What do companies look for in a design portfolio? How do you show passion?

Key Takeaways

my name is Joseph and I'm a graduating SE uh senior from cesson and my question is uh what do you look for in a recent uh graduate like as in uh when when they're out there looking for jobs what do you what's like the most important quality or feature you look for in a recent graduate what do you think we're looking for talent and how do you demonstrate talent talent you demonstrate that through your portfolio but you also demonstrate it through passion like you just don't do design or art for uh for fun it's something that your whole life revolves around and I I think that's what talent is and that's what employers look for candidate so you said two things talent and passion how do you show talent talent through your ability to execute designs and art how do you how do I see that what does that look like to you uh physically seeing it would be through a portfolio Okay and where would that portfolio Live Well I know in the old days it would be in a book but uh we're not in the old days it's 2017 more recently though a website on a website yeah so you have to put a website together to show your work let's drill down into specifics now okay how many pieces should you post well what they teach us in school is about uh 10 forget about what they teach you in school tell me what you feel um I I feel like there isn't a set number it's how many it doesn't matter how many you have it's like how many it's it's the works that are that you feel are your strongest I okay how many would be the minimum then wait eight eight so you have eight amazing pieces that you're proud of I I I'm pretty confident in saying that yes really how many of you guys agree that you have eight amazing pieces that you're proud of not that many or maybe they're just being very humble this morning and that's okay all right so you say you should have eight pieces but only the pieces you're really proud of and the part that I'm going to emphasize is the word really not just kind of proud of but really proud of and can we put some kind of somewhat objective measure on work that you could be proud of I mean they're like your children right so you're kind of proud of the work you do but how can you look at it yourself and determine is this high quality work how how can you do that anybody go ahead um I think I think it would be cool to show a piece of work to someone without having known that it's your work and if it kind of passes off as professional then okay so we're going to use that word professional now okay all right okay I'm going to keep you in the hot seat just for a little bit longer and then anybody else that's going to speak our audience complains like we want to hear them on the mic and I get that okay you have eight really professional work that you're proud of can you guys look in your mind right now and start counting off how many pieces you have and then I'm going to tell you what I think the answer is okay but it's just me all right and then you said passion so like see like uh I I went to school for design you know not like liberal arts or an English major an anthropology or sociology major but as I find out in my life now I'm getting a bit older is that words matter and so whenever you have a difficult problem to solve all you do is take the problem and break it down into a little pieces all right I'll let you sit down have a seat okay you just break it down into little pieces what is a recipe a recipe is a complex dish broken down into finite numbers of steps almost everybody here given a good recipe can make a wonderful dish one that you've never made before okay so how do we show passion now and I'll get back to the talent part a little bit because Talent is what somewhat subjective right anybody how do we show passion I mean if I talk to you I could feel your passion if I know you really well I could know your passion if I've been keeping attendance and looking at participation in the class I can see your passion but when it comes to a portfolio put on a website going from one screen to another screen how does somebody see that oh okay I like that uh what is your name Dominic Dominic he's using the word passion in the definition of passion let's try a different word when you say passion projects what do you mean things that you're interested in you have a personal interest uh like movie posters okay so I'm going to write first I know we all like our studying design and so we got a lot of words on the on the Whiteboard already so like movie posters how do I know you're really into movie posters are there projects that you put in that a professional that you're really proud of that you're not passionate about yes there are why are they in your portfolio to show range what kind of range are you showing um layout design editorial design and you're not passionate about editorial layout design like what's one end of the range and what's the other end of the range really passionate about movie theater or movie posters keyart and I think the other side would be editorial that you're not passionate passionate about editor okay you like movie posters and then editorial you you're not so happy about like we're talking about magazine layouts and things like that yes yeah okay why show something that you don't like to do so you can get more of the things you don't like to do is that logical to you yeah it's and who here loves editorial design anybody you guys all right we'll talk about that a little bit okay I love editorial design exactly I suspect you don't like editorial design because you're not that good at typography just yet that would be my suspicion like somebody some here doesn't like drawing some like drawing like yeah because I don't I'm not good at it I'm not at tennis that's why I don't play I'm not good at yoga so I don't do yoga but you need to think about that do not show work that you don't love doing I can see it a mile away so you see that now there's a little bit of an oxymoron here is if you're not passionate about it I don't think it's going to be very good how can it be are you really good at faking you are no you're not don't nod your head or like yeah you're right that's okay all right that's an amen I get it testify all right so movie posters if you love movie posters just make a bunch of movie posters and show diversity and range in the kind of movie posters you work on so you like sci-fi you like big tent pole pictures like the comic book movies show a little like a documentary or show a romcom that's range okay there's things that we talk about in terms of like focusing and going deep that shows expertise when you have a focused portfolio chances of you working at the company you would like to work at go up okay I'm not going to hire you to do editorial I can tell you're not loving it because I can see that the command of typography isn't there the interest and the level of work you put into it isn't there and you guys can tell when you get student projects at school when somebody goes bananas and when Dave says bring in three comps right and everybody shows up three comps three comps three comps 37 comps who's passionate that person and it's very evident all right you can't fake that stuff you're not that good yet okay when you're that good you can fake it so let's talk about that okay show range in the things that you love all right so let's get back to this now so that's how he says we show passion thank you very much how else can you show passion I think uh passion can be seen in uh like the quality of your work you know like if somebody's not passionate about something their quality of their work you could tell right away you know like they just threw it together they just did it to get it done but somebody who is passionate about like say movie posters like you can tell that you know they put a lot of time into it they're like doesn't matter what else they have going on in their life they're going to make time for it so the quality really shows okay so quality and devotion quality and devotion yeah okay okay all right go ahead hand the mic pass it it's like a joint just keep passing it all right anyway we'll edit that part out we totally edit that part out all right you know I'm sorry now you guys all have to introduce yourselves say your name and then follow U my name's Christina and I think passion can be shown as a student someone that takes it outside of school like uses linda.com or explores other um other I guess services that are free and you can actually meet with people and like other people from firms like we had a a project where we got an interview um someone that was our hero or someone that we admired in the field and a lot of us got a chance to do that and meet our people when you say Take It Outside what do you mean there's a lot of people on the internet that are going to watch this and say what the heck does she mean take it outside so I feel like people at work leave work at home so maybe when they get home they're so they like it's a passion I think it's something that you consider a hobby as well so you don't just stop you just changed your definition there I'm talking about taking it outside but okay so your personal interest is also your hobby that's fine I get that but what do you mean Take It Outside I guess I'm I'm when I meant Take It Outside I guess I meant just from being a student outside of class like don't don't just confine yourself to what you're supposed to do kind of explore outside of that if that makes sense can somebody help her out you want to phone a friend anybody want to help her out uh yeah I'll phone Alisa okay um I guess I'll use the same examples that she was given um instead of just practicing and working on one project maybe branching off of that same project let's say it's packaging and branching off and making that a website or like an app um but taking it outside the classroom I think is what she was trying to say and just utilizing that and making it okay so what you're talking about here is go beyond the parameters of the project yeah exactly okay is that what you're saying Take It Outside all right go beyond beautifully done because Take It Outside you guys see that M yes where the kids like playing video games and they take it outside go play outside the kid gets a really gets a really long cable it goes outside the window and he's still playing video games outside he's like go play outside he literally took it outside which're is making sure that we're not talking about that you're going to go beyond all right so here's here's a little bit of truth serum this is a confessional nobody's watching this how many of you guys and you know we have Godfather Dave in the background have gone beyond the parameters of the assignment now okay and without looking at Dave D you just give me a look is that true or not true just give me a look I said you guys are not supposed to look so he can tell me the truth what I I have to say that that maity pass the mic pass the mic you're like you're holding on too long you know what I mean this is Dave Moon from Cal Northridge teaching graphic design courses um I I honestly have to say majority of the students here right from the beginning of the semester when we audit their portfolio to now many of them have gone beyond what is expected so we use the term come to class do more than what is expected of you and I think that's sort of like what Chris is reiterating is that anyone could do same level right so how do you differentiate by going Beyond if there's five thumbnails are requested you show up with 10 thumbnails or more right that's passion and you don't even have to do much other than showing up in there the people know that you are passionate about it and those are the kind of people that that we want to be associated with right as well yeah so yes D quid they have done gone beyond as well okay I have a followup to that though Dave you hold on to it for a second I don't need a double mic I recently went to a class at se Sun I won't tell you which class I was just there last week we have it on tape where the instructor said do One logo and do one application and sure enough to the student One logo one application and I had said something rude I'd said how many weeks have you guys worked on this and to my surprise they said 10 weeks you guys need to learn how to produce a lot more work in this time and this is something I did not say then is I think I could have done the work that they did in 10 weeks in probably an hour and a half I'd be much much better at it so something is wrong okay and then somebody said in defense we got a lot of other stuff going on that's what they said I'm like oh all right so I'll be careful right now well how does that reflect on your work what are you trying to do and I wondered this and and Aaron was there we were just chatting I wondered this myself is why didn't one student only takes one person to do this to come in there and embarrass everybody else to come in there you know what I did one logo but if versions of it and then I did this many applications cuz this project is I'm just really excited about it I want to have this deep conversation and show people what I can do because you know when I'm looking at your portfolio when you're done with school like in a few months I see it or I should say I don't see it I don't see that passion you're talking about so do you guys have a clear picture now as to what you need to show in your work all right so you you you you've come to your own answer right this is how many pieces I showed to get a job in advertising it was my first job my first professional job somewhat almost out of school I sent three pieces maybe it was four and I thought there's no way I'm going to get a job this is all I've got that's not all the work I've produced that's all the work that I thought was relevant to the job I was applying for this is back in the old days you put your work in a FedEx box and you s it out I put three or four pieces in it and I got a call days later we're offering you the job we got the job so three is important because three shows a pattern uh Steve oad is editor he said one won't two might three will to establish a pattern right when you're doing an IQ test they show you three things and they say what's the fourth thing they don't show you two things and ask you what the third thing is cuz you can't figure it out it's not not that I mean I guess you can but it's not very likely that you will be able to hard enough with three show as few pieces as possible that's relevant to the to the job you're applying for and make sure it's really good now the problem is that decision was made a long time ago it wasn't like you just worked on that project specifically to apply for that position right that means the work that you've done as as a sophomore as a junior and as a senior already determined whether this was going to be good or not oops maybe I don't know the one thing that I wanted to share with you guys is when I was going to Art Center this is uh over two decades ago the level of competition there with my fellow classmates was pretty intense now I'm not saying every student was as intense and maybe I was a super intense so I just wanted to be better than everybody else that was my thing and then when I could spot another student who's willing to battle with me in so to speak not literally but they would do more I'm like oh all right next week okay I see where this is going to go and it's totally unspoken it's not like you you me the diamond you know I'll see you back at the diamond we're going to take care of some business it was just like I don't want to be embarrassed I want to embarrass you and the amount of work I'm willing to put in the amount of ideas of thorough thoroughness of the exploration is where I will do it so think about that we have 13-year-old 15-y old kids watching the show that are already much better hand lettering artists than many of us in this room and believe it or not when somebody's 16 years old and they tell me they've been freelancing for 3 years I think that's bananas and then I see their work I'm like okay I can see that I can see that now okay are we good with this put this one to bed [Applause] [Music]