I learned six new tools and forgot what the project was
Professional development has opened 47 browser tabs and no obvious exit.
Creative survival
The portfolio refresh has entered its geological era
The website is nearly ready. So was the previous civilisation.
Our fictional designer has redesigned the portfolio navigation four times without adding the project that prompted the refresh.
A portfolio needs to help the right person understand your work. That is a smaller job than proving, all at once, that you deserve a place in the history of visual culture.
Choose the audience and a handful of projects that suit it. Explain your role and the decisions you made. If a result is unknown, say what you delivered and learned without inventing a triumphant metric to fill the empty space.
Publish a useful version before rebuilding every interaction. Check that someone can reach a project, read it on a phone and find your contact details. Ask a person unfamiliar with the work what they understood.
Keep a list of improvements for the next pass. A launch does not require you to stop having opinions about the typography.
The navigation can evolve later. At present, it is the most extensively documented thing you have never shipped.
Your revision is next. Keep rolling
See all dispatches
My creative routine is mostly negotiating with a chair
The perfect morning ritual has been postponed until after the actual work.
Creative survival
My day job has declined to be the villain in my origin story
Sometimes the thing paying for your work is allowed to remain the thing paying for your work.
Creative survival