Monday 16 Jul 2007
Land a dream design job by creating a winning portfolio that wows potential bosses. We asked some leading creative directors to reveal the secrets of a perfect portfolio.
The ink on your design degree scroll is barely dry, and you’re bristling with ideas and grand plans of taking the design world by storm. But after six months and 30 job applications, you haven’t got even a sniff of an interview, so you aim lower, and seek to gain some work experience.
Yet after four months and hundreds of emails even this eludes you. “Too many people believe it’s their goddamned right to have a job at the end of art college,” warns Doug James, managing director of Honey (www. honey-creative.co.uk), a ten-person London-based ‘creative brand partner’.
“But it’s bloody tough. We probably see only one per cent of people who send us portfolios.”
You’re now faced with two choices: give up, like most design graduates, or ask why you’ve not made the breakthrough. Your first question must be ‘What does my portfolio say about me?’ Does it scream organized, professional, multi-skilled and commercially relevant, or chaotic, slapdash, limited and commercially miles off the money?
It’s likely the answer falls somewhere in between, but in today’s bitterly competitive design marketplace this isn’t good enough.
The factors that make for a good portfolio – whether print, online or PDF – are set in stone: show no more than half a dozen pieces of your best work, make it relevant to the recipient, and offer variety.
“I think three samples are optimal, five at the very most,” contends Doug James. “It doesn’t even have to be finished work; it could be a sketchbook of a project that got away, because it’s about how you draw, how you scribble and how you think. I believe ideas are what people want to see, and how you came to those ideas.”
“I think colleges must tell students to show everything, because they always seem to go for quantity,” says Law Roberts, studio manager with Devon-based Logo Design (www.logodesign.co.uk).
“But what agencies want to see is a few nice pieces, just the stuff that someone is really proud of. Often you’ll open up a folio and bits fall out all over the place.”
“Show your best work,” agrees Ming Liu, designer with digital London agency Thin Martian (www.thinmartian.com), “not your entire archive. We see about 20 portfolios in any week, so it needs to be ‘Bang, bang, bang’. Explain what the work is, why you did it, what the client liked and didn’t like, and what you might have done if you’d had more time or money. You also need to tailor the work as far as possible to whoever is interviewing you.”
Making your portfolio pieces relevant, says Doug James, is easier if you know what you want: “For those fresh out of college the most important thing to ask yourself is who you really want to work for, and why?
"These are the people you should be shooting for first. Then consider what’s relevant in your portfolio, and why. Perhaps it’s the creativity or the technology. You need some hook or link between your work and theirs.”
He continues: “Let’s say you’ve done some work for the motor industry, and you’re contacting a company that does a lot in the drinks sector. On the face of it these are poles apart, but you can concentrate on communicating messages, how you problem-solved around a brief, how you love what you do, and would therefore add value to what I do because you’re passionate and committed. You have to show keenness and proactiveness. You have to find some common thread.”
For one Logo Design interviewee it was more a case of loose threads, recalls Law Roberts. “He showed us lots of fine art and illustration, and when I asked him if he had any commercial work, he rummaged around at the back of his portfolio and produced an envelope with some postcards of a really nice project he’d done on work experience at an agency. It was the last thing he showed rather than the first.”
Variety, meanwhile, is not only the spice of life but also helps makes your portfolio hot. “Variety of work is important, particularly if you live in an area that does not have many agencies, like the West Country, because with an agency like ours you’ll have to design absolutely everything,” says Law Roberts.
“We find print designers who can’t build Web sites, and Web designers who can’t do print.” Nick Wylie, creative director of another West Country agency, Jump Media (www.jumpmedia.co.uk), finds this lack of adaptability “frightening”.
What’s even scarier for one-trick graduates is there’s no quick fix; they have to expand their skill set in order to succeed. “People still seem to be going down highly specialized routes,” says Wylie.
“As a company, we operate across branding, print, Web and packaging, but some people come to us with an entirely print-based portfolio. The way of design is now so multi-channelled, and to pigeonhole yourself at such an early stage is a dangerous thing to be doing. People should be exploring all aspects of design.”
A portfolio that ticks the right boxes is a powerful ally for a job-seeking designer. “The best I’ve seen was someone who came with the vast majority of skills,” says Nick Wylie. “She had interactive know-how, illustrative skills and high-quality typographical skills.
"The layout of the portfolio was logical and clear, and the materials she used were spot on. She had a really good balance of work, with some really nice arty stuff but also corporate work. It provided a global view of her in an interview setting.”
Being able to demonstrate consistency of approach is another vital factor. “Good portfolios show a very concise, clear, matching of work, because this is something you get increasingly asked to do these days,” says Law Roberts of Logo Design.
“A client might ask you to suggest 50 names for their new restaurant, and when they’ve chosen one, ask you to produce signage, menus, the wine list and a Web site.
"If someone shows you work across the gamut like this for a single project then you get to see a good piece of design from front to back, and that’s very exciting. Consistency of application is very important.”
He adds: “We hired a guy recently who had an excellent portfolio. On four or five projects he had sketches showing the build-up of a logo, as well as a finished version showing Pantone colours, and there were illustrations of shop fronts and shopping bags. We could tell straight away he had a really sharp eye for design.”
And don’t think that a print portfolio can’t demonstrate your online expertise. “I think people with interactive design skills can demonstrate this in a print portfolio,” contends Nick Wylie.
“I’m more than happy to see a storyboarded Web site from graduates, because it demonstrates their knowledge of how the flow of information and design gets drilled down through a Web site.”
But increasingly, print portfolios are becoming supplanted by emailed PDF versions as the initial shop window for a designer’s talent. “There’s a big change in the number of people putting work together in PDFs,” reveals Law Roberts. “It works very well, because we can go through them together on a large screen.”
“These days very few people leave a portfolio of work with us; they tend to be electronic,” says Doug James. “I prefer the immediacy of the information that you get with digital portfolios. Not only are you not killing the environment but I can look at them anywhere and any time,” he adds.
But Nick Wylie believes that the print portfolio has still very much got its place. “In a profession like ours, you’ve got to be able to communicate, and a print portfolio puts the designer in the spotlight in a way that online and digital portfolios don’t.”
Common portfolio mistakes…
For every great portfolio there are hundreds of poor ones, and most break the same rules. “We see a lot of trash portfolios produced by jobbing designers,” says Law Roberts of Logo Design.
“Typically, such a person might have worked for a double-glazing firm for five years and they produce endless double-glazing brochures. To land a more general design role, someone like this would have to do work off their own back, to prove they can handle projects like corporate identities, exhibition panels and packaging.”
A lot of people get carried away by the portfolio itself, says Nick Wylie, creative director of Jump Media. “They try to be too wacky, and use incredibly complex constructions.
"I prefer a really well organized portfolio that presents ideas and shows variety. I like to see use of high-quality paper, and I like to see sketchbooks, because this shows a good depth of design process. It’s a selling exercise after all.”
Law Roberts sighs every time he sees a graduate heaving in an enormous 80s-style A2 portfolio. “By the time they’ve done the 60-80 interviews they’ll need to do to get their first post it will be absolutely shot to pieces. It should be no larger than A4 or A3 – basically something that can be easily handled and passed around a boardroom table.”
Lack of accessibility is another problem, particularly with online portfolios, reveals Honey’s Doug James. “You get people saying they haven’t got PDFs of their work, so they send a link to a Web site in their CV, meaning you have to go into the CV, copy it out and paste it into a browser.
This looks very bad, because you’re applying to be a digital creative who’s a problem solver, who can make customers’ lives easier and get instant messages across.”
Think commercially when chosing work…
Whether rookie or creative director, the portfolio’s function is to sell its owner in a horribly congested marketplace to creatives who are unequivocal about what they need. While no one expects a recent graduate to proffer a body of commercial work, they are expected to demonstrate that they’re at least capable of delivering this.
“They should at least have some form of commercial-style projects,“ says Law Roberts of Logo Design. “Most will have done a corporate identity, which is vital, but it rarely goes beyond logos applied to a suite of stationary.
"With Photoshop they could easily take a picture of a restaurant, say, and replace the signage with their own, to provide a real-world visual. This kind of attention to detail puts you to the front of the queue, because it shows you’re thinking about the commercial application, and at the end of the day, it’s this that makes us money. Not enough people do it.”
Conversely, Ming Liu, senior designer with Thin Martian, says those with industry experience should not overlook the impact of non- commercial work. “It’s important to have your own projects in there to showcase your creativity. A lot of people think they should include only the stuff they’ve done commercially, but we always look for variety – something that’s a bit off-centre.
"If you include ten Web sites but also some life drawings you’ve done in your free time it’s something that marks you out as a bit different.”
The little things count, too, says Law Roberts. “One guy we gave a job to recently followed up his PDF portfolio with print-outs sent by post, which very few people do.
"Some may send a mini-brochure of their work but it doesn’t work as well as two or three well-selected sheets of work on quality A4 paper. It goes a long way, because it tells you something of that person’s personality.”
Making stupid mistakes tells agencies a lot about your personality, too, and they’re usually fatal. “We get emails where people have applied for a job and have forgotten to attach their CV,” says Ming Liu.
“We’re not going to remind you to send an attachment – we just delete the email. We say at Thin Martian that ‘God is in the detail’. You’ve got to get the details right.”
Giving thought to your initial point of contact is also vital. As well as flawless, you must be captivating, says Law Roberts. “When someone contacts us either by email or phone and appears interested in our work, and explains how they can benefit our company, then it gets your attention.
"It shows they’re looking at your company and that they’re interested in what you’ve produced. If they then ask if they can show us their portfolio, they’d get a favourable reply from any of our senior designers 90 per cent of the time.”
“Some people just write ‘Here’s my CV’ while some write nothing at all,” bemoans Ming. “They need to write a short paragraph about themselves that lures you in, in the same way a piece of good journalism does. It’s basic communication.”
“We’re in the communication game,” confirms Doug James, managing director of Honey. “We do three things for clients: attract, inspire and capture. The same applies to people contacting us looking for jobs.
"You attract somebody to your email with the header, and then with a few lines you have to attract me to view your work. You need to make it clear that you know a little bit about my business; intelligent flattery goes a long way. The imagery then has to inspire me, and the capture is achieved by making it easy for me to contact them to call them in for an interview.”
Once called in, you then have to sell yourself. Even if your portfolio is outstanding, a failure to communicate it properly will nearly always lose you the opportunity.
“When someone is talking us through their work, one of the most important things is to speak with conviction,” says Ming. “You need to really believe in your work, and being passionate about it is key as well. If you sound bored while talking about it then that’s not going to energize or inspire us.”
He adds: “It’s like a pitch. You can show your work but you’re being hired on the strength of work that you’re going to do, not what you’ve already done. What you’re pitching is yourself, not your work.”
How to win with online portfolios…
Increasingly, designers are showcasing their talent – or lack of it – online, and as with print portfolios, the watchword here is quality. Ming Liu is a designer with London digital agency Thin Martian, and reveals that he’s had designers email him screenshots of their work.
“If you’ve designed a Web site you need to point us to the Web site, not a screenshot of it.” Jump Media’s Nick Wylie reveals he’s even been sent links to sites that are nothing but a holding screen.
“You can’t get off to more of a false start than that.” Ming emphasises that “the key thing is that your portfolio is your identity”, and adds: “It’s the only thing I know about you as a designer before I invite you in for an interview.
"If the site is broken I’m not going to be going on a journey with you, and it’s the same if it looks wrong on my screen because you didn’t check its design on a Mac or on IE 6, say.”
And if it looks messy or is full of typos, forget it, says Ming: “It doesn’t take long to show the site to a friend for an opinion and a second pair of eyes. If you can’t be bothered to check typos on your own Web site it means either you don’t care or you’re too lazy.”
Doug James of Honey urges designers to think about their online portfolio from the user’s point of view. “Think about where your Web links are sending me. Have you built something specifically for me to look at, or are they all about you? Graduates should have the time to do this kind of thing.”
James adds: “A Web portfolio needs to tell me what gets that individual out of bed in the morning. With projects I want to know the brief, why you did it, what you got out of it, and any testimonies you may have.
"Go have a look at some commercial sites and see how they write about their work, and see what you can learn for your own.”
Small type, says James, is a common failing. “You click through and the site looks good but I can’t read it. People can get your attention and inspire you, but then fail to capture you because they’ve given me information in a size that’s illegible for any human being. This happens more than you can believe.”
He adds: “Navigation is another problem area. Designers and creatives think they have to over-design something. Take a look at Apple’s site. There’s shitloads of information in it but it’s pretty easy to go through.”
Seal the deal at the interview…
A good portfolio might get you a foot in the door, but if you fail to follow this up with an impressive interview, it’ll be slammed in your face. “One thing many people don’t do is research the company, which is easy to do online,” says Law Roberts of Logo Design.
“It’s much better to come armed with questions and opinions about our work than asking how much you’re going to earn and how much holiday you’re going to have, which doesn’t show you really want to be part of our team.”
He adds: “When someone’s talking you through their portfolio, one thing that makes a good impression is if they can give you a succinct, logical insight into the brief behind a project.”
But even a brilliant portfolio will be devalued coin if you’re late for an interview, as three out of four final-stage interviewees recently were at Logo Design.
“The only one who was not late was the guy who got it,” says studio manager Law Roberts. “Students in particular don’t seem to have much of a work ethic.”
Honey founder Doug James believes that when discussing a portfolio “you should have three key points that you want to say about your work per page, and make them as relevant to the company as possible”.
He adds: ”Show your work, explain the brief and demonstrate why the process you went through to develop, create and deliver the work will be advantageous to the agency that’s interviewing you.
“I would also have a sketchbook with me, to show how some of the ideas were developed. This is especially important if they’re second jobbers because many of their amazing ideas will not have gone ahead because clients are not that daring at times, so the ones that got away are really important.”
Nick Wylie of Jump Media says young designers are often incapable of selling either their work or themselves. “If they have fantastic ideas but can’t communicate them then that’s a real negative for me. If someone can’t communicate their own ideas, it’s a real turn off. It’s as much about how you talk about your portfolio as what’s in it. The final decision for any job is always decided by communication skills.”
Sean Ashcroft
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