Creative Director, Roger Bannister, gave me an hour of his time to go through my portfolio as it stands.
Roger made many comments about portfolios generally, often, then, relating them directly to my own. He started by saying that he personally liked portfolios that held great variety and that to his mind a portfolio should ebb and flow. His view is that many students assemble a portfolio from 'off the shelf pieces' completed at various points in the past with very little attention being paid to the depth of variety, right down to fonts and colour schemes being presented. His message was to consider the whole and avoid repetition of styles, genres and details which indicate a 'one trick pony'.
He was of the opinion that mine avoided this pitfall.
Roger's second piece of advice was to treat portfolio creation as a 'tick box' exercise, after all this is what busy creative directors will inevitably do. As far as my own went he said that it ticked the boxes for use of illustration, typography, ability to conceptualise and use of layout.
He suggested that a short statement to accompany each piece, to place it in context, would be useful. In the absence of the creator there is nothing else to provide this information, it sells the piece without you being there. Include, what the brief was, your thinking and what you actually did.
To Roger's mind my portfolio is varied but appears to be driven by illustration. In terms of Springetts his concern might be that I would become frustrated by the nature of their work. Much of it is tweaking or in a sense 're-creative' and there is a possibility that it would not offer sufficient creative outlet for me. He felt that my work might be more ideally suited to editorial layout.
Roger declared my work 'nice' but gave a number of suggestions for adding further dimensions to it.He talked about some focused self-initiated work demonstrating the ability to tweak existing designs that I might feel don't fully work for one reason or another. Packaging or identities would be ideal subject matter but the caveat is be absolutely sure that the existing design is not working as well as it might.
Another idea was to offer two solutions to a brief; one that is safer, more conventional and the other more conceptual and challenging.
Furthermore he suggested looking at social/cultural shifts that are impacting on products or services e.g. the move away from dinner parties affecting the sale of after dinner mints, and seek design solutions to bolster business; in this instance a more informal mint Springles product.
Roger finished by saying that it was only wise to tailor a portfolio to a specific job market if you are really sure and interested in working in that sector. Otherwise be true to yourself, submitting a portfolio is as much about finding out whether you would want to work for them too.
