If you’re just out of school or have a few work years behind and need a new gig, the most important thing for you to do is to put a good book together. Here are a few tips that will hopefully help you:
- Plan in advance and be consistent in keeping archives of your good work. This will help you tremendously when you need to collect your work quickly.
- Don’t put any cliches in your book, such as condom or wonderbra ads. Creative Directors, not to mention clients hate those.
- Don’t put more than 7-12 good ideas or designs in your book. CD’s and clients don’t have time and they don’t want to look at your work history. They want to be sure you can do good stuff and a few good ideas are enough to prove that.
- Have at least a 3-4 of those works made for FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods, such as toothpaste, detergent or soft drinks) products. Important agencies and design studios have these clients and they want to make sure you can do such work as well.
- Show a range of different jobs. Have a 360 degree campaign, but also have a logo design. Include ambient, online and other unconventional media ideas as well. Variety is important, unless you specialize in a narrow field.
- You may want to include at the end stuff that’s not directly work, but shows your skills that are related to the job. Poetry, drawings, product ideas, etc.
- Make your book as simple as possible. It’s all about the content. Not about the cover.
You can have both an off-line and an on-line version of your book. Good free online portfolios can be built on coroflot and behance.
If you have any other suggestions, please do share!
