly, so that alone tells me that I will find that here correct, those are your expectations. has been set up now it has to move on and it also tells me that Rho Heat wants to be a little bit higher up the food chain, okay so he might not be the designer, he's just doing all the work, he's the designer on the that I can trust. like more of a senior designer or an art director versus just a designer, that's where I think I'm placing it now okay, so those are our expectations, first impressions when we landed on this, I mean, I think the images are quite simple. "You're simple.

I have high hopes for you, Rho Heat. When you view projects in a specific order, you always click on the first one first. My guess is that the top left is the best project, that's the premium real estate that's there, okay? I guess this person has put their best project on the top left wherever it exists, okay, yeah, so I'll click here first to remove the communication barrier, open book, forget about this woman there. reading a six level book and look so that there is contact Hey, let's read this, okay, Mission Open Book is an English teaching agency in Japan and hopes to influence people to learn English and eliminate communication barriers between them, so Medellin spells punctuation like little things there if that's the goal, so I just need to say spelling mistakes will immediately eliminate you as a candidate, that's it, should we move on?

We are communication designers, so we are dealing with texts all the time and I can't have that nagging feeling that you are going to publish the client's work in a world that has spelling mistakes, there are so many of them. ways easy ways to check spelling this is a problem right now the problem here is that the word barrier is spelled correctly so thisIt wouldn't necessarily be caught by a spell check, but it would be caught in, say, Microsoft Word as a grammatical error, right? or grammatically any of these things where they are looking at the grammar, yes, and I just can't say this, enough creative directors need you to have these things handled and if you find that this is a difficult thing for you, you have to have someone to help you in who you can trust because we need to trust you, okay?

So it's all about trust, it's all about trust and you don't want these little things to add up and erode trust, so service is brand identity brand strategy research on the target audience this is great. I love the result of the context after understanding the inside of the agency, we developed the audience personas that targeted people interested in learning a second language and also gave a brand refresh to increase brand loyalty. Well, I want to stop and say that there is a us here and I don't know who we are. Is this a team project? If so, what is your role on the team?

So again, I love context. but you have to make sure that the context is clear, okay, so the impact after the launch of the new identity was that more than 100 people visited the website and about 20 to 25 people registered for the class. Although I haven't seen much of the design yet, I am very clear about what the challenge was and what its impact was from this project and that is more important than the actual form of the design, it is more about the function, its function. It has to work first before it can be beautiful and you know when I read this it gives me context to know that you have thought about a problem and that everything I will look at is moving towards achieving that goal.

Keywords so important to them. We are highlighting some of the keywords Friendly publishing in English, world peace such as brainstorming, the process, moving the board and sketches. Can we enter any of them? I don't think so, no and yeah, well, it's okay because it's especially with The sketches I'm just having a hard time seeing, yeah, I think if you're going to put them in there, show them well, don't make them so small, just zoom in on one. or a couple of them so we can see them. or talk about it, yeah, and I think the mood panel is a little disconnected from the keywords.

I would actually like to see the keywords and the mood panel because those are things that supposedly influence each other and that will help me see them. I want to connect the ideas as if this is your brainstorm right here how words influence the thought process of what comes out visually well so that the sketches come out open books help the English language in industries and schools of various sizes in Japan it is beneficial to have knowledge in a global language to remove the communication barrier and help them work or move again. I feel like this is a missed opportunity here because it seems like it's more about talking about the project in a big way rather than right now.

In it, now that we're further down the page, what was your thought process in connecting the words from the brainstorm in the challenge to what you highlighted here? What I would expect to see here mm-hmm is that something has been selected. and why because this is a detail and so I would like to know about that detail, but I like that at least it's doing this if there was a way I could even circle the things on the mood board that influenced the sketches that then they convert. Here, okay, open the book, so I guess it's like the cover and the logo.

Now he's talking more about the process. It took me over two weeks to research and create a client persona. Talk to a group of employers and instead of asking if they are interested in learning English, we ask them if they are interested in learning a second language and if so, what is stopping them? So, I thought this would be a little bit more about I don't know, I'm a little confused. when I read this, yes, for example, I think it might be that I want you to tell me what these shapes mean. I make assumptions about what these shapes mean, but it may seem obvious to you because you are the creator, but you will be able to articulate why you are using blue and red, what the star represents, why there are two shapes there, and you know this, the way that It works the hat feels a little uncomfortable, I think visually there are some design problems.

With the logo, I guess this is the logo that was developed here, but other than that, I think again, yeah, giving some context on how we got to this brand. What I really like that he did is that he put in a human hand. Here he's giving me a sense of scale a lot of times, especially with dimensional objects, books that pack, um, I don't know if you know, I know what this is because it's a pen, but sometimes I see things and I have no idea. Whether that's that big or that small, scale, especially when it comes to virtual presentations, is crucial.

That scale is important because of brand loyalty in different contexts. Azure. What is the scale that I like because these things are for? humans and I would like to see humans interacting with them and I also judge the success of graphic design by the relative size of the things you know, without that hand this book could be small and maybe that's why the logo is so big that it looks quite big here and It's still a little confusing what's inside that book as a cover right, I'm actually struggling with that right, okay let's move on so I don't know what this is, it looks like it's a Nelson Mandela quote but I don't have any context for what This is what we are seeing here and here you can see the difference in scale.

We have no idea if that's the size of a business card. I guess you're actually this card in terms. From the scale, I'd say it's probably a page from that book that I see, but I don't really know. What I would recommend to this designer is to make the information he has here a little more condensed, but then add how the design did it. how his choices correct the design choices he made are consistent with his findings as a person who does proper research, that's a very good point and I think that's what I couldn't articulate or before why I was confused because he's giving you got contextual information. and He tells you here's the problem, but He doesn't tell you how He got to the solution on the other side, so He just tells you this part and I think it's a little missed opportunity, but we know why because He's really trying to emphasize the right aspect of your brand strategy, kind of right, but even with the brand strategy you're recommending solutions.

A designer, he is the designer and he is the brand strategist. I guess I'm not sure why he has that word that we wrote, so maybe he. in this project he didn't do the design mm-hmm maybe he just did the brand strategy and someone else did the design well so that's the end of this project so I mean I think the context could use work but It is useful. At least you know that from your initial submission to this website, knowing that you want to do a brand strategy, it helps me frame and understand the work from a very particular lens now that we have it.

I think it's just a bunch of spelling stuff. a bit of connecting the dots in terms of what you thought and how you came up with a unique solution. Those are the things that are missing right now. Let's do one of the last projects. I am always interested in what they determine. is the last one so this is the mark of a Daily Show for a Daily Show or The Daily Show okay so I made a travel tip date I owed a tip sorry tip date about what does rs say square media, so now, when we were crazy, although the Gothic, there is no context for this new woman for today, so that's it, so what someone will do when they see this is they will evaluate it decoratively, so now I'm taking a look.

I know I'm looking at kerning. I'm looking at shapes and the relationship with shapes. I'm just looking at it from a purely visual point of view. I don't like those types of fonts. together mm-hmm I don't think this works very well as a poster because it's hard to read, even when we can, we have it so clearly here that I can't imagine being a car flying around and understanding anything. anything about this project, so that's a great point, so when we got here we were looking at it with a particular mood and now that there's no context or story, we're back to well, does it look nice? you can see it well? we're just looking aesthetically and you pointed out that there are some contrast issues here, even with us parked on this.

I had a hard time reading the r-square underscore means, so it's a very difficult font, if that's what it's going to be, it's not a font to use. on a billboard or know environmental signage, so Rho Heat. I think there's a little bit of work to do. You are a good designer and it's just a matter of finding out more about how to communicate the things you want people to understand about you as a designer and the strategy. I really appreciate you showing us your process, but I want you to show us better and walk us through it.

What happened here is that, in essence, you have to substitute sitting. standing next to someone and showing them that work, you wouldn't just go here Matt, here, take a look and you'd do it right, you need to guide yourself and then through the guidance it's very important to connect the dots for us, to have a sense of empathy that we have afraid of not knowing you we are afraid of hiring someone we don't know help us by organizing this because I think you do a fantastic job okay let's move on to the next person so let's look at the portfolio. by Kevin Lawrence Kevin Lawrence's goal is to get a job.

I assume it's an internal position and let's read about it. I am a designer from Scotland, my career has been mainly as an in-house designer and I hope to get a job in an agency or web agency my work is a mix of freelance and personal in-house projects my work is mainly web design however I have a solid background in design of impression; It seems like this person is in some sort of transition. I've done some development and then also some design work, so just from the context that Kevin has given us mm-hmm, I know that this work has probably been more difficult because you're dealing with clients, especially internal, so I'm looking at This now is really different than if you were graduating school and you had all these self-started projects, so you know, this isn't even comparable to some of the ones we had seen, so first impressions, I mean, I like big, bold images.

Here, these are helpful, nice little animations about this stuff, so it's fun, let's click on this top left because I always assume this is Team J's favorite physique. The team's founder, Zeke Jo Parrish, came up to me several years ago to work on his first one. website, this initial website grew quickly in Houston. He began to expand his business as it grew. I was tasked with creating the J-team physique online, as well as showing off the new online trainers who had joined the team. This new website required a full member area that customers and paid members could access remotely over the course of six months.

I worked closely with Jo to help achieve his vision of becoming Scotland's number one online body composition consultancy team. Wow, and then the process is great to describe this discovery research. prototype design, test build and then it went live and its clients highlighted branding and web design services here, so in terms of context, this is amazing, it's great at first glance, it gives me an idea of ​​what was the challenge, it even feels a little personal. I have a feeling you know Jo Parrish for some reason or maybe just the way it's written, it feels very personal so I'm kind of drawn to understanding it, okay now show me how you solved this challenge while I go here, so I guess this is the logo, the branding again probably needs a little context, maybe on one of these pages on the top left it could say logo design colors and write, it looks like it's a whole system of design and this.

Is the website okay? So now it's starting to show some of the features of the website. One of the biggest challenges in designing a website is the quality of the content you are working with. What influence did you have on that? Maybe you were? help them put it together or if you're working with a writer, either is fine. I just always like to know and I assume it's a wireframe, so again a little bit of context because I like the overview at the top where it gives me the broad overview of what the project is, but as I As we scroll down, it is necessary to guide the viewer in the thought process, in the evolution, where it started and where it is going, or provide context about what each is.one of these pieces because I'm going to start making up my own story about what these things are and you may or may not like it if you could highlight two features.

This website will do this for the reason we found it or the application is different from the website. The app does this because I really like knowing how you've leveraged the ability of these different types of media to convey the brand. It helps me know that you understand the attributes as you move from social media to app development to signage. These are all different mediums. types and that you understand the possibilities of that type of media gives me a lot of confidence in you and I think to that point, for me, I'm more interested in if I look at the process from the beginning, it's a prototype of discovery research, so This stuff makes me feel like you've spent some time understanding the user's business goals and how that aligns with the visual outcome here at the end, both as a website and as an identity, so what I don't know is how you got there to the solution because what I get is the overview here and then straight to the solution, this is just a solution, but it doesn't tell me what some of the decisions you made were.

It comes here because there were a couple of things that stood out. Let's see, the goal was to show off the new online trainers I had that joined. the team and required some kind of login area for full members and clients, so I have to go back there to understand that maybe it is this area, but we don't know well, it would be nice if it was just highlighted here. captions just captions little captions mall captions to highlight the coaches we use this type of directed photography here and we're showing the logo in the context of the coach so those are little things that if you just add these little adjustments it's going to help me like I'm scrolling down because when I got to the bottom of the page I forgot what I was looking at, so just reminding myself of each point, let's take a look at him talking about himself, the disciplinary designer at nine years old. of experience digital design marketing They make me geeky with creative things we will take the opportunity to dive and in another life I would travel the world practicing jiu-jitsu I really like this it is concise it is friendly if you could add Kevin to this He really wants to take advantage of the knowledge you have acquired by working internally to be able to work in external consultancies.

If there could be anything that would tell me that he is now very excited about expanding his client base that he can attract. I want to understand more. Oh, okay, this guy is really smart and there are certain things that you will learn from an internal process that I think will be crucial for those brand consultancies. You will have a vision of the projects. and process internally that we don't, so you have to help us know your value beyond just a designer because his goal is to work at an agency or web agency, but when he goes from in-house to an agency, I mean, he will have Any ideas on how to get projects approved, what some of the processes are, that sort of thing, yes, I think this is a good statement, but if you want that goal, something needs to be clear. you're saying that it should have some essence of what its goal is instead of just talking about it and the present tense in the past, maybe this is fine for the website because it may still want to consider some internal work, but if it did a cover letter that gives someone access to the site in that cover letter, he can just be specific about what his goals are in some way.

I need to know that mm-hmm, let's take another look at it, another project, okay, so I'll click. In this content I simply clicked on it because it was bright and colorful and had an interesting profit margin. When I came to CLG they had started using a loyalty card for several years giving customers discounts and offers at the various places I suggested. This loyalty system should be reviewed to keep up to date with advances in mobile technology. I suggested that the company switch to an app to appear more modern while still retaining the loyalty points system for customers.

Well, stop there. empathy mm-hmm I have no idea what CLG is, I guess it's the client, the client is CLG, but I guess I don't know what it is, CLG is a, it can be super simple, right. A flash appears, it doesn't really tell me. whatever CLG likes, there's no context personally, if I'm in a hurry I'll close this project, sorry, because it's like you're a designer without empathy, you won't be able to do your job very well, okay, look for events. Access to special offers and booking a table or function or some of the key elements when designing and developing the application for CLG user experience and functionality were considered at very early stages and throughout the construction process we work closely collaboration with a development company to advance the design. ideas and functionalities in line with what could be achieved from the developer's point of view.

It is the same as the process described here. You know, a little advice I would say to Kevin. When making these overviews, it might be good to break them down by overview. challenge in goal only for us as for me. I'm reading it out loud for the audience's sake, but in real life I wouldn't read that much. You know, I just need the bullet points and I evaluate them very visually. I would be skimming this very quickly because I wouldn't spend much time reading this. Okay, now we're sketching out some brand identity. I always like to know why I appreciate you telling me all these formulas for their colors, but I find it much less informative than why those colors were chosen correctly and the relationship of those colors to CLG, whatever CLG is correct.

I'm the same way again, just the context, just dig a little deeper, like why these colors were chosen. and what they mean for the brand, so a little history goes a long way, otherwise it's better not to show these things, yes, and then some schemes for you to scan a QR code and then earn points. I assume these are screens from the I still have no idea what CLG is. I have no idea what CLG is so without knowing what CLG is or what it does I can't rate this at all ok sorry yeah I mean the pictures are very nice like us.

We're getting over this like I like these mockups and these web pages and the colors from a visual standpoint, we go back to that right because that's all we can evaluate, otherwise I have no way of understanding, like you said, if one of the things that What designers believe is that this work speaks for itself and I don't think that's the case at all. I think because you know him so well you think he speaks for himself, but it took you a long time to understand him and you had to do it. I understand it deeply to be able to design with it, so I think it's kind of a cop-out.

I hear it a lot from young designers like: I just want the images, the people, just the work speaks for itself, no, you don't speak. because your job is very important to me if I'm going to hire you and if Matt is going to hire you, he needs you to be able to explain your job very clearly, whether it's to us, the team or outside as clients, he needs to have enough confidence that he can take you to a meeting with a client and you could actually explain your work and although clients may understand it because they understand their company, they need to know why the designer was so important in developing this.

Could you? It is not like this. You have to prove yourself, you have to be fluent in the ability to talk about the creative process and its importance. No, I think that's really good because as we continue down this path, there are more and more designers who are very competent. technically well, we're getting to a point where tools are getting easier to make beautiful things. The difference between you and another person is the value that you can bring to a particular client or a company that you work for, so I think what Patrol said there is like what did you bring to the table that could be useful for this situation? in particular and the more they can highlight it, the more they can tell that story as they build their portfolio pieces and the case studies, the more useful it will be for me, so if I'm hiring, I'm evaluating you, maybe I know what value you could bring to me, okay, another thing for you, Kevin, is that you are calling your company digitally shielded, which is fine and what I assume is that you have a company, so my company either met or was blind or the future would be hiring digital armored, not you because he's saying I'm a design company mm-hmm so it's a little awkward if I'm going to do it then if you actually want to come and work with Matt as an employee mm-hmm because I would hire Kevin Lawrence , not to Digital Armor, so there is a little bit of sense, yes, yes, so your perception of him is that this is what he has put.

He committed that now it's a studio and I would hire a studio, and I don't know if that's what he's doing because he said his goals were different than that, to that point your perception is that it feels like I would have done that. He's committed to video at his own company, which is called Armor Digital mm-hm, and I don't think he's willing to be hired, so the way to fix it is I would say Kevin Lawrence mm-hmm, video specialist. web, you know. It may even be given a title so you know I'm on the fence about it.

I don't necessarily completely agree with that. I don't care if people buy an alias, but the perception I share with you is that this is a studio and that this is not an individual, so it doesn't seem like you're right, it's like we're competing now, we're on the same level instead of hiring a potential staff member here, you know, it's so there's a disconnect there, but I don't care if someone uses an alias where it's not in their name. I want to comment on the photo. I'm not criticizing Kevin's appearance. I would like to make sure people understand the perception of the photos.

Do you think about Kevin? What information does that photograph of Kevin give you? He is a guy who likes to smile and seems super nice and pleasant to work with. Yes, he does and he has a working environment. He seems eager to be smart early on. For some reason, it seems like he would actually listen to me and care about what he had to say and he seems a little more mature. He said he has nine years of experience, so that helps me get some life experience under my belt. I'm really positive, I feel like he's a colleague of mine, okay, let's reach out because that's something you really wanted, you've been easy to reach out to, yeah, that's what's been easy to reach out to, yeah, his emails electronic, right? here and then he has a shape.

I don't think you need both, but he's fine, so when I land here, if I assume the work is good, I can see that the work is great, we did a little bit of that. I think this is an area where we can go a little deeper into, like you were saying, what some of his goals are and he could really expand here because in the footer there's actually more information about them than about him. My page on the right, so all of these are favorite food, favorite place, inspired by Krishna, even your coffee, coffee, by the way, being inspired by Christo is fantastic because it tells me that you really care about the design business and I really care.

I care about good designers. I care about the design business, so, you know, a level of self-improvement, I think that was a good step, so assuming I go through all this and now I'm ready to contact Kevin, it's pretty clear to me that it shows all the places I can find it if I wanted to dig deeper, so this is pretty simple, yeah, no, I don't care about these forms. I want to make it as easy as possible for people to contact you so I think sending an email is great, I think you could also give me a resume and that resume, if that's the one I'm linked to, you might want a phone number there just to have more ability to get in touch quickly.

I don't like filling out forms and sending I don't know, I don't know. I would like to know what the statistics are on how many people actually use this. They appear a lot on portfolio site templates as an option, but that's about it. Yes, I am kind. Likewise, I would prefer to have an email address to contact someone directly and then continue the conversation. That's the only reason I would see the need for a contact form because maybe you do different things and have different dropdowns here to say "Me." I'm reaching out and then there's a thread that might help with sorting it on the backend, but it's usually for people saying if you have a business that assumes it's more digital is that you need a way to sort and vet customers, but If you're doing this as a freelancer it doesn't make sense unless you're only getting emails like 20 leads a day and then you need some way to pre-screen clients and that's when you'd introduce a contact formsome information maybe something like the minimum level of participation, but that's only when you're really busy and you need to pick some people and put up a wall and I wouldn't do it Kevin, really good job, let's highlight it in the summary.

So some of the things that Patrol and I were discussing was whether or not you should use your real name or a fictitious name for a study, regardless of that. I agree with using an alias, but the thing is that the perception is that you are a studio. so it doesn't look like I can hire you to be an internal staff member, so that's the number one thing that I feel is going against your goal right now, number two as we go through each of your project breakdowns, just giving us a little. It's a little bit more of a step by step guide as we scroll down because when we get to the bottom we forget what was at the top so just use subheadings or just break up your explanation and walk us through each step that It took me a while to get to the final result, and lastly, I think we talked a little bit about the About section in your footer and your About page.

I think if you can dig a little deeper into your About page and just tell me something. a little more about their goals or what they aspire to do. I think this is a perfect opportunity to do it here, but we all do a very good job, so we went through a lot of portfolios and gave advice to everyone, so this is the time in the episode where we're going to do a little recap to make it very clear to them how they can apply them to their portfolio so they can go out and crush it in the real world.

I think context context number one. Context Context is king because it frames your viewers' gaze, whether it's a potential employer or someone considering hiring you, it gives them an idea of ​​what they're seeing and why some of you have missed opportunities. of providing these moments of context and Other points of view have done very well, but I think context is very important for us to know how to evaluate what we are seeing, so we are really asking for written statements that can be at the beginning of a project or at the beginning and then caption other images in the project for who is where it exists what is the nature of the business and why should we care.

I would also add that you could put into context how we should view it from your perspective as to what I think this represents the best of you. I would like you to see my experimental typography or I used my images in this to show how I am a designer and illustrator, so consistency is next. I think consistency is very important, so when we come to your website. Are there at least three to five examples that show consistent professional work? Because if it's all over the place, maybe you have a really good piece on the top left and then we go to the bottom right, your last piece. and it's not that good, better just edit that.

It's good to have a couple of really strong, consistent examples so that I, as an employer, can develop confidence in you as a potential hire on our team. I want to encourage him. If you don't have, say, six complete and finished projects, maybe you can put a section that's projects and that has three or four and then put a separate section on your website that says experiments or studies and you can put these things there. that are quite unfinished or more spontaneous and you will appreciate them as unfinished pieces and experiments, so the next thing I think is that some of you are underestimating the power of sequence and I think that sequence is very important from the moment someone receives the email you send.

Let them know when they come to your site, get into your projects, and then drill down to see how the project story plays out for someone else, so it's very important to have clear context before an overview and as you delve deeper into any topic in particular. project you have to hold the person's hand to guide them through your thinking process how you identified the users problem and how you solve it in your design solution you have empathy for us when you use acronyms or things you might be familiar with no We know, we don't know what XYZ is, so help us, just make it clear.

Next thing I think Patrol came to this a couple of times. I think it's a good opportunity with your portfolio in your work to share your unique POV I think it's important because there are so many designers looking for work Why should I hire you and not someone else? What is the only thing you are going to bring to the job? That will be clear to me now when you do it. That unique point of view may be something that's more important to me than it is to Matthew, but at least we'll understand how to place you within the context of our different design offices, and I'm not talking about style. really talking about a unique approach to the work that you are doing and you are a unique combination of skills that you will be able to bring to the project.

I heard a couple of things. I heard you want someone to have a wide range. of skills, but also someone who has a unique point of view because I'm reading it in a different way than the way you're describing it, so when I think about a unique point of view, which I also think is important when you have your own voice. The job. I'll give you an example, if Jonah was filming an event and then Ricky, our other editor and videographer, was filming the same event, their footage would probably look very different in terms of what they found valuable about that particular event, so there's that. literally their point of view from their camera, their lens and how they choose to document it and we can create very different stories based on the exact same chamber or the exact same content, so if there's an example here, I'll rename this blocking system .

What is your point of view on that? What is your opinion and how did you connect the dots that are interesting from your point of view that another designer might not have done? I think that's why it's really important to share that thought process and that point of view on things that I don't know, we're thinking differently, okay? Another tip here that I want to highlight for all of you is that it is very important to have a clear objective, so that when you submit your portfolio, you do have a clear objective. objective of what you want to do and your portfolio is representative of that, then you will know how to talk about the job in a very clear and direct way so that I, as the employer on the other side, who has limited time to evaluate potential candidates, can know that I could take this square peg and put it in the square hole because that's what I think.

I'm looking for a designer who is very skilled in typography so I need to see that in the work properly so it just needs to be It's very clear when you present your work and what it is that you want to do and what you're good at and that needs to be represented throughout your portfolio. You have the opportunity to talk about your goals in the about me statement or on Behance. form, you can put it like the description at the bottom, it shouldn't be something vague and general, it should be really specific. I'm really interested in working with cultural institutions developing brand identity and exhibition design, so be it. very clear about what you want so we know how this person is a specialist yes, that's what I want, be very clear about your specialization, whether it's a niche market or a skills specialization, either way, make it clear to us so that we can place it. you and it will improve your chances of getting a job if you are looking for a job rather than just freelancing there should be something on your end that links to a resume and that resume can be part of the website itself or it could be a link to a PDF file, the PDF file works very well because people sometimes print them, stack them, and evaluate them as a group.

I think a resume is extremely important, it should be well written and extremely meticulous in spelling and grammar, so I think it is important. I like to see where people have gone to school. I'd like to see some of the experiences you've had, even if those experiences aren't design related. I like to see what you claim to be digital. experience in whether you have some analog or craft skills if you speak more than one language and what are some of the interests that you have that are really relevant to the way you approach design. I have a completely different opinion.

Don't know. I believe in resumes and I almost rarely look at them when I hire people, but I think it's industry specific, so if we're going to say at Google, I think the resumes are probably pretty good, which happens in companies that are different than those from then, blind or the future is that your work is examined by the group's human resources, okay, so a resume is very important, if your resume does not pass, the portfolio is not actually delivered to the creative director or to the director, so you have to separate the audiences. If you are going to work in-house it is very important that you really look at the hiring manager, what they are looking for is different than what a creative director would look for and you need to keep both audiences in mind. you are interested in that type of comment and it will be very clear to you if there is a message for an application for a particular type of employee or freelancer, they will tell you what the requirements are, so you just have to read.

The requirements are very clear to show what it is you need to provide as evidence that you can do the job, so sometimes it's as little as a portfolio, sometimes it's more like a cover letter, resume, and portfolio. because you have to review those layers. You like me? today's episode and do you want to help us further by leaving a time-stamped comment below and identify some of the things you liked about this particular episode? Were there any particular

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