Putting Together My Portfolio

For professional contexts last year I chose to pay for Squarespace to design my portfolio and dossier. After a while, I decided that I didn't like that everyones websites looked the same as many photographers will use the designated photography templates that Squarespace offer. I know that it isn't seen as being one of the best tools to use for making websites, but I chose to use Wix as it was the only other one that I know how to use and I liked that you could have a lot of control over the design and layout. At the moment it is fine for what I need, but I am only on a 12 month premium usage so can always switch so something else.

I put together the re-design of my website straight after the portfolio 2 module had finished, so the colour schemes (muted blue and muted pink with grey ) were taken from the 2 projects I had on there. There was a lot of pale blue in my Glass houses images and a lot of muted pinks in the ones for Everything's rosy. I also went with a font for the title of the website Times New Roman that is quite mature but also used very often, but having it italicised softened it, making it appear similar to script. I looked at using fonts created from handwritten script, but felt that these didn’t look very professional. With the font for the body of texts being Futura, a contemporary, rounded font which is easy to read and very familiar to us all. Though I designed the website before my final major project, I think that my images from this do fit nicely into the design.

Initially I wanted it to be a website where there is no scrolling involved, each page just acts like a card, with a click-through gallery of images and the project statement beside them and I did really like this simple design. When it came to my final major project, the statement was too big to sit comfortably on the page without compromising the size of the gallery. I don’t mind that you have to scroll slightly on this page as I think that having this also emphasises that it was a bigger project, but for others in the future, I would like to stick with the no-scroll design.

I know that at the moment, my About Me page is quite empty. I have my artist statement on there and a contact email. I don’t have any achievements as of yet that I feel are worthy of going on there and I’d rather not include any than ones that aren’t that impressive (e.g winning a prize in sixth form) but once we have done the degree show, that can be added as well as other things I have planned for over the summer. Instagram is really important for photographers at the moment as it means that people can follow along with what you’re doing, so have this on every page, giving the viewer more opportunities to click on the link. SEO and the analytics of my website are something that I need to look into and understand to get my name higher up on Google and to understand who is coming to my website and what they’re looking for.

As I am thinking of working within the editorial sector, I have begun to think about putting together a physical portfolio. I already have a portfolio case that is A3 in size which I would use to store and transport the portfolio. I have also got a leather luggage tag to attach to the case to put in my business card which has my information on in case it gets lost. I know that a physical portfolio isn’t a marked aspect of the hand-in, but it is something that I am working on at the moment so that I can get my prints done whilst in university making it cheaper. I am at home currently, but when I am back in Bath, getting the prints done is something that I will be focusing on.

I am currently thinking of getting a print book made by Plastic Sandwich. Their 14” x 11” print book is £270 which is the size I like as it’s between A3 and A4. Prints can be added and removed easily. I don’t want sleeves as I don’t like the way that they look. I will pay an additional £18 for a pocket to store business cards and £42 to have the same font that my name is in on my website embossed onto the front. The colour of leather that I would like is grey as I think that black may be too harsh against my images. I think that I may also need to buy their punch and score kit so that my prints can be put inside correctly.

In the print book, I will start it with my artist statement, then put my projects it order of the most recent first, including the project statements and a selection of the strongest images from each.

I wanted for my business cards to be an extension of my online portfolio as closely as possible, I designed them in indesign and then imported them into Moo.com who are printing them for me. I chose to have them printed onto recycled cotton and matte as I think that this will complement my images and uploaded a few different images for the back so that I had a variation to give out depending on who I am meeting. The designs for them are below.