How much to put in your Portfolio?

Dave1975

Active Member
Hey all,

With your own portfolios (both offline and online) how many pieces of work do you have in them? I've always been told to have 8-10 examples of the very best work in my print portfolio to see prospective clients, if possible tailored to suit their business.

Do you think it's worth limiting an online portfolio to set number of your best projects or latest work?
Or is it better to have a really extensive portfolio of lots of work on your online portfolio?

Thanks,
Greg
 
Greg said:
Do you think it's worth limiting an online portfolio to set number of your best projects or latest work?
Or is it better to have a really extensive portfolio of lots of work on your online portfolio?

In my personal opinion I'm not sure it matters as long as you have some of your most recent work in there.

What would be the argument against having a huge portfolio with all of you previous work in?
 
mrleesimpson said:
What would be the argument against having a huge portfolio with all of you previous work in?

For visiting clients, the argument against all the work is the time it would take your client/s to look through it all and then answer any questions, or talk through it. For the online portfolio that point doesn't really apply so much, as I'm guessing clients like to see as much as possible on your site?
 
Yer.

I would say the more you give the to look at the better.
 
I disagree, I think it's better to have a showcase of your work rather than a big collection of work. We've been going for over 7 years now and protential clients would just get wound up with having to spend 3 hours to go through our designs.

Ideally a portfolio should be suited to the client, with some bound-breakers thrown in. But obviously that's not always possible (unless you have a fixed meeting).
 
I think fewer with good explanations behind each piece then having loads of examples is best way forward.

Brett
 
How about with regards to an online portfolio? Is it best to keep it limited to fewer with explanations, more like case studies? Or better to have all your work on your site and then highlight a few as case studies?

Thanks,
Greg
 
I was always told by my first boss to keep a portfolio as minimum as possible but with quality not quantity. Always leave them wanting more. Then you get that elusive second interview.
I tell students never to replicate stuff, 1 corporate id, 1 ad, 1 poster etc etc. rather than the "here's another poster i did conversation". Always leave them wanting more. The best interviewee i had many years ago was an older designer who was applying for a finished artists job ( Cow gum, Spray Mount, CS10, typesetting houses!) he came in with 1 piece of work in a brown paper bag! It was an illustration of something but it was amazing and that one piece of work showed his precision, detail and ability. He got the job.
Online at our site we have 10 pieces of work from selected clients, but we have a rollover feature that means it
it changes into 4 other images which means we can show 40. But it is important that what we feature as a whole shows a great breadth of work across different fields. Less is more ( unless you disguise it)
 
Hi Greg,

I think that a way of doing the online portfolio is to divide them in to categories.
That way it seems that a company looking through your portfolio doesn't have to look through a lot.

But I think it is important to be selective and show only the artwork that you know that people or companies will like. This way you keep them amazed.

Regards, Dan
 
To a certain extent I believe in quality over quantity.

In a portfolio that I take to a client to try and secure a job I show them a minimal amount of my owrk (say 8 pieces) that are the best out of my portfolio and that are the same as the work that they want me to carry out asweel as about 2 pieces of work that they do not wish for me to carry out - this way they see what I can do, and see what I can do for them in the future

With my online portfolio it is a similiar matter - I post most of the work I do, but certainly not all!
 
I think tailoring your portfolio for your client is the way to go .... at the end of the day a portfolio is an extension of your CV .... putting irrelivant information into a CV looks and reads messy its the same for a portfolio i feel... but hey what do i know .... im just a student :eek:
 
My current portfolio has four different sections (corporation, small biz, non-profit, creative) with about 6-10 examples in each. That way, depending on the client, they can not only see what I've done in their particular realm of business, but they can see how my skills could apply in other arenas. I think if you have a lot of pieces, one should try to segment them so the user isn't overwhelmed.
 
i think it's quality over quantity too, and I'm trying to tailor my physical portfolio to suite prospective future employers... I've got 16 pages in my physical A3 portfolio.

I'm trying out the best of both online with a showcase and a catalogue of previous work... the clients i seem to pick up online liked browsing through my (vast ammount of) work when I had my old online folio up, but prospective agents and employers seem to like less.
 
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