A portfolio represents how a designer visually and verbally approaches a problem, and how this relates to the intended

audience. Anything that helps me to understand that process is great. -Steve Liska

PORTFOLIOS
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Creating Your Post-Undergraduate Portfolio

Creating your portfolio is an extensive design project in itself, and should be treated as one. A memorable portfolio cannot be completed in a day. In fact, your portfolio is one of the on-going projects you will be continuously revisiting throughout your entire design career, so understand that your portfolio is your marketing tool, talent showcase, and an experience by itself. By understanding this, you become aware that in creating your portfolio you are creating a brand of your name, with the products being your designs and skills and the portfolio being the point of sale system. Through this understanding, we can tackle the creation of both an online, web-based portfolio and printed portfolio, through a client-based perspective, where you are the client, and you need a point of sale system designed to attract customers and captivate them to the point where they are compelled to contact you because they have confidence in your services and that they will have a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship with you. A great portfolio will serve its designer by telling your story, expressing your personality, showcasing your skills in both their breadth and depth, and displaying your process and final products. And since you are the client, the process of research is natural because you know more about yourself and your unique personality and sense of expression than anyone else. As well, the process of revisions will be streamlined because you are probably your own harshest critic so revisions will naturally occur for the purpose of making the viewers experience of your work, skills, and personality more authentic. Asking for other designers and professors to review your portfolio is a fantastic way to get creative feedback, especially as the professors are incredibly attuned to noticing the details of the typography, layout, content hierarchy and organization, flow, color system, photographic quality, body copy, piece selection in terms of range and quality, and creative presentation of the portfolio.
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Writing out the Creative Brief

The first step in creating a design portfolio is completing a creative brief for yourself. As you are the client of your portfolio, it is important to write out a creative brief to clearly understand the design problem and direct your attention to how you can solve this problem. To have a more complete understanding of your portfolio, and how it uniquely addresses your marketing and branding strategy, write a project summary, establish an audience profilewhat constitutes your typical client or hiring managerdescribe how you plan to set the tone and perception of your portfolio, determine your communication strategy, and create your target message that the audience with leave with after experiencing your portfolio. These components will provide a foundation for your creative brief to support the creative direction you take in expressing what you have to offer through your portfolio. From this brief, decide whether you want to tackle your printed and pdf portfolio first or if youd rather start by designing your web portfolio, or if you want to take them on simultaneously.

Physical vs. Website Portfolios

Printed portfolios have their advantages in being able to give someone a physical object that they can touch and see in the real world. The true power in a physical portfolio comes after the layout design, in choosing the paper type and weight, the design, material, and dimensionality of the cover, the binding, and designing the physical user interaction. Portfolio websites are advantageous because they allow you to display interactive web designs, video and media work. They are accessible from all parts of the globe, expressing your designs to clients and hiring managers from all over the world.

A Quick Preview of Whats to Come

PHYSICAL PORTFOLIOS
The Purpose of a Physical Portfolio ........................ 3 Beginning Your Physical Portfolio ........................... 4 Grid, Layout, & Dimensions ......................................... 5 A Cohesive Personal Experience ............................... 6 Cover Pages and Binding ................................................ 7 Packaging and Casing ....................................................... 8 Content Organization ....................................................... 9 Presenting a Redesign ...................................................... 11 Showcasing your Photography ................................... 13 Dealing with Three-Dimensional Designs ......... 14 Motion Graphics and Interactivity ........................... 15 Presenting Websites in Print Portfolios ................ 16 Ending Your Portfolio ........................................................ 17 A Note on Leave-Behinds ................................................ 18

WEBSITE PORTFOLIOS
The Purpose of a Website Portfolio ......................... 19 Types of Online Portfolios ............................................. 20 Formatting your Best Designs for the Web ....... 21 Grid, Layout, and Navigation Planning ................ 22 Crafting your Logo, Tagline, and Branding ....... 24 Creating a Cohesive Theme ......................................... 26 Welcome Screens & the Home Page ....................... 28 Designing Your Portfolio Pages .................................. 29 Personalizing Your About Page .................................. 31 Providing an Unforgettable Experience ............... 32 Downloadable Resume and PDF Portfolio .......... 33 Making yourself Easy to Contact .............................. 34 Building Traffic and Getting Noticed ..................... 35 Blogging and Social Media Presence ...................... 37

The Purpose of Your Physical Portfolio

The purpose for having a physical portfolio is not necessarily to have a case or book that displays your skillful designs, but a presentation and storytelling tool. Of course, a large part of your physical portfolio, especially if it presents a smaller quantity of designs that were all large and challenging projects with plenty of process displayed alongside it, would be then to display your skillful designs. There are plenty of skillful and genious designers out there, however being talented is not what gets you hired. The client and hiring manager are interested in you and your relationship to them. Of course, they care about your portfolio, and having a poorly-designed, generic, or even nonexistant portfolio will cost you that job opportunity. Most interviewers ask you to come in because they have seen some of your work you sent and were interested, or had you recommened from the design community, and now they want to know what kind of designer and person you are. The printed portfolio can take on many dimensions, layouts, configurations, binding styles, and surfaces. With your creative brief, begin brainstorming ways to express the targeted message you want to the audience through the communication strategies you determined, and any others that come to you in the process of communicating that message.

Start with Sketches

Once your brainstorming starts producing some compelling directionsor when you hit a brainstorming roadblockyou can start sketching out some of your ideas, experimenting with dimensions, the grid, cover design, and beginning to select the pieces in your collection you would like to showcase as your best designs. By sketching out ideas, creating a storyboard of your portfolio, you begin to play with your overall portfolio organization, the order of the pieces you choose, and themes of the layout, such as rules, type size, positioning.
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Choosing Your Best Designs

Limit the selections to your Best Designs
When selecting pieces for your portfolio, limit your selections to only designs that you are proud of, expressing the range of skills and projects related to the specialties and variety intended for your client or hiring manager. Limit these selections to six to ten designs that display your breadth and depth in design skills and thinking. Including too many designs will detract from the effectiveness of the ones you are most proud of, and will mean you are more likely to include poor designs that you are not proud of or did not complete to the same quality and level of skill as the best designs, so be selective and scrutinize your work. Know that most hiring managers will spend 10 seconds to 1 minute flipping through your portfolio, so only show them the best designs that will engage them to spend more time to delve into your work.

Dont put anything in your portfolio that youre not proud of. -Tim McNeil

Start Strong, Finish Strong

The order of your pieces is extremely important, and you should make sure to choose your two best pieces and display them first and last, making a powerful first impression and a lasting final impression. In between the first and last pieces comes your creative ordering of your selected pieces. Choose an order that works for you, where the ordering takes the viewer on a journey through your design work, telling your story with changing color schemes, styles, and formats. Showing your range in design among different mediums and also your range within one medium (i.e. posters, business cards, envelopes, books are all in the print-on-paper medium) is one organizing constraint.

Grid, Layout, and Dimensions

Prototyping Dimensions and Layouts
Explore all kinds of different portfolios. There is a wide range of possibilities to be inspired by in creating your own uniquely. -Susan Verba
With your selected pieces in the correct order, it is time to begin experimenting with page dimensions and layouts. You can begin selecting appropriate dimensions and layouts by getting multiple pages of different sizes from a copy shop, printing and cutting your designs to size, and moving them around over the various page sizes, and seeing how your design is presented on the page. Print out dummy text that is approximately the type size, style, and treatment of what your page text will be once you have made it and arrange that on the pages too, along with selected sketches, brainstorming, and other forms of process that led you to creating your final designs. Physically prototyping the dimensions and layouts is important because your portfolio is a physical piece that the viewer will be interacting with, and feeling the size and weight of the page and where the elements are located and in your visual span gives you an intuitive and direct vision of how your final design will look and what sensations and cognitive thoughts it will inspire in the viewer. Once you have several of these quick mock-ups arranged, ask other designers and your professors to give you feedback on the piece selection, piece order, spread layout, and page composition. Ask several non-designers to give you their feedback too, as your clients will look at your portfolio, and it is in your best interest to ensure that both designers and non-designers can easily navigate and understand your story.

Drafting your Grid

Begin drafting your grid from the layout mock-ups that were successful. Your grid will unify your portfolio by giving it a consistent structure that is flexible to adapt to each spreads layout needs and guides the eye in understanding the page.
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A Cohesive Personal Experience

Styles, Themes, and Color Schemes
Once you have addressed the layout, dimensions, and grid of your design, it is time to experiment with the graphical style of your printed portfolio. Experiment with creating a few main avenues of type styles, expression of hierarchy, color schemes, use of rules and bleeds, and even alternative ways of navigating through your portfolio, such as opening fold-out three and four page spreads. Once you have created a set of cohesive, personal and expressive themes, it is time to prototype them by creatively applying your styles to page layouts that have been refined by your new grid. Maintain cohesion throughout the portfolio by applying styles in a consistent way among the different types of pages and the content within those pages. This themes open graphical expression of your design values and skills gives the viewer a stimulating experience, helps organize your portfolio, and cues them into your personality and how you relate to the design world. Do not forget that, first and foremost, your portfolio pieces and process should be the main message you are communicating. Simplify your styling so that it complements your work, rather than competes with it. The purpose of your portfolio is a point of sale system of your services, a communication platform with which you can tell your professional design story visually and be direct about your process and product.

Cover Pages and Binding

We Judge a Portfolio by its Cover
While you are thinking about style, its time to think about your cover and how you will be packaging this portfolio. If you plan on doing a portfolio book, there are many ways of binding the book, and you should experiment with cover designs and materials that speak to you. Visit websites like Lulu.com and Blurb.com to submit your materials for relatively cheap printing and binding. Displayed here are just a few examples for inspiration in putting together your portfolio cover and binding it.

Packaging and Casing

The Creativity is in the Case
The packaging of your portfolio is another option to consider. Many designers go for two different approaches, the book bound portfolio with a sleek case or the box of designs mounted to matte board, or other materials. Craft is essential in all aspects of portfolio design, but will be exceptionally important on the casing. The casing is the clients first impression of your work and your design standards, and if your casing is sloppy, cumbersome, or ill-suited to your type of design, you will not get hired.

Content Organization
Having reviewed and presented many portfolios myself, I found that the most compelling presentations are ones where designers are unafraid to share their processeven if it means including work that is incomplete or unpolished. -Cavan Huang

Organizing Content on each Page

The pages of your portfolio will have plenty of information on them, and youre responsible for the organization of the copy and graphics, as well as their content. Each of your projects, whether displayed on a single page, across a spread, or across multiple spreads if the scope of the project is big enough that you need multiple pages to display the project, should include at least the basics below of defining the project briefly, displaying process, and presenting the final design. These information sections, with a few others, are shown in this example from a UC Davis alumnis portfolio at right. 1. Define the project and the design problem Include the projects title, client, the design problem that you solved through this project, and any necessary background information 2. Display brainstorming and sketches Show people your brainstorming, mind maps, word lists, and sketches. It informs the designers of your process and the non-designers that youre thinking. 3. Show prototype designs Introduce your prototype submissions, depicting that you understand the process of working with a client, and that your finalized proposal nearly always requires revisions. 4. Finalized design Present your finalized design on the page where it can be clearly understood to be the finalized design, and the one chosen by the clients. (5.) (Optional) Alternative final submissions Exhibit your alternative final submissions (if there are any), showing that you proposed several options for the client to choose from, all of which of strong design.

Example from 2011 Design Alumni

Description of client, problem, and solution

Display of final design in a prominent location 4

Finalized Design

Clean Technology Club

1
Problem: Create a logo for the Clean Technology Club that reflects the purpose of the club, which is to educate the community about clean technology. I entered this logo as part of a design competition created by the Clean Technology Club, which is run by students of the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis. After my design was chosen by a panel of judges, I continued to work with the Clean Tech Club to make additional changes to my entry. Together all the elements of the logo; the sun, the leaf and globe communicate clean technology, sustainability and community.

Clean Technology Club

attheUniversityofCalifornia,Davis

Clean Technology Club

2
attheUniversityofCalifornia,Davis

Alternative Logo Ideas

Great display of process with sketches and development! Brainstorming through mind maps. 3
Original Logo Submission

Display of final variations! Excellent. Shows you have a well thought-out variety to choose from

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Presenting a Redesign
Organizing content of a project Redesign
Organizing the layout of a graphic redesign, whether that is a redesign of logo, promotional material for a recurring event, redesign of a website, redesigning the graphic standards for a client, or redesigning an information graphic, all include the basic organizational content for each page. However, there are a few elements that are specific to organizing your project when displaying a redesign. These organizational elements are depicted in this example from a UC Davis alumnis portfolio at right. 1. Define the project and the reason for the redesign Specify what is ineffective with the original design and why the redesign is necessary, and how your redesign addressed the issues to solve the design problem. 2. Display the original graphic Show people the original graphic that you redesigned. Position the original graphic nearby the final redesign so the two are easily comparable, stimulating the viewers to compare original and redesign for themselves. 3. Organize prototype designs in their progression Introduce your prototype submissions in a systematic order from first prototype to most similar to final redesign. 4. Finalized design Present your finalized design in a location where it can be clearly understood to be the finalized design, and easily comparable to the original chart.
McNulty Identity
The offshore construction company required a fresh identity to modernise their image. Visuals were architecturally inspired and these were selected as the strongest proposals.

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Example from 2011 Design Alumni

Description of problem and designers solution.

Showing original in comparison with the redesign organized for quick comparison and to hold your attention.
Original Chart

Blood Alcohol Content

Problem: Clarify and simplify the text and BAC chart to increase legibility and understanding. The BAC informational sheet is mailed out to everyone after they renew their license. The originally design is confusing and difficult to approach. The redesign successfully opens up the space by reducing and editing the text and reorganizing the chart. By separating the information for females and males the stair step parttern is reduced and determining your BAC becomes a much more manageable task.

First Draft

Page layout needs work and doesnt correspond with other portfolio pages content flow. Eye moves according to arrow at right.
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)
Table for Male (M) and Female (F) Number Body Weight (Pounds) of Drinks 100 120 140 160
0 1 .00 .06 .12 .18 .24 .30 .00 .07 .13 .20 .26 .33 .00 .05 .10 .15 .20 .25 .00 .06 .11 .17 .22 .28 .00 .04 .09 .13 .17 .21 .00 .05 .09 .14 .19 .24 .00 .04 .07 .11 .15 .19 .00 .04 .08 .12 .17 .21 180 .00 .03 .07 .10 .13 .17 .00 .04 .07 .11 .15 .18 200 .00 .03 .06 .09 .12 .15 .00 .03 .07 .10 .13 .17 220 .00 .03 .05 .08 .11 .14 .00 .03 .06 .09 .12 .15 240 .00 .02 .05 .07 .10 .12 .00 .03 .06 .08 .11 .14

Get a DUI - Lose Your License!

It is illegal to drive with a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of .08% or more (.04% for commercial vehicle drives and .01% if under 21). Other factors, such as fatigue, medications or food may affect your ability to legally operate a vehicle. The table below gives an estimate of blood alcohol levels based on the number of drinks consumed, gender and body weight.

Draft redesigns and progression is well ordered.

Remember: Even one drink is likely to affect your ability to drive safely!

2 3 4 5 0 1

Subtract .01% for every 40 minutes of drinking 1 drink = 1.5 oz of 40% alcohol (80 proof liquor), 12 oz of 5% beer, or 5 oz of 12% wine

Driving Condition
Safe to Drive Driving Skills Impaired Unsafe to Drive Above Legal Limit

2 3 4 5

Final Redesign

DL 606 (REV.7/2010)

Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)

1 drink = 1.5 oz of 40% alcohol (1 shot), 12 oz of 5% beer (1 pint), or 5 oz of 12% wine (1 glass).

Second Draft
DL 606 (REV.7/2010)

DUI Prevention
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)
Table for Male (M) and Female (F) Number Body Weight (Pounds) of Drinks 100 120 140 160
0 1 .00 .06 .12 .18 .24 .30 .00 .07 .13 .20 .26 .33 .00 .05 .10 .15 .20 .25 .00 .06 .11 .17 .22 .28 .00 .04 .09 .13 .17 .21 .00 .05 .09 .14 .19 .24 .00 .04 .07 .11 .15 .19 .00 .04 .08 .12 .17 .21 180 .00 .03 .07 .10 .13 .17 .00 .04 .07 .11 .15 .18 200 .00 .03 .06 .09 .12 .15 .00 .03 .07 .10 .13 .17 220 .00 .03 .05 .08 .11 .14 .00 .03 .06 .09 .12 .15 240 .00 .02 .05 .07 .10 .12

It is illegal to drive with a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of .08% or more (.04% for commercial vehicle drivers and .01% if under 21). Other factors, such as fatigue, medications or food may affect your ability to legally operate a vehicle. The table on the right gives an estimate of blood alcohol levels based on the number of drinks consumed, gender and body weight. Remember, even one drink is likely to affect your ability to drive safely!

Number of Drinks 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5

Body Weight (Pounds)

100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240
.00 .06 .12 .18 .24 .30 .00 .07 .13 .20 .26 .33 .00 .05 .10 .15 .20 .25 .00 .06 .11 .17 .22 .28 .00 .04 .09 .13 .17 .21 .00 .05 .09 .14 .19 .24 .00 .04 .07 .11 .15 .19 .00 .04 .08 .12 .17 .21 .00 .03 .07 .10 .13 .17 .00 .04 .07 .11 .15 .18 .00 .03 .06 .09 .12 .15 .00 .03 .07 .10 .13 .17 .00 .03 .05 .08 .11 .14 .00 .03 .06 .09 .12 .15 .00 .02 .05 .07 .10 .12 .00 .03 .06 .08 .11 .14 .00 Safe to Drive .02 .07 Driving Skills Impaired .08 .33 Unsafe to Drive = Above Legal Limit

Get a DUI - Lose Your License!

It is illegal to drive with a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of .08% or more (.04% for commercial vehicle drives and .01% if under 21). Other factors, such as fatigue, medications or food may affect your ability to legally operate a vehicle. The table below gives an estimate of blood alcohol levels based on the number of drinks consumed, gender and body weight. Remember: Even one drink is likely to affect your ability to drive safely! F

2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5

.03 .06 .08 .11 .14

Driving Condition
Subtract .01% for every 40 minutes of drinking 1 drink = 1.5 oz of 40% alcohol (80 proof liquor), 12 oz of 5% beer, or 5 oz of 12% wine Safe to Drive Driving Skills Impaired Unsafe to Drive Above Legal Limit

DL 606 (REV.7/2010)

Female

.00

Male

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Showcasing your Photography

Refine your Photographic Images
Unless the only pieces you are presenting in your portfolio are illustrations, logotypes, symbols, web designs, and typographic treatments, you will likely be presenting photographic images. Photos are a fantastic way to add context to your designs, to vary your visual storytelling, and to display your photographic skill. Select your most professional, well-designed photos that express the perception and tone derived from your creative brief. After selecting your professional quality photosstored at large sizes, with a minimum of 300 DPIand placing them on the page, it is time to edit these photos to complement your theme and visual strategy. Make sure to transform the color mode to CMYK for accurate color matching when printing. Adjust the levels, brightness, contrast, color balance, saturation, and resize or crop the image so that it matches your similar photographs in your portfolio and your visual theme.

Full Bleeds and the Paper Canvas

Wistful Photography

Title: Inner Beauty Client: Myself Medium: Film Photography B&W I have always been passionate about interior spaces, mainly, restaurants. Capturing these rare moments in black and white brings back a nostalgic feeling of eras past.

The power of depicting beautiful, professional photographs in your portfolio comes not only with editing the photographs to bring out the vibrancy of the colors and the dynamism with the right amount of contrast, but with how they are handled on the page. Your portfolio page becomes the paper canvas for your photographs, and bleeding the edges of the photo frees the viewer from the frame of the margin, granting a personal experience of your photo. Experiment with cropping photos or joining them side-by-side or in a grid-system, and find other ways of using photos on the paper canvas to create dynamic compositions depicting your designs.

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Dealing with Three-Dimensional Designs

Presenting three-dimensional designs on a two-dimensional portfolio page is challenging and requires you to show photography of the design taken at multiple angles that showcase all of the intricacies of your design.

Considering the Background when Photographing your Design

The challenge lies not only in photographing the three-dimensional design at angles to showcase the salient characteristics of the designwhich should be the focus of the photosbut also in considering the background your photo is pairing your design with, and how appropriate the background is in relation to the purpose of the design. When photographing product designs and small-scale models, use a light-tent to distribute light equally around the design and provide that soft, warm-white background used often in product photography. If your are photographing full-scale signage, a sculpture, or other large-scale three-dimensional piece, incorporating natural background scenery to match the scale. For both instances, always color correct your photos.

Presenting The Dieline Skin

Part of showing the process of creating the three-dimensional graphic design may involve creating an exterior skin that wraps around or bends to become the three-dimensional design. Present your skins as one of the final stages of your process, and depening on the project it may be accompanied by a scale. This confirms to the client or hiring manager that you have the ability to think and plan in two-dimensions and translate those plans to succesful three-dimensional designs.

Description of problem and designers solution.

Detailed sketches and developed ideas with supportive reasoning! 3 5

Images at different angles showcase the dimensionality of the product! Well done!

When taking photos of small 3D objects, use a light-tent. Color correct your photos too!

Goldfish Colors
Problem: Redesign the goldfish colors snack package to reduce waste and incorporate sustainable materials. For this class project I redesigned the individual snack packs and the box that holds a set of nine. The box is constructed without any use of adhesive and features biodegradable cellophane window. The individual snack packs would also be made out of a similar material. This design is influenced by biomimcry. The box itself uses a playful wave element that continues onto each panel, the clear window gives the illusion of fish in an aquarium. The easily recognized goldfish shape used for the individual packets reduces waste and further emphasizes the biomimcry of the design.

Brainstorming, sketches, and experimentation. Excellent! 2 4

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Serving Size 1 Pouch Servings Per Container 9
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Motion Graphics and Interactivity in your Physical Portfolio

Motion-based and interactive design are challenging mediums to present in a print portfolio. This UC Davis alumnis portfolio spread uses sequential panels to depict change and motion.

Still Frames Depicting Motion

Motion-based designs can be exposed in a print portfolio by using the same principle that the film strip does, or before that the comic strip. By presenting a series of frames taken from your videobased design arranged in a sequential order, the viewer interprets the changes between the frames, notices the similarities and observes the pattern through which the differences occur between the frames, and mentally completes the motion. Still frames serve a larger purpose in a print portfolio by showing the designers mastery over composition, by balancing the figure and ground into a dynamic visual experience in the still frames between the motion.

Description of problem and designers solution.

Great use of sequential panels to depict movement 4 3

Comparison between sketches and final video. Excellent! 5

Strong choice of large still shots

All the Kids The New Humans

Problem: Create a vibrant music video that effectively portrays the bands vision and incorporates typography, video footage, and abstract shapes. This video was made for The New Humans, a dance/rock/electronic band based in Sacramento. What originally started as one minute final project was one of three selected by the band to be produced as a full length music video. The song All the Kids is all about having fun, dancing, and just enjoying the club scene.

Inclusion of process and sketches! And in color!

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Presenting Websites in your Physical Portfolio

Although websites are not intended to be viewed on print media, be ready to have pictures of your websites and talk about them if they are a part of your design skills and experience that you want to portray to your client.

Using Panels to Display Webpages

One of the easiest ways to display webpages inlcudes using multiple panels to showcase the home page and other related pages. Through this, the user can experience much of the website in well-designed, still images, that present the websites identity and showcase the navigation system and other unique features.

boomeranG publishinG
website
......................................................................... boomerang were looking to update their website with a with a simple clean design where their creative projects take the centre stage.

jacobien spekreijse
website + logo
......................................................................... Jacobien spekreijse is a fashion designer specialising in knit, she required a website & logo that reflected her style and personality. www.jacobienspekreijse.com

www.boomerangpublishing.nl

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Ending Your Portfolio

Including your Contact Information
Finishing your portfolio with your contact information is essential to ending your portfolio presentation, especially if you have sent your portfolio via mail rather than taking it in for an interview. Leaving your contact information is how you give them the resource to call you in, if you did, in fact, send them your portfolio via mail. Be sure to include all relevant forms of contact for the client or hiring manager. Include your website, blog, phone number, and email. If you are catering to a niche-area like motion graphics, make sure to include your vimeo or youtube channel. If you did take in the portfolio for an in-person interview, bring a well-designed business card that is cohesive with your portfolios style, or you can get creative with a leave-behind.

Contact

Arianna Azevedo 408.607.0421 arianna.azevedo@gmail.com http://cargocollective.com/ariazevedo

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A Note on Leave-Behinds
What is a Leave-Behind?
Leave-behinds are items within the design community that serve the purpose of reminding the client or hiring manager who you are and quickly showing your work again. Leave-behind designs originated as deal-closers, because if you would leave something behind that has your name and beautiful design on it and it stays on their desk, eventually they will recognize it and they will likely call you, especially if your design concept is great and your craft is excellent. Leave-behinds have become so popular that they have oversaturated the market. Many of your competitors that are pursuing the same job are using leave-behinds to remind the employer to call them. However, if everyone uses leave-behinds they do not become special anymore. When this happens, the art directors that are looking to hire people have their desks littered with leave-behinds. This is not good marketing. The solution: if you are going to do a leave-behind, be smart when you do it. Make something that really expresses you, that strikes the client or hiring manager as not just a mini portfolio, or that has its own utility.

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