Portfolio Design, 3rd Edition

Harold Linton

Overview - Table of Contents - Preface

Preface to the Third Edition

The third edition of Portfolio Design has been developed to include an expanded discussion of digital portfolios. The vast majority of design students and practitioners of architecture and environmental design disciplines are now creating portfolios electronically. Throughout the process of developing the third edition, I have had the pleasure of corresponding with many university administrators, design professors, students, and professionals who expressed overwhelming support for a greater discussion of the digital direction portfolio design is taking. This project has, therefore, benefited from the technological expertise and contributions of students and professionals at universities from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. More than thirty institutions submitted sample portfolios for the third edition. I have introduced three new chapters¾Portfolio Preparations, Digital Strategies: Images and Text, and Digital Directions¾while retaining the basic information of portfolio development and layout design presented in the two previous editions. I am also excited to introduce a new concept of professional review in which three complete student portfolios are presented and critiqued by three industry professionals: Tod Williams of Billie Tsien and Associates in New York, Peter Lynch of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Francisco Gonzalez-Pulido of Murphy/Jahn Inc., Architects in Chicago. I thank the students, Robert Zirkle of Yale, Claire Imatani of The University of California, Berkeley, and Matt Vyverberg of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who bravely volunteered their work for objective review by three of the country’ top architects. My thanks to the architects who supported both this new approach of portfolio review for the third edition, and the importance of portfolio creation in design education. Creating a portfolio of your work for application to graduate school, employment, scholarships, fellowships, grants, internships, or employment is an exciting step in your professional career. A significant portion of my professional work has been devoted to helping architecture students and recent graduates organize their work into a unified and coherent portfolio with strong graphic sensibilities and an understated elegance. I have enjoyed giving lectures and workshops at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa State, North Dakota, Southern Illinois, Ball State, and Andrews Universities, the Michigan Design Center, the College of Creative Studies, Lawrence Technological University, the American Institute of Architecture Students Forum, and numerous other schools around the country and abroad. It has been my privilege to meet design students who are committed to architecture and allied design fields, and who have the desire to make a fine portfolio project.

In support of your professional goals and to help you deal successfully with the organization and design direction of your portfolio, I have created a new Web site appropriately named, www.portfoliodesign.com. Here you will find examples of portfolio design taken from my lectures and workshops, as well as suggestions for layout strategies and resources for production. I have also included examples of professional marketing tools, such as print and electronic brochures, from architecture offices for further study. Finding good examples of graphic design can be as easy as visiting local design firms for sample brochures, or writing to offices whose designs you admire to request samples of their marketing instruments. As you proceed to design a portfolio of your work, remember that this is an exciting time in your life to put yourself and your work forward. Your work is a reflection of everything that you have learned during your professional education in design. Give yourself enough time to brainstorm numerous designs and make mistakes along the way. Make several trial booklets of your work from photocopies to test how it can be best organized. Do not hesitate to revamp the overall layout and its contents until it flows easily and legibly. And don’t forget to thoroughly enjoy the process of working on your portfolio every day.

ISBN: 0-393-73095-6
Winter 2004
176 pages, paper, 23 color, 250 b&w illus.