“I don’t really care what the end product looks like,” says Hahn. Influenced by the over-saturation of these types of images from sites like Dribbble and Behance, we get the idea that the end product is the most important thing. It’s tempting to use a portfolio to showcase a grid of pixel-perfect final artifacts. “Are you super organized and someone who loves execution, or are you a creative ideas person who may struggle with the details?”-Nick Hahn “Are you super organized and someone who loves execution, or are you a creative ideas person who may struggle with the details? All that is great to be clear about.” “Help me know where you’re at in your career,” Hahn says. Tell the hiring manager what your strengths are and where you’d like to grow. Be transparent about your strengths and pitfalls.“Can you animate as well as design? Are you great at making GIFs? Tell them that! Give additional specific ideas for ways you can expand the role that are unique to your skillset.”
“Chances are you’re capable of so many more skills than those bullet points,” Lewis says. Tell them where you can add extra valueĭon’t let the job description limit what you bring to the table.“I look for individuality and personality throughout the portfolio experience”-Meg Lewis More likely, most of us are pretty good at a couple of things, and employers would rather see those take center stage. If you really are a Renaissance person who can set type, use CAD, animate seamless motion graphics, juggle with your eyes closed, and handle front-end code-great. We use our portfolios to prove we can do everything so that we at least get hired for something. Students often brand themselves as jacks-of-all-trades. Sell yourself only on what you really love to do.Spread from “What They Don’t Teach You in Design School: A Survival Guide to Life After Graduation” a zine collaboration between UT Austin design students and Eye on Design
We asked Nick Hahn, InVision’s director of design system consulting, and Meg Lewis, designer, career coach, and entertainer, to help students do exactly that. While there’s no proven method of presenting your portfolio, we can help you remove some of the guesswork while still staying true to yourself. Wading through endless bullet points and “Top 10 Tips,” you might wonder if it’s even worth following these laundry lists of practical information, or if it’s better to toss out the rule book and do it your own way. You could try Googling, “How to nail a design interview,” and find results pages filled with advice.
But even if you’re the best designer in your class, if you can’t present your work effectively, your portfolio might not get you anywhere. We hear that in design, your portfolio is more important than your GPA, or even your r ésumé. As design students, we spend semesters laboring over it. The magical, this-is-it, all-or-nothing, singular document that could land us a job and alter the course of our entire lives. The portfolio: an amalgamation of our best work. For more portfolio tips, be sure to register for the AIGA Portfolio Festival, which you can catch from July 14-18.
Keep an eye out for the upcoming zine What They Don’t Teach You in Design School. This story is part of a collaboration between Eye on Design and the students at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Design & Creative Technologies.
0 kommentar(er)
