Day Three: Aesthetics

It has been quite an adventure creating my portfolio. I have chosen my pieces and now I am assembling my portfolio and forced to make decisions about the aesthetics of my portfolio.

This Christmas my parents were very generous and bought me a beautiful leather portfolio case with a handle. Prior to the leather portfolio I used a faux-leather binder that worked well at a significantly cheaper price. If you are looking for an affordable, but classy looking binder, I recommend Office Max. I bought my first binder for $15 and I was never docked down for the less expensive binder. Now that I have my fancy binder, I made the decision that the paper I was going to use would be heavier to prevent bending and crinkles. So, I bought black cardstock paper and stock paper with a fine flower border to give my articles something extra.

I found that potential employers like a little flare to represent how you stand out from others. I wouldn’t recommend going overboard with flashy paper or borders but a subtle pastel color does add to your portfolio.

Choose colors and prints that match your personality and make sure when you are presenting that you show how those choices represent you!

Day Two: Choosing Pieces for Your Portfolio

After many hours of reading and rifling through all the things I have done thus far. I came down to my final five pieces that I will feature in my portfolio. What it came down to was deciding on pieces not based on content, but what I had to say about them. What could I say about a particular piece? The following is a list of tips for choosing pieces to feature in your portfolio:

1. Choose a Piece that you can talk about- if there was something in particular that made a piece special, use it. For example, if you were writing an article and you couldn’t figure something out, how did you solve the problem, what were the tools you used, and what was the end product? Potential employers want to know what you are capable and also how you accomplish and cope with things. Use this piece to demonstrate your abilities.
2. Choose a piece that means something to you- choose something you are proud of, that you worked really hard on and was successful. Employers want to know what you’re passionate about, what gets you excited.
3. Choose pieces that are different- you want to show your potential employer that you have a broad range of strong skills. Show it.

Day One: February 15, 2012

In less than one month, on March 9, I will be presenting my portfolio to a panel of judges. These portfolio reviewers are professionals in the public relations field in the state of Oregon and they will be judging my portfolio, and its contents, and my presentation of the contents.

Portfolio reviews serve students at the University of Oregon to help create strong presentation skills that will help for real interviews in life. Many students are taught how to create content and be good writers but less instructed on how to deal with presenting work skills to employers and this allows the opportunity for just that.

I have already gotten a head start on my portfolio as I have created an online portfolio already. The online portfolio seems the easiest part to do because you create a website include your content, choose a layout and you are done. Of course you can add aesthetically pleasing content to the site, which helps. But now I am facing the true difficulty; creating a hard copy portfolio.

I believe myself to be very artistic but when it comes to creating things physically they never turn out the way they do in my mind. Especially paper; it never agrees with me. Right now I am in the process of choosing my pieces to present and all the parts that go with it including the graphics, word bubbles (if I choose to put them in) and the paper behind the articles, which is important.

Stay tuned for tips on choosing pieces to present and how to build the layout for the pieces.