Just starting a sabbatical half-year. It seems like rather than being a relaxing time it will be more pressure than just teaching. The goals for this time include generating interest in starting a center for book arts and printing at Bradley University. We have the components we need: a press, type, a knowledge and skill base. It will be a matter of putting the parts together. Hopefully in the next few months I can demonstrate the viability and timeliness of such a program.

Graphic Design Portfolio Strategies for Print and Digital Media is now listed on the Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com web sites. It will be available January 15th, published by Prentice Hall.

I want to get an "A"

Paula Scher in her book “Make it Bigger” makes the point that design is less about styles and theories and more about the personal and corporate political forces that surround getting things done. Knowing how to navigate those waters is a life skill that applies in almost every profession.

The end of the school year brings students pleading for exceptions to deadlines, grading policies and a host of other complaints. The arguments that are the least effective are those that include the “I really want to make an A” component. What most students fail to realize is that this is almost universally going to negate any other argument they make.

No teacher at the university level is going to be positively influenced by the statement that you want to make an A. That gives the impression that you don't really care about learning, only about your GPA. From the point of view of teachers who have dedicated their lives to studying a subject, the best way to influence them is to convince them that you are interested in the material and that you have learned or mastered it. If you want an A, the most convincing argument is that you have excelled, going beyond the mere minimum requirements and brought some creative insight to your understanding of the subject. This is almost universally the best way to convince someone that you are deserving of an A. To focus on the grade alone is rather short-sighted. Professionally, no one is going to care all that much whether your GPA was a few points higher or lower. In fact, in all likelihood, telling them what a mean and unreasonable professor you had to contend with might gain you some points over the dweeb with the perfect 4.0.

Showing that you read the text, did some outside investigations, checked out a few optional books, made connections between subjects, found some aspect of the subject that interested you and followed up on it — those are the ways to navigate the academic waters.

Type Camp and original sources

Step in Design magazine, published in Peoria, ran a recent article touting a study program that takes students to locations such as the St. Brides Printing Library so they could experience the works in their original form. Interestingly, we at Bradley University tried a program such as that in 2004. We took a group of students to the British Library, St. Brides Printing Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the National Art Library, along with visits to William Morris' house in Hammersmith. Students were to do some preliminary research in preparation, and then had two weeks in London to consult original sources (not reproductions) to gain further insight into the works they were writing about. It is a very hard sell to get undergraduates to take an interest in anything connected to libraries. (above is an image of Bradley University student Dave Schuette at the St. Brides Printing Library examining a some Kelmscott editions.)

A little goes a long way, or a designer is not a brand.

A little goes a long way, or a designer is not a brand.
Some confusion can occur in talking about branding with regard to portfolios. The Brand identity of a portfolio needs to be subtle. Never over-bearing. Analyzing the situation, one is reminded of the observations of Beatrice Warde’s famous crystal goblet analogy in speaking about typography.

"Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain."

Of the person who selected the glass goblet, she goes on to state.

"the first thing he asked of his particular object was not 'How should it look?' but 'What must it do?” …Without this essential humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more hopelessly wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive enthusiasm, than I could have thought possible.”

The portfolio must serve as a frame, a delivery system and a navigation device for the projects it contains. Any personal messages must be hushed when the viewer is looking at content. To add another analogy one can apply to this, a ring tone for a phone may be functional in attracting attention and alerting its owner, but once the conversation commences, it would be counter productive if the ringtone continued. Having served its function, it needs to fade into the background.

And the most effective portfolio presentation is one that allows the viewer to examine the work presented in a clean, clear, uncluttered space. So how does one make a portfolio that is both individual and serves is contents well?

It should be pointed out that Warde speaks of the above approach as modernist, and in 1955, when her address was delivered to the Type Directors Club in London, modernist has a very clear meaning. It is with somewhat less certainty that things can be formulated so directly. Perhaps then even Warde sensed the dead end of strict minimalism as she wrote :

And with this clue, this purposiveness in the back of your mind, it is possible to do the most unheard-of things, and find that they justify you triumphantly. It is not a waste of time to go to the simple fundamentals and reason from them.

It is for this reason we urge “reasoning from the fundamentals” as a guide to successfully completing the portfolio design process

How much work to include in your portfolio

QUANTITY, QUALITY AND VARIETY
In planing your portfolio, one of the first questions that arises is what to include? How much, and what mix of work? How does one go about selecting work for a portfolio? This question can be addressed (if not answered) in several ways: Quantity, Quality and Variety.

QUANTITY
Quantity is perhaps the easiest. Most professional designers surveyed for this book expressed the opinion that somewhere between 8 and 12 pieces of work are sufficient.
1. focus on the selected pieces and make sure they are impeccably worked and presented.
2. If you have not succeeded in impressing someone with the first eight pieces of work, four or five or ten pieces more are not going to make your case stronger.
3. Selecting fewer pieces allows the really strong work to stand out, not dragged down by work of lesser quality.

Judging quality of work is something you should not trust to yourself alone. Avoid the trap of including work for sentimental reasons, or –worse yet—because you worked so hard on it. The amount of time and effort you expended, or the degree of difficulty, are themselves not an indicator of quality. They may even work against you, especially if the nature of the job did not warrant that much time and effort. The best work seems often (seems) effortless. More effort does not improve a weak or flawed concept.

Example :
Design A: a modest solution to a modest problem: shows a good match of effort to budget and results.

Design B: a modest problem, but the solution involves a time-intensive and costly process. The work obviously took much longer to produce than would be billable for such a project. Such pieces can come across as self-indulgent on the part of the designer, and a potential employer might wonder, if they hired this person, would they end up turning little or no profit. The bottom line is, “will you be an asset to the company?”

That is not to say that some spectacular flights of fancy are out of place, but make sure they are recognized for what they are.

Letting Go is hard to do.
A conclusion one can arrive at from this might well be: spend a great deal of time practicing your craft— creating and discarding designs rapidly, so that the designs you do feel worth keeping, are executed with speed, sureness and elegance.

While a good project can be improved, some projects are doomed to mediocrity; due to in part to limitations inherent in the brief, your abilities at the time, or the nature of your proposed solution. No amount of work can correct these. It is better to let them go.

In these matters, an experienced advisor can help you judge whether the idea is worth reworking or whether it should be scrapped.

QUALITY

A second consideration for what to include is Quality. With regard to quality, there are seems little disagreement: The work should be all of superb quality. What passes for common wisdom (having been repeated often) is that a portfolio is judged on its weakest piece, since that indicates the range of your standards. If you are willing to accept the mediocre, to present work with a few flaws in a portfolio, then that is an indication of your standards, and so, by implication, the level of quality you would be willing to give to a client.

It is better, according to some designers, to show a few good pieces than to show more work, some of which declines in quality. Include enough to demonstrate that the good work is not an aberration, or that it was not the product of a particular collaboration, and you can sustain quality across a range of work. Eight to ten pieces are probably sufficient for this.

Time is another factor when it comes to portfolios. It is not uncommon for a design firm to receive two to three portfolios a day, and if they actually advertise a position, the number of applicants can be several hundred. So portfolios get looked at very quickly. Things that arrest the eye may get a longer look. If, at the end of the day, after you have left, the person with whom you interviewed can recall one piece of your work, you are lucky. If that person remembers that piece of work as one of the high-points of his or her day, you are well on your way to landing a job!


VARIETY
The third factor in deciding what to include in your portfolio is variety.

As in any design situation, place yourself in the position of the viewer. Pretend you are a designer/art director looking at a prospective employee’s portfolio. (In a classroom setting this can be done as a role-playing exercise. Otherwise, try to imagine yourself in the role of the interviewer). You are in a hurry—meetings, deadlines, etc.—and a person visits unannounced with a portfolio. Your desk is not clean, so you lay the portfolio out on top of other things. Or you go into to a conference room with a large table and you open the portfolio. Most likely you will flip through it to get an overview. Does the first piece you see arrest your eye? Then does the second spread present another aspect of the individual? Are you AS engaged as you were on the first page? Or is it more of the same. Is the third page more of the same or is it something surprising that keeps you looking — do you look at your watch?

Here is where you would really like to see something surprising. If the next page has some humor, something different, something to suggest that there is more ahead that is of interest, you will continue. If not, you will take the measure of what you have seen so far. Perhaps you will politely flip through the rest of the portfolio, hoping for something new, but having already made a decision that this person is not the most qualified, that first impression will be hard to dispel.

Since you are limited to a few pieces of work in your portfolio, you want each piece to show as much as possible. Redundancies are a waste of space and tend to lessen the impact of your portfolio. There are exceptions, but a general rule that I recommend is to select work that shows specific skills or conceptual solutions. This can apply to techniques, formats and concepts.

Of course, the value of diversity within your portfolio will vary depending on your objectives. Tt should be noted that the above advice is directed toward preparing an entry-level design portfolio.

(Exceptions include application to graduate programs. For example, a student applying to graduate school should show a consistent and focused body of work. A few extended projects will be well-received, since often in graduate school you will be expected to carry out extended work. In contrast, if you are applying to an advertising agency or design firm, especially one that has a diverse client base, demonstrating that you can handle a variety of work is an advantage.)

literate design – The structure and meaning of the text

Recently a senior design student stated that he was unaware that his design projects were being graded both on content and on form—the he assumed that the actual verbal content did not matter. After I picked my jaw up from the floor, I tried to explain that we have always taken the position that design is essentially about problem-solving. And visual communication design involves knowing what it is that one is communicating.

In many conversations with art directors in researching an upcoming textbook, many have indicated that they are looking for someone with strong verbal, organizational, and visual skills. Writing is a vital component of both multimedia and graphic communications. Lance Rutter (of Tanagram, Chicago) underscored that a few weeks ago in saying he was interested in “literate” designers.

True, most production work requires that the designer merely follow the given copy; however anything higher and more creative—especially where the designer expects to be a participant in the decision-making process—requires that the designer pay attention to the connection of word and image in service of solving the design problem.

Four-year design programs, such as the one at Bradley aim to turn out thinking designers who have the potential to be art directors or creative directors, or heads of design firms. Highest marks go to those who creatively solve problems. Graphic designers work with words every day; and many hours are spent adjusting spacing, hierarchy, placement, etc, so the design reinforces the structure and meaning of the text.