Web Design Careers – How to create a great professional portfolio and add promotional values as well.
Web design is becoming the New Frontier of media design, and it’s also becoming one of the most demanding “portfolio-based professions” on Earth. Web design can be so many different things. You may have to design a website that does booklet printing, for example, or another with a range of apps which makes Facebook look like an abacus. The problem is, that for a good career, you really have to do both.
The portfolio issue – Getting to grips with success
Most creative people, and web designers are creative at the drop of a cursor, have difficulty understanding the opportunities their work creates for them. Like artists and writers, web designers have a huge range of materials available to them which they usually use pretty badly.
The problem is that web designers, like other professionals, will use the technical masterpiece as the showcase of their talents, but not the commercial bread and butter work that employers and contractors need to see.
Most web designers, for example, would consider almost any template to be a lowly achievement, something anyone should be able to do.
Well, is it?
Consider for a moment:
- How many truly lousy templates have you seen?
- Do commercial web design businesses need good templates?
- Do you do good, functional templates?
You just got yourself a job, on the basis of showing a template that proves you’re able to provide good product to someone who needs good product.
This is business.
Your contracts need to see sale-able end product.
Your career and your income will develop specifically on the basis of your ability to deliver good quality commercial products.
Yet many people will innocently leave out these basic commercial necessities in the mistaken belief that people want to see what is effectively glitz, or worse, obscure technical achievements which may or may not translate into useful materials to employers and contractors.
Structuring your portfolio
You need a good working all-purpose portfolio for all possible contracts. The list of requirements is almost horrifyingly basic, but you’ll see why:
- Templates
- Databases
- Media
- Forms
- Page layouts
- Graphics
- Sprites and animation
- Audio
The fact is that these very straightforward things are the core business elements of web design. These are the things that prove you can do a whole business website from scratch. You are instantly employable on this basis.
Now you can show higher values for the employer: The technical masterpiece becomes more interesting because it means advanced skills. The very demanding thing you worked on for days to get right proves your talent, skill, and problem solving capabilities.
You see where this is heading – You show a structured portfolio, from basic to advanced. You become the person the employer or contractor needs, by definition. The employer, it so happens, has a DIY business card printing app that needs work. You can obviously do it, and you can prove your standard of work. The rest is the beginning of a long, successful career. Get the basics right, and everything else will run as well as your websites.
Hey! Great tips on creating a wonderful portfolio!