portfolio hell

i often wish i could skip ahead to a point in my professional existence where i know how things work and don't have to feel so much that i have to constantly prove and legitimise myself as someone worth hiring. i simply hate unfamiliar situations -- i feel very small and inept very quickly whenever i don't know the exact workings of a process and i am not someone who can hide this ineptness. at all. i also hate "putting myself out there". i'm sure it's a self-confidence issue but it just always feels at least a little bit egotistical and self-important to try to sell people on my work, and i don't like the idea of manipulating people into caring about what i do. i do love sharing my art, especially when i'm proud of it and think it's good, but i always feel shy and icky when it comes to presenting it to specific people actively -- this is why (in theory -- we all know i hate ig atp) i've always liked putting my work on various platforms online, bc i can just throw it into the void and people can look if they care but i'm not forcing it onto anyone. anyway. you can imagine my agony over the process of putting together a portfolio to apply for internships with.

winter term 26/27 is internship time. so, summer term 26 is application time. in its unbounded generosity, my uni is offering a 4-day portfolio workshop that's been kind of ok so far. after a rough start, where our prof (decades-long working professional in the industry) asked two different AI chatbots whether a portfolio is even necessary these days (i am exploding you with my mind i am killing you with hammers. whatever), we looked at different platforms for making & hosting an online-portfolio, looked at specific portfolios and talked about what makes them work or not work, and finally collected our own material to start work on a visual concept for our own portfolio. kind of basic stuff that felt mostly already known but i think it was helpful anyway to have this kind-of-knowledge verbalised and brought into the conscious realms of our thinking.

where i think for me this workshop is most beneficial is 1) i am forced to engage with the subject and to work on this thang in a more structured way than i'd be able to bring myself to do, and 2) i get to talk to others about my ideas and mental roadblocks, which has been helpful because -- who would have thought -- talking about your projects in dialogue with others totally unblocks your thinking and sometimes that's enough to find better solutions to the problems you're having. and i just like being around my classmates again. oh how the turntables.

at the back of my mind, in the beginning of this process, there was a bit of a wrestling situation going on between two ideas about how a portfolio should look or be constructed. something traditional in me was saying: the portfolio itself cannot be overdesigned lest it takes away from the work itself. make it easy and intuitive to use, keep it visually simple and unimposing. be normal. in disagreement, my whimsical side was saying: you need to make it fun. you need to make it silly. you need to treat it like any other art you make and you need to make it your own. can a portfolio not be an artwork in itself? the whimsy quickly won.

i am just not a designer. i can do graphic design, i can also do relatively minimalistic graphic design, if i need to, and i like good (including sleek, minimalistic) graphic design a lot, but at my core i am a child who likes fun and wants to draw. i think it would be disingenuous if i set up my portfolio visually as this modern sleek graphic design thing when really, i do illustration that is anything but sleek, just to fit into the contemporary style of webdesign. and i'm thinking that the kinds of people who will like and want what i actually provide, will not be deterred by a visually fun portfolio that actually represents my style. or that's what i try to tell myself to silence the pervasive fear of being shunned that comes with being non-conforming. whatever. we will prevail.

in researching specific portfolios, i found three that i love a lot and do really fall out of the sleep graphic design convention.

possibly my favourite, just for how gimmicky and out-there it is, is Sumner Howells' portfolio. Howells went all out on the windows95 aesthetic and the site is just full of personality that seems to perfectly represent the work that she does.

gorgeous

Jo Iijima takes a different approach. his work is similarly maximalist but he keeps the site's design rather clear and simple. this is maybe what they mean when they say let the work speak for itself. but here, it doesn't feel boring because Iijima's work is simply so bright, and there is plenty of character infused into the page's design that makes it still feel cohesive with the work. my only issue here is that the horizontal scroller on the project-pages doesn't really perform very well.

things also keep moving on here which gets almost too much for me.

for something less maximalist but maybe more related to what i do (illustration), we have Reece Parker, who does illustration and animation, as is very quickly understood when you land on his page. this one was found by a classmate who is big into animation and said he's in love with this page. i fully understand this. everything on there responds to your movement and cursor-interaction, which i love and admire in a website. it's really quite simplistic in its design and (while the site was made by N3V3N) the message is that Parker is also a designer but still it's infused with his illustration and animation work's character.

you have to appreciate a good design grid

these pages have kind of reassured me in my desire to make my portfolio fun and interesting. you can be fun and whimsical, as an artist. that's something you can do. crazy how the world works. 

anyway, i'm making this portfolio my own and i'm gonna be silly about it. and kind of high-concept, maybe.

this is a demo i put together late last night while simultaneously just starting to figure out readymag. it doesn't show here but my cursor is hovering over the first panel, making it show up blue.

i make comics, right? or, i want to make them. no, i already make them, but i want to make them more. so whyyyy not make this stupid portfolio a comic in itself. kind of. i was struggling a bit with how exactly to do this -- for a website, it would make sense to do a webcomic-format, right? but i don't make webcomics, not specifically. and i love physical media, so simulating a physical interaction feels more appropriate. plus, i always love when websites do this as a gimmick, emulate the analog in some way.

so my idea is this kind of illustrated simulation where the viewer sits in a physical world and is looking at physical objects. like when you click "graphic design", the pov character looks up at a computer screen because that's where i do my graphic design. if that makes sense. trust me, it'll be so cool.

so this will be my project for the forseeable future. maybe i will put the portfolio as a work in and of itself into the portfolio. just to be stupid and meta.

going back to that now.