The making of a Portfolio

Graphic specifications

I am going to example throughout this blog about how to make a portfolio and what type of things you can include to make your portfolio look professional to whomever is going to be looking through your portfolio.

Page Templates

When looking at page templates you should always plan your work beforehand. So this means that creating different layouts of how you want your portfolio to look and how you want to layout it out all through the portfolio to make it stand out from everyone else. You could sketch different things out so then you can see the different ways you are able to lay everything out which as if you were doing a photography portfolio you can sketch out to see how many photographs you can have on the page. You can show your skills and capability of portfolio work because you’re making different sketches and creations of how you want your portfolio to look over all. You can always create a quick portfolio via your computer and get a rough idea of how the page templates might look if you were to use a certain design overall. The image below is an example of a page template – everything is set out professionally and even though this is a web based template it could defiantly work for a print based portfolio. All the photos are lined up and most likely the person who designed this would have created more page templates to create such a professional look for this design.

http://cdn.tripwiremagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/glisseo-photography-website-templates.jpg - Images used from tripwiremagazine.com

File Formats

Like my older blogs I have spoken about different file formats such as JPEG’s and GIF’s (ECT). You should always make sure that you use the correct file format so if you’re using a photograph in your portfolio you should use JPEG’s because then they will print out a lot better but you must make sure you are using ‘maximum quality’ when it gets to the printing options. Don’t use GIF’s as they are more for the internet so stick to JPEG’s! Make sure that your images aren’t pixelated and make sure that you think about the different media types which could be photos/stills/posters (ECT), so that means watching the resolution too because you won’ want your photos to be blurry and distorted when you put them into your actual portfolio.

The way of print

If you’re using Adobe Photoshop to make your portfolio then use MUST use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). CYMK is a lot better for printing and make sure your printing at 300dpi as well. For your portfolio your better using A3 so when it comes to printing make sure everything is set up as A3 paper. 

Just Save it!

First of all SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!!!

(Ctrl+s) Don’t stop saving your work because if you don’t save then you could possibly lose everything if something happened to your computer which it can. This has happened to me many times so just save your work - it can be every minute or every 5 minutes just saving constantly. Make sure when you’re saving any edited photographs or anything else similar then make sure you save things in the correct file formats. So for a photo save it as a JPEG as its better for printing.

Audience Needs

You’re creating a portfolio for a certain audience. This could be a possible employer or a university. Well the key is to keep it professional as this will set an example. You must make sure that if you write anything on your portfolio that it is easy to read and that you use correct language which mean don’t use any ‘slang’ so things like ‘dunt’ or ‘anyfink’. Spell check everything and if you are planning on write anything then write it all out on Microsoft Word or some type of program which you are able to spell check your work. Get someone to read through it for you as well so this could be a family member, friend or even a tutor if you’re still at college or some kind of education. Keep it formal too!

Visual style

Visual style again is kind of similar to your page template but it’s what the colours, fonts and backgrounds all look like. Think about colour theory so that means see what colours represent you (look online for colour theory). Also think about shape theory so the different shapes you want to use in your portfolio which could be the navigation. Navigation bars are a way of showing the person looking at your portfolio when to turn and where to turn so far example you could put a certain shape in the bottom right of your portfolio page to show that’s where they need to turn. This can be repeated on every page. You can use shapes such as circles, lines and arrows to show navigation too. You should also think about typeface so serif fronts such as ‘Times New Roman’ and also sans serif fonts such as ‘Comic Sans MS’. Using different typography (so fonts) will show what type of person you are to your audience (the people viewing your portfolio). Also think about alignment so like the image I have used above in the ‘page template’ section it is all aligned and all the photographs are straight and set in a certain way. This will make your portfolio look professional/neat and someone will be able to look through your portfolio and see the type of person you are from your personal portfolio.

It's all about Optimising

So.. What is Optimising? 

Image Optimization - Optimising has various target destinations such as bit depth, resolution, dimensions and the intended image output so an example would be screen worldwide web. Data gets rearrange or gets rewritten to improve efficiency of retrieval or processing. When looking at image optimization it is using the most compressed so that would be the smallest file size which is visually acceptable images that are in the proper file format for the specific role of the image. It is needed for two reasons which is download time and bandwidth used. To you they could sound interrelated but they are very important for many reasons. The storage of the hardware if the third reason that many get applied in some cases. 

It involves choosing a suitable graphic compression format. Compression actually reduces the image file size and also the consequently the time which it takes to actually download and display in your browser. Files which are commonly compressed are GIF, JPEG and PNG. These compressed formats reduce file sizes by removing some information from the images. An example, using the JPEG format would reduce overall tonal range to reduce file sizes which means highlights and shadows because a lot less pronounced. If you’re reducing the file size of the image is can be a significant issue for websites which may have a larger subscriber bases such as maybe a new website. Some site owners can actually get charged for the amount of information of data which gets downloaded from their sites so that means if the website is very popular and the larger that the images are than they greater the traffic costs overall. 

Just a brief example – more information below.

Image optimization is actually an easy process. Firstly use Photoshop and edit the photo how you want it to look. Once you have manipulated your image to the correct appearance and canvas size you need to use the ‘save for web’ in the file menu. Using this will allow you to exercise fine-grained control over images and the file size. Many websites have JPEGS when they should actually use GIF's or PNG's. When looking at a JPEG graphic or a JPG they are determined by the quality of the overall image and also the image canvas size. Most JPGS look best but are the most efficient between 50-70 qualities. When looking at quality the factor is pretty much between 1 and 100, 100 is the highest quality which will determine how much compression is actually being applied to the image you’re using. In this case 50 would be the lowest range and the less important picture and then 70 being the highest for the larger for the important images which could be a graphic title or possibly a headshot. If you’re using a GIF or PNG graphic then its determined by the canvas size and also the number of colours in the optimized image. Most graphics and logos don't need 256 colours to actually look good they could use around 32 or 16. Either one of these graphics can look good as a large or small graphic depending on the type of graphic you’re creating. 

The image above is showing the higher quality picture. I have zoomed into the image which shows a good resolution overall. Below shows the image which i have print screened and zoomed into which shows a lower image quality because it’s not 100% in focus and and the resolution is starting to show the pixels in the image. 

So for now you know about Optimising I can tell you how to optimise an image! It is an easy process. First of all edit your photograph in Adobe Photoshop, its best using Photoshop rather than using a different program which aren’t at the same level as Photoshop. Once you have set the canvas size you want you can now save your image by going to ‘save to web’ in the commands at file menu. This will allow you to exercise fine grained controls over an image and its overall file size! You can then select the format for the job. If your image is very similar to a photograph then you should defiantly use a JPG format. However if it’s a graphic or something similar than I’d suggest you to use a GIF format or even a PNG format. Websites should be used GIF formats or PNG’s rather than JPEG’s which some sites do use. You MUST make sure you look for anything that looks distorted around the edges in JPGs which could should the poor quality of your image or graphic.