If you do not already have an online portfolio it is about time for you to create one. The traditional portfolio is increasingly becoming a thing of the past as geographical situation do not mean that much anymore. Potential clients will be able to find you online at all times so make sure that you do not miss any important part of your online portfolio.
- The Basics – What do the clients need to know? Begin with asking yourself the question: What do my potential clients need to know? Try to put yourself in their situation. What you will display obviously depends much on what kind of assignments you wish to get in the future.
- Keep it simple! It should be easy to find and use your online portfolio. Be open with what it is that you want. Are you looking for assignments? Put a sign with the text: “For Hire” and a link to how to actually hire you. Make sure that your best material is the first thing that visitors get see. Describe yourself and your work in just a couple of words.
- Let people know about you Your work should always be in focus but do not forget to include a good “About Me” page. Let people know who you are and what your background is. Have you been mentioned in the media? Link! Can you get your clients to write a few lines about how it was to work with you? Excellent!
- Contact Information on how to get in contact with you is of the essence. The link to your contact information must be easy to find. It is not a bad idea to have the most basic information on several places, such as at the bottom of each page.
- Let people know what you are doing Your clients might not see the value of your previous work through a screenshot of a website or a free-standing illustration. Let people know what the assignment was. Where is it published? What problems did you solve for your client? What was the result of your work?
- Build traffic Share your experiences. You can for example record a video when doing a photo shoot. Start a blog, the more text on the site, the easier to get snatched up by search engines. Link to others that are creating amazing things – it will pay off in the end.
- Be search friendly Google and other search engines are responsible for most traffic to websites. Through optimizing your site you will have a much greater chance of getting found by new clients.
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2012-01-31
Other web host providers may take a lesson from the recent set of problems that have been the experience of DreamHost, a domain name registrar and web hosting provider founded in 1996 and based in Los Angeles, C...
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2012-01-31
With the overwhelming reaction against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), a few members of the United States Congress have put forth an alternative bill. Oregon Democrat Senator Ron...
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2012-01-30
At its simplest, Magento is a robust e-commerce solution built on a foundation of open-source technologies. The blended approach that Magento uses provides the best of both worlds for end-users. On one hand, the...
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2012-01-24
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced last week that the application system for the new gTLDs (Generic Top-Level Domains) of the Internet began on January 19th and is proceedi...
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2012-01-19
Amid Internet site blackouts and public outcries, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been placed on hold in the Senate while sponsors regroup and reconsider their position on this controversial topic. Along w...
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2012-01-18
Over the weekend, Zappos, the online store famous for its vast array of shoes for sale, announced that personal confidential information, including such items as email addresses, partial credit card numbers and ...
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2012-01-12
The United States Congress, returning from its holiday recess this month, will be resuming their consideration of three bills whose passage or rejection will have enormous effects on the ...
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2012-01-11
The Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet usually runs without any hiccups, but a company that offers itself as an alternative DNS resource caused a severe problem last week for several hundred thousand web s...
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2012-01-04
An EV-SSL or Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer certificate was used in December to give a greater aura of legitimacy for a phishing hack-attack against PayPal and its customers. A sub-directory of the web...
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2011-12-20
Last week, the CA/Browser Forum, an international consortium of software firms and CAs (Certificate Authorities), released a set of industry standards for issuing SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TSL (Transport La...
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Commented by: web design maker, 1 June, 2009
1. Plan in advance and be consistent in keeping archives of your good work. This will help you tremendously when you need to collect your work quickly.
2. Don't put any cliches in your book, such as condom or wonderbra ads. Creative Directors, not to mention clients hate those.
3. Don't put more than 7-12 good ideas or designs in your book. CD's and clients don't have time and they don't want to look at your work history. They want to be sure you can do good stuff and a few good ideas are enough to prove that.
4. Have at least a 3-4 of those works made for FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods, such as toothpaste, detergent or soft drinks) products. Important agencies and design studios have these clients and they want to make sure you can do such work as well.
5. Show a range of different jobs. Have a 360 degree campaign, but also have a logo design. Include ambient, online and other unconventional media ideas as well. Variety is important, unless you specialize in a narrow field.
6. You may want to include at the end stuff that's not directly work, but shows your skills that are related to the job. Poetry, drawings, product ideas, etc.
7. Make your book as simple as possible. It's all about the content. Not about the cover.