A portfolio of work is a curated experience. It’s an applicant’s chance to shape the way that I’m viewing his or her approach, methods, process, and best thinking; but oftentimes, a portfolio only contains final pieces, as applicants are overly concerned about presenting perfection. Polish doesn’t communicate process though, and therefore I’m left with only part of the story. Messy problems — and how applicants work through them — can show a great deal more in a portfolio than one finished, airtight solution. It’s then the applicant’s job to curate those into an experience for the portfolio viewer.
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Liz Danzico with great advice for job applicants.
Liz Danzico with great advice for job applicants.
Alex Shaffer
on 18 Apr 10Great advice for designers. Design is always a work in progress. It’s important to show and explain the design process.
Anonymous Coward
on 18 Apr 10I have to disagree on this one. I think the best way to distinguish talent is by first evaluating her communication style and then by her work.
The best designers can communicate in-person as well as through their chosen medium. Would you choose a designer because they explained the process well and then couldn’t speak a language you knew? I didn’t think so.
andy
on 18 Apr 10I’ve been bogged down trying to get my personal art and design website put together. A little voice in my head was telling me to add images and descriptions of the unfinished work.
J
on 18 Apr 10Would you choose a designer because they explained the process well and then couldn’t speak a language you knew? I didn’t think so.
That’s not at all the point of the quote.
Aaron M
on 18 Apr 10This is important with programming as well. I have a couple simple dos/terminal games i wrote. While in some ways they have some bad design in code structure, they work and show much I had learned. Plus they were a lot of fun to work on.
ML
on 19 Apr 10Another great plus to this: It differentiates your presentation from everyone else’s. In a stack of hundreds of applicants, that’s def a good thing.
Matthew Moore
on 19 Apr 10I agree with this in a sense. There is value is seeing how someone came to their solution. However, portfolios are also about what you choose to leave out. A portfolio with 90% of the screens dedicated to in progress work heavily dilutes the 10% of top quality, finished work.
I lean for more is less on the initial view, but have that content available if a person wants to drill down to it in the form of case studies.
This discussion is closed.