For those of you who read one of my older posts, you know I'm graduating in about 6 months time. Knowing that, I've started going through my work to find what I might start to put together for my portfolio, and how I'm going to assemble it and what not.
After going over a bunch of sites (such as this one by Jushua Blankenship that I liked) and a Layers Magazine article from their last issue I'm starting to get a good idea of what I should be including and I've got a few basic concepts for how I want to put my physical one together. I find all these sources funny though. Some will tell you that they'd like to see a lot of your work, while others say the less the better. Some say a fancy presentation is necessary to stand out, and over/undersized portfolios are a good thing, while others won't even look at them if they are too out of the norm. It almost becomes a 'you need to stand out without going out of your way to stand out'.
Overall I know that certain styles will appeal to certain people, and I think the right approach is to go in one direction knowing that while some people will dismiss you right away, others will love your approach. It's either that or you're stuck in the middle of the road for everyone, and never really making a huge impression (be it positive or negative).
My biggest concern now is what the hell do I put into it? I seems a lot of people think student work isn't always worth looking at (probably because relax time constraints + a lot of it sucks), which obviously makes it hard to put something else together. I have some pieces I like, and while some of them get nice comments from my teachers and excited remarks from classmates, they don't make me go 'wow', so why would they make someone else go 'wow'?
The other problem is I've been told, and have read from multiple sources, that you want to target a certain job with your portfolio (lots of web based stuff for web design, lots of photoshop/illustrator stuff for ad agency etc...) but I don't have a bunch of anything, but a few select pieces of each that are worth presenting.
Obviously I have to make-do with what I have, and I will, it's just a daunting project I guess, and I want to be able to put something together that really is great. Once it's done I'll get some photos of it and put them on here, even though that's awhile away from now, it's still something to look forward to.
