Assembling an Effective Portfolio

Various Portfolio Forms:

1. Portfolio Box:
   A well constructed portfolio box, available in standard sizes such as 16" x 20", 14" x 17", and 11" x14, is a relatively quick and painless presentation. Pieces are recommended to be mounted on black or gray foam core boards. A large box will allow a large collection without having to reduce pieces. A smaller box is easier to travel with and is simple to store.
   
2. Bound Portfolio:
   A bound portfolio creates a very professional and holistic presentation of your work. Project images will need to be reduced in size and restricted to paper but the finished project is often quite impressive. Process work can be incorporated in the page design to show the development of projects.
   
3. An Online Experience:
   Sending your book to as many people as possible is optimal. This is difficult when making physical forms of work, however sending a URL to a person is as easy as setting up a laptop in a Starbucks. Since this web page is your first impression it should be beautifully and conscientiously designed as well as graceful and easy to use.

Note: As important as it is to have strong work, it is equally important to be able to communicate aspects of your work to other people. Poor communication skills portray lack of knowledge and experience.

Assembling the Portfolio:

1. Ordered by Strength of Work:
   Pick your three strongest pieces. Place your first piece, your strongest, in the very front. Put the second on the last page, and your third somewhere in the middle. The main advantage of this strategy is constantly reminding the reviewer of your strengths. The primary disadvantage is all your work should be on close par with your best work.
   
2. Ordered by Design Specialties:
   If you come from a generalist background, it is beneficial to organize your portfolio in categories like branding, packaging, interaction, advertising, etc. The disadvantage of this is that some categories blend into other categories. Web Design for example, might blend into branding and interaction. To challenge is to not be too stiff on dividing works into categories.
   
3. Ordered by Skill Sets:
   A more conceptual approach is to arrange your portfolio in categories such as Leadership, Collaboration, and Communication. This allows for greater flexibility and creativity in organization. Use of dividers and tabs is strongly recommended with this form of hierarchy.

Other Portfolio Tips:

1. Your first piece shouldn't be too complex, but should have a quick impact
2. Have one "story" piece in the middle. The story should have a positive experience that will engage and impress a reviewer.
3. High quality craft is essential.

Conclusion:
Not only is a portfolio a keystone to one's career, it is also a reflection on everything that a designer has done. It is very important to be proud of your work. Although I am young in my career, I've already started to collect my previous portfolios and compiled them into an archive. It's amazing to see how I've grown as a designer. How have you organized your portfolio? How has constructing a portfolio made you grow as a designer? What is the best feedback you have ever gotten from your portfolio? Please feel free to comment and link your portfolio below.

Johnson and Wales Second Trimester Portfolio Review

I've decided to accumulate a series of portfolio assessments from each trimester from my courses at Johnson and Wales University.  I remember when looking at prospective schools I could never find any student work. I hope that these posts reach out to high school students in aiding them in looking for good design schools.

DME1030 - Introduction to Digital Media
Professor Alves

Character Creation:

D&AD Contest Submission:

(Book Covers for H.G. Wells)

UNICEF Safe Water Project:

DME1040 - Introduction to Client-Side Development
Professor Santos

The Weybosset Hill Writers website (above) features a full html/css website that works in all browsers. Each page can be changed by the client via CushyCMS. Google Analytics reports are also sent to one of the new emails every Monday about the previous week's usability.

I wish I was allowed more time on each project. I was able to pump out really nice work. Although, now that I have assembled this compilation, I see what I can do different and how to make my work better.

Dr. Dog at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel

This past weekend, January 29th, Dr. Dog rolled into Providence's Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel with California's Growlers and Providence's own Last Good Tooth. I was lucky enough to go with some really good friends which made the experience so much more enjoyable.

Last Good Tooth took the stage first and drew a very big head bobbing crowd. The group really enjoyed their time on stage and even did some dancing. Their sound was very laid back, folky,  and had a really good fiddle in it. Their live set was much more enjoyable than the stuff on the myspace page. Last Good Tooth hails from the Rhode Island School of Design. They are also expected to play at the Brown Folk Festival on May 1st, 2010.

The Growlers took the stage next. From California, you could defiantly hear the surfer-rock progression. The band was composed of 5 members, and they defiantly enjoyed their time on stage. However, the crowd didn't seem to take in as much as the band would have liked. It seemed like there was too much anticipation for Dr. Dog.

The stage was adorned in Cherry Tree Branches and Wildcat masks.. the perfect setting to see Dr. Dog. When the time finally came around 11:30 pm, the band came on stage and quickly opened with The Old Days. 

The crowd got more energetic as the night on. Some surprise mosh pitting and crowd surfing surged through the large throng of people. Dr. Dog also played some news songs, I can't remember all the titles but one.. "Where'd All the Time Go" with strong emphasis on the "Where'd"

The new songs were very energetic and lively focusing on Toby Leaman's (bass) vocals moreso than Scott McMicken's (lead guitar). The new album is titled Shame, Shame and is expected to come out April 6th, 2010.

 

  

(Toby Leaman (top))(Scott McMicken (below))

Creativity and Organization in the Brainstorming Process

Creative "Writers Block":
I've recently taken up the construction and management for a poetry group and literary magazine here on my university's campus. I know that when I or anyone else undergoes a brand new project one of the first steps is to observe websites similar to the theme of the project.

I did some research and found many websites related to literature and poetry. However there were all very outdated and didn't feature any sort of uniqueness or ease of navigation.

Mind map:

In an attempt to gather thoughts and ideas in one place I composed a mind map.
      "A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing." -- as defined by Wikipedia

By creating a simple mind map I was able to visualize elements that need to be taken care of as well as design attributes that I might of not thought of before.

I created my mindmap on a mac by using MindNode Pro from MindNode.com. There is also a freeware version that works very well.

Inspiration Board:

I recently read a very informative article from Web Designer Depot on "Why Mood Boards Matter" (I find "Inspiration Board" much more fitting.) This good read was very eye opening for me. I've definitely spent hours and hours on layouts that my clients did not like, and looking back, an Inspiration Board would have been extremely useful.

An inspiration board is supposed to show clients what direction you are looking to head with their project. Elements of an inspiration board should include color schemes, typography examples, and other flourishes or designs you wish you to include.

For color schemes I am a huge fan of Adobe Kuler, which can be found at kuler.adobe.com or through the new plug in included in Photoshop CS4.

For typography examples I am an advocate of UrbanFonts.com.

I find a lot of my other design ideas from other designers in the community. One of the reasons I love web design and development so much is the huge community that supports it.

Conclusion:
To prevent a brick wall of creativity it is best to leave your computer chair and find inspiration of other means. I've provided my two favorite brainstorming techniques and I believe they will benefit me in my design career for years to come.

However, if you believe you have other great techniques and would like to share please feel free to leave a comment below. It would be greatly appreciated.

Flash Player 10.1 Features

Is anyone else excited for Flash Player 10.1?! I know I am. I've been following that gosh darn twitter and reading up on the latest features since the public "prerelease" on November 17, 2009, including the Adobe Max Web Conferences. There are a lot of new features on the way which will revolutionize the development of websites across multiple new hardware and mobile platforms alike.

The Support for New Platforms

With the release of 10.1 comes the support of a multitude of mobile devices, including; smartphones, netbooks, and other internet connected devices. Target mobile systems include (but are not limited to): Android 2.0, Microsoft Mobile 6.5, Palm webOS, Symbian S60 V5, as well as Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6. (Notice the lack of "iPhone" on the list...)

The consistent flash player is expected to deliver the most productive experience to users across these new operating systems and devices. This consistency reduces the cost of creating, testing and deploying, essentially the complete essence of development, to such devices. 



Designed for Mobility

Mobile text input -- Support for native device virtual keyboards with the TextField or inputText is a must if no physical keyboard is detected for mobile devices. The focused text field is centered in the visible region of the screen medium as to not obscure the keyboard or a random event such as an incoming call or a rotation of orientation.

Screen Orientation-- Exported SWF content can adjust to different screen parameters depending on orientation landscapes. That is from portrait to landscape, which is consistent with other built-in applications on the device.

Adaptive Frame Rate-- Processing power is limited and very critical on these new mobile devices. Such a reason is why Flash Player now adapts to optimal frame rates to save CPU resources and available memory.

Accelerometer Input-- Accelerometer's are currently present in mobile phones and a wide variety of video game controllers such as the Nintendo Wii controllers. Accelerometer's use direction on x, y, z coordinates to locate orientation of the device or provide for game input. Event information gives developers the option to change or re-manipulate the format or layout when reorientation occurs.

 

Sleep Mode-- Probably most important, when the screen goes into sleep mode or power saving mode, the flash player slows down to preserve CPU and battery consumption on mobile devices. Also, whenever a phone call is received, the device will automatically pause the flash player.

Enhanced Browser Integration

Multi-touch and Gestures-- User interaction is a key component of the latest hardware advances. Specifically in the new HP TouchSmart personal computers and laptops, native features such as pinch, scroll, rotate, scale, and two finger tap are a part of the every day user interface. Flash Developers can take advantage of this through ActionScript 3 API's. This allows for the interaction of multiple items simultaneously or the multitude of native features.

Lee Brimelow's HP TouchSmart Flash Tutorial Demo

Demo of multi-touch on windows and mac

H.264 Video Hardware Decoding-- Also introduced in this new version of Flash Player introduced hardware based video decoding. Directed to deliver smooth, high quality video with minimal overhead across multiple mobile devices and PCs, it can be expected to video playback performance and offload tasks from the CPU.

Browser Privacy Mode-- The new "private browsing", supported by Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer, is now supported in the flash player. Local data and browsing activity are not parsed locally, providing a consistent private browsing experience. What's about this is that no developer action is required.

Out of Memory Management-- Allocating more memory than available has always been a top reason for HTML crashes. Instead, with Flash Player 10.1 adds a logical decision in shutting down the SWF and not the whole browser. Now, users will receive a notification to restart the SWF, or instead will see a notification to restart the browser instead.

Expanded Option for High Quality Media Delivery

Content Protection-- Using industry-standard cryptography, Adobe Flash Access 2.0 and Flash Player 10.1 provides an ever-growing environment to protect a wide variety of content; whether it's video on demand rental, electronic sell through, for streaming, or download.

Peer-Assisted Networking-- (requires another program, "Stratus", a new communication protocol) 10.1 now supports groups, which enables an SWF application to segment it's usrs to send messages and other forms of data between a predetermined community. Examples of this include streaming of continuous live video and audio communications through multiple browser portals. 

Microphone Access-- The long awaited microphone addition has launched a new wave of applications, such as audio recording for transcoding, karaoke, voice manipulation, pitch detection, and more. 

What Does This All Mean for the Future of Flash Developers and Designers 

I'm extremely excited for the multi-touch capabilities. Not only will these gestures work for touch-screen machines, but it will also work with components like the new Apple Mighty Mouse and the trackpad on new Macbooks. 

There have also been a lot of improvements in the way the Flash Player runs that is going to allow the streaming of media and rendering of 3D content to boom in the future. 

With that being said I think it is a fair guess to say that new media applications as well as advancements to current web trends are going to take place in the flash player. As an ActionScript and all things Flash junkie I am truly spasmodic about this 10.1 Flash Player Update. 

New Twitter Layout

Like many others (according to MTV) my new years resolution to tweet more.

With that being said, I did a little research and found just how boring my old background was.

I observed other twitter fanatics like DesignerDepot, Color Burned, and Instant Shift. I wanted to spice it up. I also got some observation from the standard default twitter background as well.

I added a seamless background, a sort of metallic surface. On the left I have pretty sleek section where I have all my contact info listed. I'm going to try and use twitter as a multiplatform medium to make connections as well as keep up with the latest and greatest web standards and trends. On the right I have a tampered logo of mine as though it was painted onto the metallic surface.

I did this simple transformation in my spare time, which trust me, is not plentiful. I am happy with the outcome, however I know I am going to look to redo it again.

If you don't follow me on that gosh darn twitter, check me out.

Character Creation - Part One

As part of a Principles to Visualization and Design class, we were instructed to develop a character. draw it, color it, scan it, and do it all over in illustrator. The images below depict my rough draft for such an assignment. I plan to assosciate the character into a full 24 x 36 inch print before I return home for Christmas Break.

Although I don't have a name for such a character yet, I think I know how I want to incorporate it into a poster. It involves a seamless background!

Above is my original sketch, I'm not a very good drawer, but I'd like to think i make up for it in illustrator.