Crunch Time (almost)

The semester is coming to a close, and while I wouldn’t use the word panic, I am beginning to feel the pressures of approaching deadlines for multiple courses. Unfortunately I have a feeling that certain amount of damage control will be the order of the day when crunch time truly sets in. I discussed this at length with my parents over Easter and they agreed that prioritizing my classes is much more important than giving equal attention to them all. Sorry History of Baseball, I will always think fondly of you in the years to come. I have to say though, that I don’t enjoy doing this. My grades are a source of personal pride for me. While A’s and B’s may not be the most accurate way of gauging someone’s understanding of the material, for me they represent my ability to adapt and perform under less than desirable conditions (sick, time management between school work and girl friends, money problems, diet, lack of sleep…life as I like to call it). While grades may not be an important factor in this field of work, I still want to make the dean’s list one last time. 6 for 8 would be good record, especially in baseball terms.
On to this weeks readings. What concerned me the most from Sara Eisenman’s Building Design Portfolios, were the resume examples she provided. They seemed scarce in terms of content, but were referred to as strong pieces. I can only assume that the information given must have been the Holy Grail and lost temple of design assignments. Thus giving the designers lots of room with which to be creative in their page-layout. In comparison my resume has a lot of content, but nothing remarkably impressive. I suppose that this is a disadvantage most graduate designers face seeing as how they have do not have much out of school experience to present. Still, I’m leaning towards putting my resume on a diet of sorts and removing a lot of the content and compressing the information. For example I could probably just put Adobe Creative Suite in place of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc., leaving more space for creative layout. Even though I do not have much to present in my resume, I could still make my resume something of a presentation (hi there! I barely know how to file my own taxes and still live off of a steady diet PB&J’s but doesn’t this look nice?).
The self-promotion section was another interesting method of getting your name out there. I’m not quite sure how I would go about doing this just yet, but the number of cost-effective examples presented by Sara is encouraging. I like the idea of a mini-pamphlet, perhaps something akin to the workflow guide in Adobe’s CS3 program box. Obviously not as in-depth as Adobe’s, but following the same idea of a 5.25”x7.5” layout. Making everything fit, while retaining legibility will be an issue. Strangely enough being gifted with very good eyesight is something of a curse for me when it comes to design as I can read small text clearly when other’s cannot. As a result I often have to go back and redesign everything, and unfortunately it’s never as easy as scaling down the images and magnifying the type. Perhaps one day laser eye surgery will become more common place and I won’t have to re-do my works as often.

After being forced to read books for 4 years, now I'm making one....the irony is astounding

Standing in direct contrast appearance wise to Adrian Shaughnessy’s How to be a graphic designer without loosing your soul, is Sara Eisenman’s Building Design Portfolios. With the later looking more like an actual portfolio and Adrian’s book taking the guise of a schematic; still I have to say the consistency Adrian’s design does work and the look of the book begins to grow on you with its minimalist approach.
What captivated me the most about the first reading were the sections on Book format, showing process and proper packaging. Having selected print and print styles as my area of focus, I really gravitated to the idea of making a landscape styled hardcover portfolio. Sara Eisenman actually advised that print format portfolios are still the most effective means for young designers, further encouraging my decision.
Admittedly I am concerned about the leave behind element when it comes to a book portfolio, while certain sites to provide good rates on small quantity publication. I still worry about the cost and time factors involve with giving every interviewer a book. That and it would be tremendous waste if it were to be thrown away. Perhaps including a CD with all the PDF files organized on it would be a more cost effective manner. Another thought I have for a leave behind would be to make t-shirts. A lot of my grunge/layered style designs would lend themselves very well to current clothing styles, a memorable and unique leave behind to include with a PDF CD of my portfolio works.
A brief foray in to book pricing has yielded some promising results for two websites. However I would feel much more comfortable if they would give the paper options, available fonts and cover materials. They do both posses 4-color printing though which is a plus. Curiously enough the pricing actually decreased with multiple book orders as opposed to a one-book print. Perhaps it is more cost effective to print multiple copies then to print a single book and have to reset all the machines involved, I’m speculating on this but it makes sense to me.