Building Design Portfolios

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Job no:70268 Title : RP- Building Design Portfolios Client : Pro-Vision

Scn :

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175 Size : 171.45(w)254(h)mm Co : M1 C0 O/P: CTP

Dept : DTP D/O : 26.01.06 (Job no:70268.C1 D/O : 08.02.06 Co: CM8)

BlackText

Introduction

OPPOSITE Designer: Skolos-Wedell

By definition, a design portfolio is a grouping

of loose sheets collected in a portable case. But

today, portfolios assume a range of new forms:

websites, motion portfolios, files on disc, port-

able document format (PDF), and limited-

edition books or monographs. Despite their

differences, these presentation forms share a

surprising number of similarities.

Let’s take a brief look at the history of design

portfolios. Before and well into the twentieth

century, designers were most often employed by

printers, acting as in-house designers for all

kinds of printed information, including invita-

tions, manuals, books, or advertisements.

In these cases, the portfolio usually took the

form of a type specimen book, where previously

printed samples showed how a specific typeface,

ornament, dingbat, and border worked on

the page.

Among the earliest examples of type specimen

sheets is Trissino’s display of Arrighi’s italic,

circa 1526. Also worth noting are the lovely

eighteenth-century Fournier and Bodoni speci-

men books, which display both typefaces and

ornaments offered by the printers to their cus-

tomers. There’s also the long and distinguished

series of printers’ manuals from Johannes

Enschedé of Haarlem, the Netherlands, display-

ing the rich variety of typefaces produced by this

foundry from the sixteenth century through the

twentieth century.

In nineteenth-century America, most printers

issued elaborate and extensive type specimen

books, with the most thorough and interesting

coming from the Bruce Type Foundry. Other

examples include the celebrated Harpel specimen

book from Cincinnati, and the long succession of

elaborate American Type Founders type specimen

books that displayed the myriad typefaces and

borders offered by that enormous foundry.

Clients could review type designs and faces in

various sizes and weights and familiarize them-

selves with the house design style specific to

that printer or type shop. Naturally, the different

shops were very distinctive.

By the early twentieth century, designers began

to operate independently of printers. Sir Francis

Meynell, who conceived and directed England’s

Nonesuch Press, saw himself as an architect

rather than a builder, a specifier rather than a

printer. Rather than contracting printing locally,

he went to extraordinary efforts to use the best

printers throughout the world, regardless of cost

or inconvenience. During this period, publishing

companies and food and product manufacturers

began to hire staff designers. Governments

also hired designers to design money as well

as postage stamps. If staff designers were not

able or available to design products, the service

was “jobbed out” to highly respected artists

and engravers.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the art

departments of several universities and colleges

began offering graphic design courses, where

students learned from teachers in classroom set-

tings, rather than through apprenticeships. At

this time, a portfolio, or a carried case similar to

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