Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
much. Minimizing the number of pieces you show is a form of self-protection. It's a
lot harder to get sucked into showing an inferior project if you limit your total num-
ber of pieces.
Illustrators, artists, and photographers, who are responding to a different type
of market, will almost immediately disagree. To tap the stock or clip art market, they
feel that they have to carry an encyclopedic amount of work on their sites. Their error
is in not making a distinction between their Flickr account or catalog site and their
portfolio.
There are many outlets where you can display your oeuvre. Sites like Flickr
encourage image makers to upload everything they shoot. But digital cameras and
camcorders make it dangerously easy not just to shoot extensively—a blessing that
photographers in the film age would have given their best lens for—but to post obses-
sively as well. That's fine for sharing fun ideas or trolling for facile compliments. But
a portfolio should contain nothing but the artist's selects—a small fraction of your
work. The person looking through a portfolio with money in her hand wants to know
quickly about the artist's style and how it plays out in some example projects. This
need is best served by a small, exclusive collection of highlighted images. In contrast,
anyone examining work on a stock or catalog site is looking for something specific.
They will treat the site like a database or search engine and search by subject.
Reworking, rethinking
Once you've trimmed your expectations of how much work to show and elimi-
nated any work that feels off, you may discover gaps in areas that you originally
thought were well covered. If you really need an example of a certain type of work,
you can return to a less satisfying piece and rethink it—pushing it harder to show
that you know how it should have turned out.
Reworking is almost obligatory for any piece that wasn't professionally pro-
duced, and the result can be very successful in a digital portfolio. In particular, ani-
mations and interactive projects are so comparatively easy to rework at the same level
of production that you should never include a substandard one. Even with a site that
was a live client project, you will boost your chances with a potential employer by
showing how you would improve it.
You also have the prerogative of reworking
projects that were OK but that suffered from built-in
limitations. If your portfolio is chock-full of black-
and-white line drawings and you are bored with work-
ing in black and white, why show a digital portfolio
that will never get you a color illustration? Reworking
an idea with fewer (or different) limitations shows
versatility and enthusiasm for your work.
For me, the ideal portfolio has about
a dozen pieces in it. And those
dozen pieces give me a clear idea of
how the person thinks, how that
person approaches problem-solv-
ing, and how that person under-
stands the constraints of the craft.
—Stan Richards
