Four Portfolio Mistakes You Should Avoid

Don't let this happen to you:

I had to attempt to put together a presentable portfolio in about a week. This was challenging, as I’ve not had need of a physical portfolio before, and I needed to pull it off without a hitch. I failed at it miserably, and here’s some reasons why:

1.) Have money for color

The first was the fact that my portfolio would have cost me between $45-90.00 to print out in full color. While I have little compunctions about doing so, I simply did not have the resources to do it (at the time I had just over $15 in the bank, and much less now). What’s even more strange, though, is that I found that I really don’t know anyone locally with a full color printer. At my previous job, if I needed anything in color I would ask the boss if I could use his printer (a rather beefy CMYK laser printer) and never for a moment thought about alternatives to that. Instead, I had to print out black and white laser versions of my work which really doesn’t capture the essence of the product. I made the wise decision to spend $8.60 of my $15 on bright white extra heavy paper, though, so it was less concerning to see the facing page text through the paper.

2.) Invest in business cards

The second snag was that I apparently don’t have any up-to-date business cards. These are crucial little pieces of self-marketing that essential for making those in-roads, and all of mine are either old, embarrassing, or emblazoned with the logo and contact info of my former employer. I put an extra copy of my complete resume in the packet, but I didn’t have the time (or money for that matter) to have more business cards printed.

3.) Have finished samples from previous employment

Snag number three was that I don’t have any of the printed work I created for my former employer. There were no catalogs, pamphlets, or manuals in finished form. I mean, I have the files, but as far as being printed on photo paper in full color, no such luck. This is only somewhat irritating as I have the files, except for the fact that I can’t afford to have them printed in color (and even if I did, it wouldn’t be a large run).

4.) Have video? Make sure that you have DVD software

The fourth (and probably least important) snag was that I could not include a DVD of my videos. These weren’t a requirement for the job, and probably wouldn’t have “wowed” them, but it is a skill listed on my resume and would have been nice to include. I put a link to the videos in my portfolio, but having the DVD would have been better. Now you may be asking yourself, “Surely, he has at least one blank DVD lying around, why wouldn’t he include it?” You would be right in that assumption; I have a few dozen blank discs staring me in the face as I write this. Before any other theories arise, the DVD+-R drives on both my desktop and laptop computers are in perfect working order, so that doesn’t factor in, either. The real reason is one of simple erroneous assumptions made by me about the software I have. When I have made videos in the past, it has always been for upload on YouTube. My videos and projects are made this way from the start. The workflow usually consists of: Filming, importing into Adobe Lightroom (which takes forever, but allows me to organize and meta tag my clips), enhancing in Adobe After Effects, tweaking audio in Adobe Audition, editing in Adobe Premiere, and finally exporting and converting in Adobe Media Encoder. Here’s the kicker: NONE of those programs allow you to create a DVD suitable for a player. I have another program that came with my analog signal capture device, but here’s the other kicker: None of the formats from Adobe Media Encoder are apparently compatible with this software (it won’t recognize H.264, MPEG2, and any MOV or AVI wrapper I could find). I found another, now out-of-date program from Adobe called Encore which will apparently do the job, but I downloaded this literally minutes before I had to leave for my interview and had no time to create a DVD menu or burn it. I am now playing with the program to have it ready for future portfolios (although I doubt that I will have the funds to have those printed professionally, either).

In Conclusion

What I did was burn all the materials that I included to a DVD so that they could view them in full color as needed. I put the description of the DVD inside the folder’s business card spot to help mask the fact that there wasn’t anything there, and then apologized profoundly and multiple times to the interviewer for not being able to afford color. It was not impressive.

So that was much of my week and my entire weekend. I'm already working on the next one.

Updated At Last!

Two years?!

Wow, it really has been almost two years since I posted anything to this site. I wish that I could say that I'm starting it up again under better circumstances, but the reality is that I was recently laid off of my job after nearly five years of steady employment, and I need to begin posting things that are beneficial to my job search.
And to that end, I am going to try to keep this blog focused on portfolio building and showcasing past projects. I can't guarantee that it will be updated as much as it should, but I will try to update it as much as I can.
Let me start off by posting a rough copy of my creative resume, formatted in HTML:

MICHAEL R. ADAMS

GRAPHIC DESIGN, DIGITAL MEDIA, & PHOTOGRAPHY

Multi-skilled digital artist who is used to working on a tight budget in a constrained time frame to produce works across several media formats. Possesses a working knowledge of vector art and photo editing software suites and animation techniques. Applies editing and photo-manipulation skills to instructional materials, advertisements, and infographics.
Core competencies include: Digital image manipulation, vector images, 3D model creation and rendering, 2D technical drawings, motion graphics, graphics for the web, and informational diagrams.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

CJ's Home Decor & Fireplaces, LLC

Warren, PA

05/2012-01/2017

One of the largest online retailers of fireplace doors, home heating appliances, and outdoor fire pits and fire features for both private, public, and commercial applications.
Web Maintenance, Technical Writer, and Media Designer
Builds content for product web pages including marketing text and images. Researches and creates instruction manuals for products sold under the store brand. Films and edits video content for commercials, product features, and instructional (“how to”) videos. Helps to maintain social media accounts. Adds new product content and changes pricing as requested by management.

• Wrote and drew a series of web guides that helped to reduce customer mistakes (and as a result, returns)
• Scripted, filmed, and edited a series of instructional and commercial videos to improve customer interaction
• Designed a series of daily product features for social media accounts that improved website traffic by about 25%

Bossa Nova Robotics

Pittsburgh, PA

01/2010-10/2010

A company that licenses cutting-edge robotics technology and implements it into products for the everyday consumer.
Technical Writer via Contract
Researches and analyzes core market demographics. Writes and edits proposals for business partnerships. Develops instruction manuals for consumers and technical manuals for engineers. Creates flow charts and diagrams for robot artificial intelligence. Works with the marketing department to develop commercial content and trade show scripts.

• Wrote working scripts and developed animations for trade show demonstrations
• Helped to cement a business partnership between Bossa Nova and Schell Games for online content
• Overhauled the manuals of several existing lines of toys
• Conducted market research and maintained an informational library on competing products

EDUCATION

Studied Game Art & Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, PA from 2003-2006
Graduated with a certificate in Electronics from Warren Vocational-Technical schools from 1991-1993

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Advanced knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite CC (Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Animate, and Audition), Corel Suite (Corel Draw, Photopaint, VideoStudio), 3D modeling and procedural texturing using 3D Studio Max and Blender 3D, Office software (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe InDesign, OpenOffice and LibreOffice).
Some experience with database management (Sage ACT!, MySQL) and online scripting (HTML, XML, CSS, and Javascript).

Carnegie Mellon Application

Today I applied to Carnegie Mellon University. Not to go to school there (which would be a pipe dream in my case), but to work as an administrative assistant to their art department. After filling out the prerequisite online form I was asked to submit a resume. Here's what I posted (note that I am leaving off all contact information in the interest of internet security):

SUMMARY
Working professional with over eight years of experience in computer operations and data entry,including five years of data maintenance with error checking and over two years of web-based research and retrieval.

ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE
- Worked as an intermediary between customers and other departments to resolve
mortgage processing problems.
- Consistently had the highest and most accurate output of employer's document recording department for over a year; involved online searches through county-level government websites for various documents.
- Ability to meet difficult monthly deadlines for clients without incurring undue cost.

COMPUTER EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
- Have used MS Word and Excel extensively.
- Extensive training using a variety of programs ranging a gamut of business software to graphic software to programming.
- Familiar to varying degrees with multiple operating systems (MS DOS, Windows 3.1 to Vista, some Linux distributions, IBM ISPF(TSO), and Mac OS/OSX); not afraid of learning a new interface.

FUNCTIONAL SKILLS
- Have received praise from multiple employers throughout professional career for being conscientious.
- Self-motivated, but will occasionally ask employer/client questions for clarity and understanding.
- Easy to train, and have no objection to training others.
- Have an ability to grasp difficult concepts to assemble complex systems.
- Reliable and a proven hard worker.

RELEVANT WORK HISTORY

Employee
Express Employment Professionals,
Robinson Township, PA
10/2008 to 06/2009

Field Representative
Pro Marketing Inc., Alpharetta, GA
01/2008 to 06/2008

Mortgage Recording Specialist
Integrated Real Estate Processing,
Pittsburgh, PA
09/2006 to 10/2007

Employee
DiCenzo Personnel, Pittsburgh, PA
06/2006 to 09/2006

Merchandise Assistant
Sears Roebuck & Co., Pittsburgh, PA
09/2003 to 03/2006

Associate
Electronics Boutique, Warren, PA
10/2001 to 03/2003

Computer Operator
Blair Corporation, Warren, PA
04/1994 to 09/2001


EDUCATION
The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Game Art & Design, 2003-2006
Warren Area Vocational-Technical School, Electronics, 1990-1993


I felt that this was a fair estimation of my office abilities. That wasn't good enough for the website though -- it wanted a cover letter as well. Cover letters are often too long and bloated to get to a point, and as recent efforts haven't yielded any results in my favor I tried a different route:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I'll keep this brief. I am third-and-three-quarters-year art school dropout with a professional background in IT that has only worked in industries poised on the brink of collapse (retail, the mortgage industry, home improvement industry, shipping industry, et al.). I have been told repeatedly by both teachers an employers that I am a hard worker and that I show exceptional promise, but I have yet to benefit from this in any way.

So consider this: I have the skills that you need but I am not an exceptional person. However, knowing how hard my own path through life has been makes me exceptionally sensitive to the needs of your students.


I'll just have to cross my fingers and see how this one goes.

Any comments/suggestions would be most welcome.