FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHILE MAKING A PORTFOLIO
There are various reasons why people choose to develop their personal website portfolios for example; it is a professional way to showcase our work. Building a website about your brand and experience is a polished way to share your expertise with others. It’s also a great first impression for employers, increases your visibility and online presence. Shows you’re more than just a resume and one’s flexibility. Whichever need you may have, there are various factors you should consider while designing or hiring an expert to design for you a portfolio as explained;
1. Create a Showcase of Your Best Work
Most times, when selecting which pieces to present in your portfolio, you’ll want to go for the best of the best. However, there are some things you might want to keep in mind both before and during this process.
· Emphasize quality over quantity. It’s not necessary to fill up your portfolio with every single work you’ve ever done just to create an impression that you’ve got a lot of experience behind you. Select few powerful pieces which will be enough to do the trick. And remember — your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest work in it.
· Communicate your passion through your portfolio. When it comes to building an online portfolio, your passion and work ethics have the most potential to make it shine and set it apart from everything else on the web. That’s why you should aim to convey the creative passion behind your works in the best way possible.
· Incorporate case studies into your work. Once you decide on the pieces you want to display, it’s time to provide some context. A huge number of creative (especially those focused on visual arts) overlook the importance of writing blog content in the form of case studies to highlight their work. Providing a short account of your initial brief and the creative steps you went through to bring it to fruition will give your potential clients some insight into your thought process. You might even want to display some of your early drafts alongside the final work, to show the evolution of each piece. Regardless of how in-depth you decide to go, a combination of words and visuals is the best way to help your future customers learn about the innovative ways you approach your creative work.
Sticking to these strategies will help you create a cohesive, organized, and meaningful selection of your work. And when you add your unique style and expression to the mix, you’re sure to leave an instant impression on your potential clients and make the decision of hiring you that much easier.
2. Introduce yourself
This should be the first thing you should consider your portfolio is going to say so much through your imagery. But don’t forget to tell us about your creative process, explain your key skills, and give us a stronger sense of who you are as a human being and potentially, a coworker. Creative types tend to be humble. But you have skills and shouldn’t hesitate to talk about them. Whether it’s at a job interview or within the content of your portfolio, don’t hesitate to promote who you are. Don’t overinflate or distort things, but be truthful about what makes you different from all the other candidates out there. The same goes for first dates. And always remember: whether it’s a company or an individual client, people hire people, not robots. Providing a sense of who you are is key.
2. Engage clients
Another way of proving your pedigree is to show off your previous clientele. This tells potential new clients that you have been trusted to do important work before and shows you have a track record. If you have worked with a well-known company or brand, it’ll add more weight to your skills.
3. Include Measurable Goals And Achievements
Your resume must contain quantifiable work experience and accomplishments that support the very skill sets you state you possess. Without them, you are simply providing opinions with no facts to back them up.
If you are great at driving explosive business growth or saving companies money, make sure that your resume contains monetary amounts, figures, or other numbers to display those skills. A good rule of thumb to follow is to make sure every bullet point contains at least one number. If you can’t quantify it, it doesn’t belong on your resume.
When crafting your resume, consider these four important tips. Remember, you have less than ten seconds to get the hiring manager’s attention. Make your resume worth those few seconds.
4. Professionalism
As equally important as content and the aesthetics of your portfolio is the professionalism of your portfolio. Make sure each individual element is presented in the best way possible with high-resolution photographs, if this is how you will be presenting your work. Check for errors in the pictures and do not include works with stains, rough edges, or dogged ears. Another area that is common for mistakes is with descriptions. Artists can get caught up in the visual elements and make embarrassing typos or grammatical errors. Double and triple-check your use of language, and ask someone for help with proofreading your writing
5 User-friendliness
Do not make you website so complicated thinking that being complicated will make people think you are so good in code, this sometimes even chases away people from viewing your website. The next thing to remember is that the portfolio should not be fairly simple and quick to download. Be careful not to overdo it with colors, animations, and music. In today’s fast-moving world, most clients do not have the time nor the patience to wait for unnecessary extras to download. Keep clients interested with a clean, streamlined design. Also include social media links.
