If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I know the title of this article is one of those “easier said than done” issues, but it’s really true.

After I graduated, I was ready to take on the world. Aren’t we all? However, your portfolio can become a major barrier to your success in starting out in the field. You have high hopes of getting a great job and you want your own work to stand up to the work done at a potential office; it makes sense. But often, people don’t let their work stand for itself. We forget that we have an architecture degree and believe that we are graphic designers. We have put together presentation boards in school…we have also flipped through all the cool architecture books with their pretty fold-outs and glossy images. So of course we should be able to put together a small book showcasing our hot stuff.

However, we soon find that recreating this look is not as easy as we once thought. Making those foldout pages actually requires folding it accurately for each portfolio and then half the time it just looks messy. Or making those pretty images with all the layered information becomes muddled and no one can even make out the actual intent of your project. We take our many many images for each project and try to cram them into what should be a few portfolio pages. Anyone who has sat down and tried to organize their cherished work into a booklet knows how many pitfalls are involved in creating a portfolio.

As a brief aside, I want to share my experience with my first professional portfolio. I graduated a semester early from my program which gave me a few months to gather myself and start working before the rest of my classmates. I moved back to my hometown, which was not even in the same timezone as my school, and started to feverishly work on my portfolio…like I was supposed to do. It is important that you know that I lived in a completely seperate place from my university because I really felt I needed to make my portfolio shine in order to gain access into an architetural community completely seperate from the one I was educated in (My glossy references wouldn’t help me out here). 

To make a a 3 month long story short, I went through 16 completely different layouts. And this was all before I even printed anything out! I had placed such importance on making a really interesting portfolio that I let 3 months of potential employment slip through my grasp. I finally settled on a design and sent a CD of my work to anybody and everybody. Printing out the booklets would have been too cost prohibitive. I got one interview callback which didn’t pan out. Going “back to the old drawing board,” I new the mistakes I had made. Four more portfolios later, I was ready to send my portfolio out. Eventually, a month later, I had a job.

Looking back on this portfolio now, three years later, I see how amateurish and heavy-handed it really was. And this was the product of months of development!

 This is precisely why laboring over an overly designed portfolio is not the best use of your time. I will make the case later for abandoning the typical portfolio approach altogether.

When starting a portfolio, you must first decide what software you want to use. InDesign is what I prefer to use but even this is a little more complicated than you really need to get. I use InDesign because I find it closely matches the Photoshop functions, which I am familiar with anyways. However, using a simple Powerpoint application should be just fine. The key here is that we don’t want to butcher our portfolio and images with the different enhancements, filters, and adjustments available in complicated software.

Next you need to consider your layout. Sit down with a pen and paper and really figure out what you want the look of your portfolio to be. Using a pen and paper instead of a computer is important so that you gain a sense of the actual proportions you will be working with. When designing your layout, I urge you to keep to no more than 3 images on a page. My preferred layout incorporates a large image with one supporting image off to the side or below. You also need to devote no more than 4 pages to each project. You should be able to get across the basic ideas of each project with no more than one flip of the page.

Here is where you should spend the bulk of your time. You should focus on the most economical layout that will facilitate the images that you have. Creating guidelines not only allows you to professionally organize your pages, but also lets you break rules here or there for effect. Chose one specific color, header or tab that will be a key element in all pages to tie the design together. You should also focus on dwindling the images down to the core information for each project. Eliminate your process sketches, matrices, or study model photos. Keep the “money-shot” renderings, a model image and basic plans, sections, or elevations. You could also consider site photography as well.

Also, think about how you will bind the portfolio. In my experience, the best, simplest, most economic way to approach binding is by simply having your printer staple in the crease. Plastic bindings are bulky and messy. Loose pamphlets get disorganized quickly. And developing ways for the portfolio to unfold, swivel or whatever contortion you want to put it through, will be largely a waste of time and energy. It will probably also come off as messy too.

Once you have created a basic format/layout and have organized your portfolio, make a conentrated effort to stick with it. By that I mean don’t redo the work you just did a year later. Get it right the first time and simply add to it as you get more projects under your belt.