Portfolio Design: Create a Visual Narrative
Build an interesting portfolio that highlights your film graphic skills and set design experience. Design a book that people are excited to look at.
Happy New Year!
It’s a new year, and most of us face the same old job market challenges. We can’t control the number of productions. Still, we can do a few things to stand out and get a job, such as updating our portfolio, optimizing our online presence, sharing work on social media and networking.
In this post, I want to share a portfolio format that features design case studies. It’s an approach that might get your work noticed, whether you’re new to film graphics or trying to breathe new life into a tired portfolio.
This style of portfolio layout focuses on design thinking. It features the evolution of your film graphics from concept to completion and highlights the role of those graphics within the production design.
This format relies on a mixture of visuals to provide a complete picture of the graphics within the set design and the storyline. Compare this to traditional portfolio formats, which organize graphics by film title, graphic type (packaging, vehicles, signage), or department (props, costumes, playback), which risk being long, repetitive, and lack context to your involvement in the set design.
This formula builds a visual narrative that allows the art director (or whoever is hiring) to understand the connection between your graphics and the film set, and why and how you made certain design choices. This approach provides more context than a pretty slideshow of film graphics might.
By focusing on context and process it invites you to include a variety of visuals to flesh out the narrative and make your portfolio more engaging. This type of presentation will hold the viewers interest, which is always a good strategy.
A well-done portfolio can communicate who you are as a designer and your experiences, such as:
World-Building: It demonstrates your understanding of the role film graphics play in building a cinematic world.
Storytelling: It showcases your ability to create graphics that serve the story and support the characters.
Production Design: It demonstrates how your graphics contributed to the production design vision.
Scenic Details: It showcases your ability to design for various styles, periods, and genres.
Process: It demonstrates your understanding of the steps required to take a graphic project from concept sketch to digital design to construction to camera-ready film graphic.
Technical Skills: It offers visual proof of your graphic design abilities, digital skills, and print knowledge.
Practical Set Design: It demonstrates your understanding of on-set design, including materials, dimensions, lighting, camera angles, set extensions, visual effects, location constraints, actor needs, and budget.
Provides Context: It connects how a film graphic relates to the scripted scene. Afterall, the merit of a design is at the discretion of the person reviewing your portfolio. Even the most beautifully designed pieces risk being misunderstood or misjudged without context.
In this post, I break down exactly how to make a portfolio that people are excited to look at.