Design Portfolios

Introduction

Qualified candidates should submit a cover letter, résumé, and portfolio for consideration.

How many times have you seen this worn‐out submittal requirement in a job advertisement? Just about every ad ever posted for a designer, regardless of the position or level of experience sought, has included a request for these three documents. Don't things ever change?

Actually…they don't. Like it or not, the need for both students and professional designers to produce and maintain a portfolio of their creative work and the inevitability that a recruiter will ask to review it are the facts of life for designers engaged in a job search. Despite the near complete overhaul of the design industry brought about by digital technologies over the last quarter century, the good old‐fashioned portfolio is still very much at the heart of the recruiting process. Though the methods by which we create and share our portfolios have changed dramatically, the song remains the same—we must still present a compendium of our best work to qualify for and get the job.

In my position as recruiting manager for a large multi‐discipline design firm, I spend a lot of time interviewing students, reviewing portfolios, and lecturing in university‐level design programs. Hands down, the subject I am most frequently asked to address in these lectures is “making the transition from full‐time student to working design professional.” As you might imagine, portfolio design is central to this topic. It seems ...