The cake is in the fridge and the box is in the mail

Hello all, I thought that I would start off this entry with some good news: First, I don’t have food poisoning anymore and am on the road to recovery. Second, I GOT CS3 FOR MY BIRTHDAY!!! (And maybe GO Media’s arsenal pack 2, if I can scrape up the cash). ** sigh- Why don't I ever have money laying around? Oh right cause I go to QU**

This week in Designing a Digital Portfolio, by Cynthia Baron, the issue of format was brought up. I am still largely undecided on what type of format I want to use, though I am beginning to solidify the contents of my portfolio. Seeing as how the bulk of my work will be composed of print design and imagery, a gallery will be the focal point of my presentation. I am envisioning this as a menu that branches into sub-categories: Print, logo, 3D, sketches and various. I don’t want to use “various” in the final version of the portfolio because I find it to be somewhat unimaginative and as possibly lowering the value of the works contained within. It’s like saying: “here is a bunch of crap that I couldn’t relate to anything else I did”, its like having “etc” in a store sign; its just bad marketing. Possible replacement ideas I have are: T-shirt designs, stickers, and stencil cut outs. For the later I am imagining a stencil that you could hold up to a skateboard, laptop or what have you and spray paint it on the surface.

Back to the larger issue of format, in keeping with the advice of the book I am leaning towards having website and two “leave behinds” in the form a DVD and a more traditional print out folder. Two concerns immediately arise with these ideas though. For the website it’s my own lack of experience in building and maintain such sites. The quick solution to this is third party web hosting, where a company does all the grunt work, leaving me to focus on the design. However, such sites have creative restrictions in the personalization of their web pages. I don’t want my portfolio site to be reduced by a restrictive template. Hopefully I can find web hosting with flexible parameters. My next concern has to do with the DVD idea I’m tinkering with. Cynthia Baron cautions against the use of CDs because of the risk of technical issues and the fact that they largely get thrown away. This is why I wanted to do a DVD, where the portfolio could be navigated like a movie menu using a remote. Unfortunately, I have no idea on how to do this myself and don’t exactly have a lot of money readily available, so this idea may have to be shelved until I get a steady income.

Hopefully as the semester progresses I will be able to resolve these issues, or come up with some innovative solutions. Too bad optimistic views don’t provide a clear direction in which to go forward.