Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
You've now tallied up the self-assessment and
have a profile of who you are—and how the world
probably sees you—as a creative professional. In cre-
ating this profile, you've defined the work you're
qualified to handle, the range of work you've already
done, and the type of employer or client you want.
Ideally, these three areas connect elegantly. Most
probably, there's an inequality somewhere that you
need to address.
You should only select the material
that you think best reflects you and
your talents. I judge a person's
portfolio by their worst piece, not
their best piece. Because I assume
that if it's in there, that could be
the kind of work they could produce
for me.
—Bill Cahan
Quality
Your portfolio is a kind of personal statement, so you want it to say what you
really mean. Every time you include a project that is clearly inferior to other work
you've done, you make the worst portfolio faux pas. You've said, “I am proud of this
work. I think it represents the quality of material you will get from me.” By saying
that, you've told the savvy reviewer that you can't tell good work from bad. Or that
maybe the good work you're showing is a fluke and that most of the work you do is
like the inferior pieces. Either interpretation will devalue your portfolio and all of the
work in it.
Some people are aghast at this idea. “This is the only piece I have that shows I
can design a website! Didn't you say I needed variety?” Project variety is never served
by variety of quality.
Eliminating bad work doesn't always mean eliminating work you didn't enjoy.
There's no excuse for keeping in an inferior personal project because a reviewer will
assume that you had creative control over it. But there is an occasional real-world
piece that may not excite you but tells something
important about your skills. If you have other work
that shows your creativity and one piece that shows
you can deliver a finely crafted but boilerplate project,
you might want to leave it in. In your explanation of
the project, you can briefly discuss the constraints
under which you had to operate.
The best reel a buddy at Pixar ever
saw was just a single shot of an
elephant. It went through transi-
tions from wire mesh, to solid
shading, then surfacing came on
and the lights hit it. It held at the
very end, then came to life and
walked off screen. It was so unbe-
lievably tight, every pixel was so
perfect and sweet. They leaped out
of their chairs and said, “Don't let
this guy leave the building!”
—Terrence Masson
Quantity
There are a lot of myths about how much work
you should show in any type of portfolio, let alone a
digital one. There's no ideal number, but whatever it
might be, people overwhelmingly err on the side of too
