Adding Fictional Projects to Portfolio

[pealo86]

What are everyone's thoughts on this? Going by some recent discussions I've had with design agencies, I'm thinking I could do with getting some more brand identity and print work in my portfolio. Thing is, I find worthy portfolio opportunities crop up quite rarely with paid work. I would consider some pro-bono (e.g. for charities) work as I have done in the past, but I find this takes *way* longer than it would if I were just producing something fictional or self-initiated, because I still have to go back-and-to with the client and wait for feedback and all that... and I often find that client's aren't serious enough about the project when they've not paid for it.

But then with fictional work, although you have free reign to produce something really clever and nice looking, you're not exactly proving that you can work to a brief and tailor the design to a client's needs.

I'm aware of the importance of self-initiated work too, but I'm not really sure how I could go about brand identity work in a self-initiated way. I can produce my own artwork for myself, but I think all this really shows is artistic flair.

What does everyone else think?

 

[hankscorpio]

It's fine as long as you state clearly that it's non-commissioned brand redesign.

You don't have to have a paragraph of text, just a simple headline of "Non-Commissioned Brand Designs" heading.

 

[pealo86]

It's fine as long as you state clearly that it's non-commissioned brand redesign.

You don't have to have a paragraph of text, just a simple headline of "Non-Commissioned Brand Designs" heading.

Thanks, "Non-Commissioned Brand Designs" sounds like a better way of putting it in fact! I imagine this could be a good way to get direct clients (I imagine a lot of them would only look at the images anyway and not notice that they were none-commissioned) but what about a job interview? Could none-commissioned work look a bit 'studenty'? Like the kind of work you'd have when applying for a junior designer position?

Or am I just overthinking it?

 

[hankscorpio]

Shows you have a genuine interest in rebranding and you've thought about how other products are failing and attempted to fix that in a rebrand.

I'd definitely put this to the end and have the real life stuff at the beginning.

 

[pealo86]

Shows you have a genuine interest in rebranding and you've thought about how other products are failing and attempted to fix that in a rebrand.

I'd definitely put this to the end and have the real life stuff at the beginning.

Thanks, I'll add this to my list of stuff to do!