For this project I have been tasked with creating a portfolio to display my work. It would have a clear theme throughout, having my style of work shine through both the work I am going to showcase as well as the backgrounds and orientation of the page.
To begin this project I did a small amount of research into portfolios in order to gauge just how long and they should be as well as how much content to put on each page. I decided that my portfolio would likely be digital based since that is what the majority of my work is made on, using digital mediums. Planning to keep to one project per double page spread, allowing me to input a large array of work while still avoiding making the page looking too full.
My initial concept is displayed below:
For this example i have attempted to create a content filled, minimalist piece. With the aim of including very small amounts of simple, block colour background content in order to allows maximum focus on the foreground images of the app wire frame itself. However I think that the large AD within the background does throw focus off too much and attracts far to much attention, possibly because it has too much opacity and the fact that the drop shadow is very large. I think this could be improved by including a greater amount of images that are within context, such as hands holding the phones rather than simply dropping the JPEG files into the document itself. I also want to experiment with more photography, if the correct photo is chosen for the project, then perhaps there will be no need for a heading at all.
I have decided to create the app design page first as think that would take up the mot space and therefore would set a good gauge for how long the portfolio should be, within my research I found that it should be no longer than 10-12 pages/spreads. given that I have only had around six projects this year it should be easily achievable to create a detailed but still condense portfolio.
I began experimenting with photograph in an effort to contextualise my portfolio. Beginning with some simple photos that could be used anywhere within my app design portion of my portfolio.
Examples are below:
I have simply taken photos of me using my app within my halls bedroom, hoping to give a clear and simple use of the app. This could now be used as a hero image to introduce the project, this photo serves a purpose of showing that the project coming up is to do with designing apps, as well as telling the viewer the name of my app. Finally it makes the work look more real since it has been used within a real photograph and is not simply a JPEG. I do like the simplicity of these photos however this may prove a problem once one has been placed into a spread alongside text and possibly more images/photos.
After importing the photo into a spread I have noticed some easily achievable ways to improve my outcome. I feel the contextualisation needs to be taken further, my app focuses on the use of multiple phones working as a speaker wherever you are. Having a photo of one person alone in a room does not work particularly effectively to translate this thinking within my portfolio, I think a more effective photo would be to place the phone in a more attractive scenery and perhaps include a greater number of phones to help covey the co ordination aspect of my app to a stronger extent.
I think the overall quality of these photos are much stronger than my previous examples, the removal of hands make allowed me to open up the different angles that I could take the photos from, A faux screen interface can easily be introduced later in Photoshop to make it seem like the phone is being used, making the portfolio successfully contextualised.
Alongside using my own in context photography I also experimented with using templates to see the outcome of them, using an online template for the phone, however using examples of my own photography to place the phone in context, using countryside photos to try to show that this app can be used anywhere. However I do not like the outcome I have created, not only does the lighting on the hand and phone look too artificial when paired with the photography. But I do not like the fact I have to use a template, I would rather the entire work was my own since the portfolio is supposed to be a showcase of my work, I think people should stray from using online templates created by others.
Editorial
Moving on to creating my editorial and the remainder of my spreads I discovered that a using the digital files but making them appear as though they are real by overlapping them as well as including drop shadows was the most effective way to go, I decided to use the ligatured first letters of many of the projects present within my first draft, however made them much less impactful as so to not draw too much attention away from the content and keep the spreads open.
Although i did attempt more directly in context photograph but I simply found that the other ways of completing the work were more effective due to the existence of the coloured backgrounds present within many of my portfolio pages.
Aidan's Graphics Blog 