- Design
- Beginner
About this Course
Your portfolio is the most immediate means for a potential employer to decide if you’re a good fit. This course will give you insight into creating and curating a collection of your work that will most accurately reflect what you value as a designer/developer, what it might be like to work with you, and what to expect in terms of your output.
What you'll learn
- Defining the concept of a portfolio
- Create a portfolio that draws the right kind of attention
Demystifying the Portfolio
It’s easy to underestimate the concept of the portfolio while overemphasizing aspects that are of lesser importance. In this stage, we’ll define what makes for an effective portfolio and establish the importance of a personal narrative throughout the collection of works.
4 stepsPortfolio Goals
Now that you know what makes for a good portfolio, it’s time to define what will make for your good portfolio. This stage will draw attention to who you want to reach, why you want to reach them, and how you can begin reaching them.
6 stepsCurating the Work
Whether you have dozens of possible portfolio entries to choose from or just a handful, selecting what you put into the public eye is a challenging, and at times, confusing process. We’ll address how to decide what deserves to be in your portfolio and what to do if perhaps you don’t have as much as you’d like to show.
4 stepsEmbracing the Process
Now that you have a sense of what work you want to highlight, it’s time to define how you want to discuss each portfolio entry. This stage will help you humanize your project outcomes to better give your audience a sense of what it’s like to work with you. An added bonus is that we’ll also discuss how you can call attention to your efforts in group projects without sounding like you were the only one working.
6 stepsPutting It All Together
This is it! Time to define how you’ll combine all of this effort and inspire those who are looking through your work.
6 stepsTeacher
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Devin O'Bryan
Devin O’Bryan is Creative Director for Project Whitespace at IBM. For the last 4 years, he has been co-creating within IBM Corporate HR and IBM Design’s global education efforts with programs like IBM Design Bootcamp Experiences, IBM Designweek events, as well as building and maintaining the intensive, award-winning Maelstrom internship program from scratch. Devin’s personal mental health journey has informed huge swaths of his educational and professional curricula. As such, authenticity is the cornerstone of Devin’s design and life philosophies, and his patient wife and two kids keep him genuine every single day.