This page I just made for use in Career Education Canvas Class at DVC. I’d love it if my students at DVC would try it out and give feedback on how to make it better!

Most artistic and craft based occupations require you build a portfolio of your work.   A portfolio is there to show the employer/client your aesthetic abilities, your range of styles, and demonstrate your ability to present and organize your work product.  In broad general terms this applies for all artistic professions, regardless of type. 

There are multiple formats portfolios can take. Many folks choose to do more than one type of these so they can show their work to the largest audience.  However, to begin with, it is best to choose one, and work up from there.  Read through these descriptions of the main types, and then consider which portfolio type you wish to work on first.

Traditional portfolios that you can carry around with you.  (Port=to move about, Folio=pages, or a book of pages.  Portfolio=a book of pages you can carry about).  Most commonly, something like this for bringing to an interview:

Flickr Photos

Slideshow Portfolios are very old school as well, (and used to be the very expensive old way to mail out duplicate copies of the above format, on actual film slides) but they have been significantly modernized by PowerPoint, and are now one of the cheapest and easiest formats to create and share .  They also can form a basis for making the next two types of portfolio. PowerPoint is included in the Microsoft Office software that you as a DVC student  can download freely to your own computer. Here is an example of one:

• Best Infographics in my Portfolio by Infographics Templates of Kiev, Ukraine

PDF Portfolios sometimes are simply scans of a Traditional Portfolio like the first one above, or may include more extensive text for explanation, as these are usually sent to a remote interview where it will be judged before one is chosen for an interview.  These can usually be made in PowerPoint as a PPt slideshow (or Google Slides in Google) first, or instead made in Word like a paper before saving as a PDF.  These also can be inserted into online book/magazine sharing sites like Issuu to be viewed by the public without having to build a a full web portfolio.

• Example: Fiber Artist Portfolio on Issuu

Video Portfolios are where you can show your work like a TV commercial or virtual interview by showing your work in the order you want with voice over description or music.  You can again begin with a basic a PowerPoint/Google Slides show, then narrate or add music, only this time instead of saving as a PDF, save it as a mp4 file.   If having your portfolio have live action or animation is especially appropriate for your art,  this format is best one to allow you to do so. For example, musicians & other performers usually do this. So do designers and makers who have work that moves, like kinetic sculpture, robotics, character design, animation/motion graphics.  Animators especially can go nuts and do this sort of thing:

Motion Graphic Design Portfolio

Web Based Portfolios cover a large swath of types, from basic web pages, blogs, galleries and a plethora of other formats ).  If you have a professor at DVC who tells you you need to have a portfolio,  you can probably check out theirs online. Here are just a few:

•  David Foulds – Film & Video (Links to an external site.)
• Takemi Tsuruta  -Contemporary Ceramic Art 
• Hopi Breton – Sculpture 
• Carrie Mullen  – Scenic and Lighting Design 
• Daniel Abbott – Art and Architecture 
• Tara Maginnis – Costume Design
• Jeffrey Smith – Industrial Design & Education

A web based portfolio can also showcase some of the other types (PDF, Video) listed above within it, and allows for multiple portfolios and areas of your work to be gathered together and be routinely added to.

Consider your options and then reflect on which format do you think you will start with and why?