Archiving your work

The first step in creating a portfolio is to effectively artchive your work. For 2D work like drawing, paintings, printmaking or 3D work such as sculpture, ceramic, mixed media, it is important to take well-lit, high quality photos. For digital work always keep the native file, a general file format such as a PDF or JPG file, color palettes, and fonts used for the project. Also, create well-crafted mock-ups of your designs.

When archiving work store always have a backup of your files in a minimum of two places. For example, keep one copy on a hardrive in your studio or office and another in a cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive.

Suggested organization and items to archive:

• Keep all your files organized in folders. Use descriptive folder naming conventions. In each folder include:
  • All native files of your project. 
  • High-resolution and low-resolution image of your work. 
  • Label your files consistently with a project name that contains of company name/course name, type of project (like brochure or logo), short description (if necessary), and the six digit date the file was created on, and file extension. For example: fpac-logo-full-color-19-0216.jpg. Learn more about proper file naming conventions.
  • In a folder labled Preliminaries keep all relevent project preliminaries including research, brainstorming, sketches and variations.
  • A document that records:
    • Design process - Explain/show the progression of the work from preliminary to completion. Be sure to note information from any feedback you may have received and why you chose to (or not to) use that information in moving forward with your design. When working with a client always note who gave the feedback.
    • Rationale (aka artist statement) - This is typically a few sentences that describe the goal, audience, concept or strategy behind the work.
    • Dimensions
    • Medium
    • Date created
    • Title of the work
    • If created for a course include the course information; keep the course syllabus and project guidelines for futrue reference.

Taking Digital Images of your Work

More to come...

Creating Mock-ups of Your Work

More to come...