Reflections: Portfolio Preparation

iii. Portfolio Preparations

What does your portfolio represent about you as a design student?
I must admit that my portfolio does not represent myself as a design student very well. As I am still in my first year, I do not have any major design projects that I can showcase my skills in any distinct area of design. However, I am confident that I would definitely be working on such projects in my pursue as a designer in the next few years of my education.

Although my portfolio is not very well-developed right now, it still showcases some of the works I have done for school subjects or other purposes. My skills in flat art, digital art and other mediums can be certainly seen through these design works.

How have you organized your portfolio and why?
I created my portfolio in a form of a blog on Blogger as it was an easy tool to work with, and definitely user-friendly for visitors too. The portfolio is arranged neatly in categories, links to the different segments (company research, resume, cover letter, etc) could be found on the right side of the page and easily navigated. Design works are categorised in flat art and digital art, sub-categorised into print, web media and photography. Every time I update the portfolio with new design works, I can tag the entries with keywords and title them properly which would allow better organisation and easy searching.

Which artifacts best represent your: Growth over time? Your strengths as a designer?
All of my artworks represent my growth over time, and I have selected two which will best describe my design philosophy in my reflections. I am still very young and inexperienced, so I would still keep growing over time as I learn and experience more. My resume highlights most of my strengths in the form of skills I have acquired in my current education as a designer. Also, I tell myself to never stop learning and growing as I move on. The right attitude will lead me on to greater successes as a designer in the future years to come.

My on-going challenges in design are:
There’s plenty of them, from improving my current skills, mastering them, to learning new skills, competitors, developing my ideas… I would never be able to list them all down. However, one of the hardest challenges, which I am sure I would be facing all the time would be competition. There are of course many other talented designers around me now, not to mention even more out there, whom I have to counter and compete with. There is always competition everywhere, so I definitely have to keep learning and improving myself to keep up with everyone else.

Right now, I want to learn more about computer graphics and photography, which I am not very good at. Also, I aspire to improve my art skills such as drawing and painting. If I could I would want to learn everything, every type of art – knowing more would not harm but help me in my journey as a designer.

How have you rated your reflections and your portfolio (1- Below expectations; 2 – Meeting expectations; 3 – Above expectation? )
My portfolio – 2. There is sufficient content, information and design works to showcase myself as a design student currently. However, I still have space for improvement when I complete major projects and more design works in the future. This will further refine my portfolio and represent my own design identity. Also, I have personalized the look and design of the e-portfolio with a simple template, which can be easily navigated and viewed. However, I would like to have a website as my own portfolio with other design elements as as Flash instead of just a simple blog layout.

My reflections – 2. My reflections are constructed with much thinking in reference to my portfolio. However, I feel that my writing can still be improved. Writing with a greater vocabulary and better expression techniques will allow me to communicate better with viewers and clients in the future.

How can you improve your portfolio? What computer skills do you need to improve at this time?
I think I can improve on my writing as well as adding more artifacts. I am not exactly a very good writer, my expressions can get quite weird and sentences can get too long. Writing better with accurate language will definitely help me in communicating my designs and portfolio in vying for the position I am applying for. Also, I want to acquire more computer skills in softwares such as Macromedia Flash and Fireworks in web-design, as well as improve myself further at Adobe Creative Suite. I am really keen to learn about film-processing and different types of camera lenses too.