Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Every year at graduation time, thousands of new product designers, like flocks
of migrating birds, head for Core 77, Coroflot, or Behance. There they build an online
portfolio nest and devour the extensive job lists. Many seldom venture away from
their new home. If their portfolio is featured there, they're front and
center for the prospective employers who visit these sites. But then
what? The next week, a new group is featured, and they move down
to the next page and join the ranks in their category.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with sticking with this
instinctive scenario, unless you count the lost opportunities.
Emmanuel Laffon de Mazières, recent transplant from France to
California, certainly did. Using a dividing strategy, he fields a range
of portfolios in different venues, each for a different audience.
Laffon's projects work hard. A group of stills appears on Coroflot. A video on
YouTube, scored to the music of Django Reinhardt, smoothly supports his 3D
flyarounds, and when results are sorted by times viewed, it still appears as the first
industrial design (ID) portfolio after the content featured for pay. His laptop presen-
tation shows a full range of projects as well as process work. Most important, his
prime projects are showcased in luxuriant close-ups on his personal website, to which
all his other portfolio versions are linked.
I tried to make my
website
extremely
sim
ple to use but as
enjoyable as possible.
—Emmanuel Laffon de
Mazières
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The site was designed to immediately capture the viewer's attention. The open-
ing backgrounds, the work of a professional-photographer friend, were chosen for
both beauty and visual simplicity so they would not overwhelm the portfolio itself.
Once the portfolio window is engaged, your perception of them quickly changes from
seeing them as content to experiencing them as color mattes around the work.
If there is one thing that should be evident in
an ID portfolio, it's concern for user experience. The
study of human factors and the study of product design
are tightly connected, and many of the most influential
thinkers in usability began as industrial designers and
engineers. So it's a disappointment when ID websites
are bleakly utilitarian or so dependent on Flash-based
effects that a smooth experience is impossible.
As an ID, I could have just dropped
my pictures into a portfolio
website. But I did this because,
through the website and inter-
face, I could describe the way I
work as an industrial designer.
—Emmanuel Laffon de Mazières
