Building a Personal Brand: Part Two

Part Two: The Portfolio

The first part of this series about building and developing a personal brand was dedicated to coming up with a logo. As the main focus of this project is to develop a consistent feel across all self-promotional materials, the logical next step to tackle is the portfolio.

Iffy Beginnings

The idea when I began creating my portfolio, like any portfolio, was to show off what I have done and could do, not only work-wise but also in the layout of the portfolio itself. As the logo is simple, the portfolio had to also reflect simplicity in order to keep a consistent ‘feel’. The strength of the logo is that it can be adapted any number of ways, from the simplest to the craziest, but as the default ‘feel’ is simple, the portfolio should reflect that.

My first thought was to employ a design which mimicked the circular nature of my logo.  However, I felt that it never really lent itself to what I was trying to do – keeping things simple – so it developed along several different unsatisfactory paths to no real avail.

After some time working and tweaking on these ideas, I decided to take an entirely different stripped-to-the-basics approach altogether.

Self-Learned Lesson No. 1 – Do what’s comfortable.
Obviously, we only learn by pushing ourselves and as designers, we routinely have to leave our comfort zone of experience and taste . However, it’s also important to only present something you’re both comfortable with and completely satisfied with. If you don’t have confidence in a piece, there’s no use in showing it to others – they’ll be able to tell in a heartbeat.

Simply Radical, or Radically Simple?

Despite making numerous different approaches and playing with the circular form, it never seemed to feel quite right – round peg in a rectangular hole, so to speak. By taking this next development further, I felt much more comfortable and confident with the design.

As a result, I went with a very spacious and ‘empty’ layout. The idea was to play to the ‘brand’s’ strength of simplicity by using a very minimalist layout, employing only some understated type and a related image. The broad use of white space adds weight to the pieces themselves, rendering them the focal point as opposed to part of a cluttered whole. As hard as it may be to tell with these images, I hope it somewhat makes sense!

The Power of Intent

Another strength of this layout is the consistency in type location – 2 inches in from the left, 1.5 inches down. This keeps the information consistent throughout the document, and keeps a constant counter-balance to the varying image sizes and locations. The images themselves vary in size and placement based solely on visuals – in a portfolio, it’s all in how it looks.

Self-Learned Lesson No. 2 – Know your limits.
Obviously, again, we only learn by pushing our limits. However, there are times when you need to know what you can accomplish in a given amount of time and what you can’t. Case in point: Working for 5 hours throughout the evening and night on some simultaneous website re-design work, only to quickly come to the realization that it takes alot more than 5 hours to do a website re-design and re-coding. This much is obvious, and it’s one of the most  elemental things you can learn through trial-and-error. But, going forward, mistakes can only help you learn.

The key with this piece, as I’m sure it is with any design piece, is to make everything look intentional. Placement, sizing, typography (and all its various details –  the strength is in the details), use of colour – it all looks ‘on purpose’ and it all fits. While it’s not the most ground-breaking layout and it isn’t extreme in any sense, that’s exactly the point. As a finished result, having had it printed and bound, I can safely say I’m confident in the layout and content enough to show it off to potential employers.

Don’t Forget the Resume

Of course, a side to the mighty portfolio is the humble resume. As part of a cohesive whole, it’s only natural that the resume had to possess the sasme feel, style and elements of the portfolio. As a result, it was important to keep the typography and margins consistent and the style the same, but most importantly, it had to possess a spacious ‘feel’ while including all my information on one page.  Quite the design challenge!

Well, that’s the second part of the series. What experiences have you had putting together a portfolio? Successes? Failures? Let us know, I’d like to hear other designers’ experiences!