Portfolio Review with a Post Graduate

I chose Alan Dalby as my 1st portfolio review this year. I chose him because he is new in the world and he is experiencing right now what I will experience soon, so I wanted to prepare myself. I actually had to send Alan my old portfolio since I hand't got round to updating it just yet, so after he gives me his advice I suppose it will help me redesign my Portfolio in a much better way that will show off my work for what it really is. I decided to do the review over email since everything is digital nowadays, and it will be a good experience to see how different things are to translate.

"Hi Rachel

Lovely to see your portfolio and I look forward to seeing all your work at the end of year show!

Theres a few easy things to change with your portfolio that will make you look a lot more professional.

These small problems can detract from your work but can be easily solved.

The most obvious thing I noticed, is that you've used a portrait portfolio. 

I would strongly recommend that if you're going to send your portfolio digitally, to use screen ratio.

Obviously keep using the portrait portfolio for the physical copy, but avoid sending digital portfolios as portrait. 

Let me explain a bit why this doesn't show your work to it's best!

When I open the file, I get a big band of pixelated birds across the screen as the pdf stretches the fill the screen.

This doesn't sell your work as well as you could!

It also causes the problem of having to resize the PDF. 

This makes the work small on the screen and also will frustrate people who want to look at your work.

Obviously you want people to really enjoy looking through your portfolio, so this small change will help that a lot. 

(Also, it's a lot easier to flip through pages with a landscape portfolio on screen.

Portrait makes you have to scroll and doesn't display pages as individual while pages.)

I know that will be a bit of a pain to sort out, but I would really recommend it before you start sending your portfolio out digitally. 

The second thing that I would really recommend changing, Is to put a bit of detail about each project.

For instance the second page,  "BMW WHF, t-shirt design"

I don't really know what BMW WHF is, and it would be great if you could put just a few words, explaining a little bit about each project.

Remember that you're not going to be with everyone when they see your work.

Each page design looks nice and minimal and is laid out well with a nice level of white space. 

I think I'd personally get rid of the key line around the bird on each page. It looks a bit weird in the box and takes the focus away from the work.

On that subject, I'm not sure you need the fourth page (with the three strips on birds) as they're on each page, as well as on the title page in the strips.

Photographs of the design on a mug, might be a good replacement If you feel you need it.

Right, I think I'm going to leave it there.

I strongly believe I've given you good advice and having taken an hour to write this (time slipped away), I'd really appreciate if you'd follow at least my first couple of points.

Obviously It's your decision but If you decide to revise the portfolio, and you'd like any more advice/opinions, feel fee to send me the update and I'd be glad to help you.

Alan"

I enjoyed reading Alans views, because it's completely different to the other reviews i've had. it focuses a lot on the design of the portfolio, which is something other people didn't take as much notice of, and I do think it is important. After Alan had mentioned the portrait layout is not good, I was thinking of how I could make it work in a landscape view instead. I had chosen portrait because most of my work was actually shot portrait when i was working on it last semester. It will be a challenge to get everything to fit in landscape, but I know i need to do this. I also agree with the extended descriptions of the images. I never thought that I would be in a situation where i could explain something about each image, so it's hit a key point i have clearly missed. 

I am working on getting my designs on actual products at the moment, but since i want to focus all my time on my Final Major Project i'm struggling to find a whole day to do this, I still have made no plans for this, but I have to do it. Last semester I did buy mugs & transfers, but I was told (after i had applied the transfers to the mugs) that the transfers would not be able to be glazed. So this let me down in some ways. I must schedule this. 

The lines around the work I've began to notice after Alan pointed it out. I would definitely agree. I'm even thinking as far as removing the birds completely, and just having my description. I don't want it to be too fancy or else we won't know where to look!

Thank you Alan Dalby!