Emailing my Portfolio - Adobe PDF Problems!

[Alex Dawes Designs]

I am attempting to PDF my portfolio to share it with prospective employers. I want to send my portfolio on an email but can’t get it to fit. The size of the file is 58.6mb and Google will only allow 25mb. I have made all my images of the designs JPGS. I have created another file in PNG format this fits on the email but the quality of the designs are affected. Please can anybody help me I’ve looked online but nothing seemed to help?

 

[spottypenguin]

Could you not use wetransfer.com (arrives as a link to download)?

 

[Edge]

or yousendit.com

 

[ARRIVALS]

Why are you even attempting to send a portfolio that big to a prospective employer? You'll only clog up their mail server and probably piss them off. I made that mistake when I was at university. It's not going to sell you very well. You need to take some images out, or decrease the size of the lot of them by a lot. Every agency I've ever dealt with have had a max mail limit of 8MB.

 

[Stationery Direct]

Host the PDF somewhere and just send a URL directing to it.

 

[ARRIVALS]

Host the PDF somewhere and just send a URL directing to it.

This is the best idea anyway. Quick and easy for them to get to and look at.

 

[bigdave]

58mb for work samples is huge!! How are you producing your portfolio?

Simple ways to make your samples email friendly:

• You should only be sending samples of your best work to prospective employers (6 or 7 pieces is enough). If you send everything you've ever produced, there's nothing left to wow them with at interview!!
• Build your portfolio in InDesign or Quark and not in photoshop! (photoshop rasterizes EVERYTHING so files become huge images and text will appear very low res).
• Set images to the correct size, (ie; don't place an A3 size image into an A4 page and scale to fit as the pdf will be made using the original image size thus bloating the file).
• Your samples are never going to see a professional printer so don't worry about making everything 300dpi. (150 is ample for screen viewing and office printers).
• Many employment websites who require portfolios to be uploaded will have a stupidly low file size limit and so you'll need to make a 'smallest file size' pdf of your samples solely for this reason (an employer who's interested in seeing you will ask for your work samples and CV again anyway).

 

[gprovan]

If you have Acrobat, you could use the PDF Optimizer option. It can do wonders for file sizes.

 

[dedwardp]

Agree with the above, don't e-mail large PDFs as it will do you no favours at all and simply harm your case. I generally try not to attach anything above 4-5mb to an e-mail if I can help it, or else I'll use You Send It or something.