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You have completed Building a Portfolio!
You have completed Building a Portfolio!
Preview
A portfolio is more than a collection of individual works. It’s all of those entries working together to create a whole. We’ll discuss in this video the importance of a holistic view.
New Terms:
-
Curation -- to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation
- Gestalt -- an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts
Further Reading:
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[MUSIC]
0:00
Perhaps you've heard someone say that
something was more than the sum of its
0:04
parts before.
0:09
The concept came from
Germany in the 1920s, and
0:11
the word they created to
represent this idea was gestalt.
0:14
More formally, the term came to mean
0:19
an organized whole that is perceived
as more than the sum of its parts.
0:22
Gestalt can be applied across
a number of disciplines.
0:27
However, we're looking through the lens of
selecting work for your design portfolio.
0:32
As such, we need to consider
the impact of the selected works,
0:37
as well as how all
the pieces fit together.
0:42
Meaning, if you choose
ten entries to show,
0:47
then each of the ten entries needs
to be strong on its own merit.
0:50
But they should also feel
like sort of a family.
0:54
Let me show you the site
of a former intern of mine,
0:58
a product designer at
Facebook by the name of Zay.
1:00
Zay has ten works that she's showing off,
and they're all connected,
1:03
whether visually or conceptually.
1:07
For instance, you'll see
a combination of screen-based works,
1:10
letter-pressed posters,
art installations, book designs.
1:14
And even a YouTube link to a fashion
show that she co-produced.
1:18
While the work is diverse in meaning,
1:23
the collection of content is an accurate
representation of what she cares about.
1:26
It speaks to her skills and
1:31
accomplishments, and is presented in a way
that depicts her personal sense of style.
1:33
If you want to considerate
creating a sort of checklist for
1:39
your content, then I have
a recommendation worth looking at.
1:42
There's a insightful article
written by Suelyn Yu, a designer
1:45
who's famously worked at the consultancy
Frog, as well as Hillary For America.
1:50
In this article she defines a checklist
of what is expected in a design or
1:55
development portfolio.
2:01
For instance, she talks about the
necessity of basics, like contact info,
2:03
how your process fits in,
excluding work that you aren't proud of.
2:08
But the part that I'm really excited to
point out is what she calls out regarding
2:13
the actual work.
2:18
Suelyn recommends showing a small number
of works, three to five case studies here,
2:20
where she defines parameters
like shipping a product,
2:26
showing variety across mobile and desktop.
2:30
Defining your user research, and giving
a breadth of industries or end user.
2:34
If you're sticking with a single
medium like web design,
2:41
then Suelyn's recommendation of three
to five projects will work well.
2:44
Although if the projects are smaller,
2:48
then I would err on the side
of five rather than three.
2:51
If you're spread across
a variety of media,
2:54
then eight to ten would be a smarter
amount of projects to show.
2:57
As you choose these works, you're
looking for what joins them all together
3:02
to create that wholeness,
that gestalt sense of family.
3:06
In the next video,
3:10
we'll talk about identifying missing
parts of your portfolio's gestalt.
3:11
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