Week 10 (week 9 is between 3 and 4)

Building Design Portfolios: Innovative Concepts for Presenting Your Work, rest of book

I knew what this section was going to be about at the very beginning. Fundamentally, this section seeks the answer to the question How far may we stretch the boundaries? Exploring creativity in this particular section constitutes a tremendous loosening up of otherwise rigid boundaries. The radically different approaches, depicted by the well chosen images, help to inspire some creativity. I think it would be interesting to make a print portfolio that is printed onto an old fashioned scroll. Or perhaps a kaleidoscope-like device that, when the mechanism is turned, displays a new sample image. I like the tone of grey used in the last section, Interactive Portfolios and Websites, and I thought it was a great closing to this book.

Designing A Digital Portfolio, Ch. 10
This section has got me to thinking about the pros and cons between the solid/static framework of Dreamweaver tables and the dynamic framework of Flash. Of course, however, I chose Flash to build my portfolio site because it is far more flexible. But then I question whether or not this flexibility is obtained at the price of a less stable foundation.
Although I haven’t yet considered the “metaphor” through which I would design my site, off the top of my head I’d assume that the Narrative metaphor would be most enjoyable to me. I suppose, however, that an excess of story telling may block the way of a client looking for specific information quickly. The other idea that ought to be considered is the concept chart illustrated on p. 204. It lets you know that there may be interpretations of your work which, whether logical or illogical, may be entirely misconstrued.

Week 8, almost there

Building Design Portfolios, up to p. 94
This section was particularly pleasing in that it seems to have brought me some good news. Since websites are not the most efficient way for all types of designers to get their work out, Eisenman weighs out the various pros and cons of a web portfolio in relation to different design disciplines. It looks like my current design aspirations check out, so my web development will pay off. It was also nice to see that music was addressed in that section, being that I find auto-playing music to be very annoying. The section on motion graphics presented an interesting idea; animating still photos! Why didn’t I think of this before? Actually I have, and have done so as well. As always, great art in this chapter, particularly at the bottom of page 84.




Designing a Digital Portfolio Ch. 8
The idea of repurposing is new to me, but I suppose that may be because I am relatively new to design. Since I don’t yet have a large collection of designs, I tend not to deal with many different versions of the same files like other more experienced designers might do. Nevertheless, I would like to start taking my old Photoshop work (don’t worry, it’s quite nice) and being implementing it into Flash animations. Once again, I see another sign that PDF development is calling me, and I suppose its time that I mature and stop avoiding it. Furthermore, with all this recent talk about compression and file sizes, it seems that these issues may disappear with technological advances occurring at an accelerated rate. It would be interesting to watch the design flow change based on that phenomenon.