Resume

According to the authors of “No Plastic Sleeves”, “best practice is to keep your resume to one page”(206). Since I have had a lot of jobs in my life, this proved difficult for me. It was hard to narrow them down because none of them were shameful or ended on bad terms. I was never fired. I never quit. It was simply that my jobs had expiration dates. Each job shows a different part of my qualities and skills in the working world. I also have awards and activities from both universities. I don’t want my resume to look crowded but I also don’t want to leave out something that will give a potential employer a better sense of who I am. 

Page Layouts

 The pieces are chosen. My presentation book has arrived. Now comes the page layouts. The authors of “No Plastic Sleeves” suggest including “a series of images or thumbnails in order to showcase important aspects, close-up details, or even sketches of the work at various stages”(92). I started laying out my pages in inDesign. For my websites, I chose to show what the home page and interior pages look like. I also added smaller images to highlight certain parts of the site. I did the same for my eBooks. While planning out how the different pages were going to look, I tried to keep the composition of each pages as close to a grid as possible. 

Online Architecture

The authors of “No Plastic Sleeves” warn, “Determining how to name sections of your website and subsequent navigation will tell your target audience a lot about you right upfront” (171). I used an information architecture to plan out the navigation of my site. I knew I did not want a “portfolio” tab in my nav bar. In my opinion, my whole site is my portfolio. I also knew I wanted to categorize my work into digital design, game design and fine art. Then, I wanted to use a secondary nav bar to categorize further. I chose to allow the viewer to choose one of the three main categories from the home page and then include a hover drop down menu on all of the interior pages for the secondary nav. Choosing to organize my site like this shows viewers the diversity of my work. 

What’s Good Enough?

It’s time to build my portfolio. The question is: What work do I put in it? I have eight years worth of work to sift through. What pieces are good enough? What pieces belong? It is easy enough to get rid of the bad pieces. The ones I am embarrassed to show my friends. But I have a good number of pieces I am proud of as well. I know I want to have a good balance to my portfolio. My web portfolio should display work from digital design, game design and fine art. It should show all parts of me and what I am capable of. It should have an generally even amount of work from all of the sub-categories within the main three, such as print, ui/ux, motion, 3D, eBook, painting, printmaking, game art, etc. My print portfolio, however, should focus on design and the sub-categories within it. The authors of the book, No Plastic Sleeves, advise taking “out any pieces that appear to be redundant, or offer essentially the same idea, demonstration, or method. If they simply repeat something that is already well presented, you should consider removing them” (7). By choosing pieces from the different subcategories, I will have more of a diverse portfolio.

Social Media

As a culture, we are constantly connected to each other. That has its advantages and drawbacks. Lori Deschene explains positive aspects of social media in Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind. She says, “You can leverage it to make new contacts or expand your business. You can use it to showcase your expertise, share what you’ve learned, or learn from people you admire and respect. You can use it to stay informed, entertained and connected”(133). I decided to use social media as a tool to showcase work outside of my web portfolio. I have a lot of photography that I would have liked to include on my website. However, I felt it was more appropriate to create a flickr account to display my photographs. I also have videos of my animations and walkthroughs of my eBooks that I showcase on youTube. I also signed up for LinkedIn as a way to keep it touch with my professional relationships. All three of these social media sites are linked to my online portfolio. I have also signed up for pinterest this semester. I have been avoiding pinterest because it was my understanding that it was primarily hair & makeup tips, fashion advice and recipes. However, pinterest has been a great source of inspiration. Its many design boards have quality examples of brand boards and information architectures. They have product designs and posters, letterheads and business cards. Pinterest is (partially) a community of designers and design lovers, sharing good design with one another. (Though, it is mostly hair, makeup, fashion and food). 

To Do Lists

As the end of my final semester at Quinnipiac approaches, the adage,  “so much to do, so little time”, has never been truer! I have to finish my web and print portfolios, write papers, and prepare presentations. I have gotten very little sleep over the past couple weeks and even pulled a couple all-nighters. I keep reminding myself that it will all be worth it. All of my hard work will be evident when I have portfolios I can be proud of. I have taken some advice from the book, Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind, on how to make it through these last weeks. In the book, Mark McGuinness recommends limiting your daily to-do lists. He suggests writing the list on a post-it note. He says, “if you can’t fit everything on a list that size, how will you do it all in one day?”(28) Granted, whether or not you can accomplish a post-it note worth of tasks in a day depends on the size of the task. Still, he makes a good point. At the beginning of last week, I made a list of everything I needed to accomplish that week. I, then, made note of what day those tasks needed to be done by, and chose the best days to do them. I proceeded to make seven smaller lists, one for each day of the week. Each day, I looked at to corresponding to-do list and accomplished everything on that list. For me, it was a less daunting way to approach the week. I found myself only focusing on the daily tasks. I was able to pace myself and still be productive. I can proudly say that I was able to accomplish all of my goals for last week and plan to do the same thing this week.