I'm a postgraduate illustration student, any advice on creating my portfolio?
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- Depends what you're building a portfolio for. Are you looking for clients or salaried work? The latter is more friendly to a broader spectrum of work, while you want to show clients the kind of work you're looking to take in.Be focussed (i.e. no matter how much you want to make yourself a multi-hyphenate, make sure your portfolio is illustration focussed; you can always add other projects in different sections of your portfolio that aren't as immediate). Quality is more important than quantity, though filtering personal, self-initiated work in which professional work (and student work, if it's of a high standard, given you're post-grad) helps give an image of what you do at your best. Don't feel you have to take on cheap clients to fill up your portfolio, it will look worse for it.Always helps to be multi-format. Have a website as your core portfolio, but have PDFs prepared in case employers ask for them. But be focussed enough that you're not overwhelmed by managing multiple portfolios (for instance, not having Behance isn't much of a loss and frees up time for other things).Though, you'll probably benefit from joining illustration organisations and maybe Hire an Illustrator, which is a great illustrator database I've used a lot to meet some real neat folks for projects.And remember that your portfolio is about you. It may be a professional document, of sorts, but have a bit of fun with it, make sure you like what you see. But also be careful not to make it inaccessible. 90% of portfolios I see are difficult to navigate and read, which only makes it worse for disabled people, and a lot of people fail to consider screen readers.
- Sorry- this is continuing..I chose illustrators with a consistent style because it would be easier and safer to present them to a creative director..
- Hey nini, first off join the AOI- they have lots of resources and events that will be useful- from how to charge from your work to how to use social media and.. present your portfolio. They also have a portfolio membership.Then - from what I’ve learned- there’s a couple of schools of thought, the first Is that you present a consistent style of work so commissioners know what they are getting- or if you have more than one style, I’d group them and name them. I recently did an art direction for course, as part of my campaign I did some rough illustrations as a guide for what I’d aim for then selected a few illustratorsI felt would work- I went for a consistent style
- Hi Nini, I would expect that to be quite a big part of your coursework? What part of the portfolio process do you need help with? Assuming you have work you want to display. I have an online portfolio on my website (which is in dire need of an update) and I have a pdf version I email out to potential clients. I don’t think a portfolio needs lots of pages, but I change work around all the time to make it fit for the project I’m applying to. Does that help?
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