Hi Gil,

For your initial contact with a firm you should just send a sample portfolio to give them a feel for your work. Show your best and most relevant work to the position you are applying. Here is an article that might be helpful for you:

The Two Page Architecture Portfolio

Try to keep your resume to just one page, you could reduce the left margin and move the references from page two to page one. Place your education at the bottom of the page above your references so it begins with your professional experience. Also, don't forget the cover letter. 

Hope that helps! Good luck!

I review all incoming portfolios for potential hires in my office - overall the portfolio layout is good - I'd give it a B for a recent graduate from undergrad - but you can improve it:

• Cover: Nice, but you've cluttered it up.  Get rid of your logo on the upper tight, get rid of "architecture and design" (we'll figure that out on our own), get rid of "portfolio.'  Drop your name down in line w/ the text on the left and you're good to go.
• Page 2/3: Get rid of them.  They're not adding anything.  It's unlikely that these three sentences are going to tip the scale in your favor in terms of getting a job ("I'm not sure about his work, but my god, his philosophy is amazing, hire that guy!"), but they could hurt you if someone doesn't like your writing style.  What you've written isn't bad, but it's wordy - you must be an architect - and a little awkward.  For example, you say architecture must reflect....reflect what?  If you're going to keep page 3, condense it into one statement, and edit it down.
• Page 6: I like your contents page, but why is your resume in a timeout way over in the corner?  Put him in line under the work.
• Page 7: I have no idea what that image is, but I like your simple category pages, and that you're not afraid of white space on the page.  Most undergrad portfolios are crammed w/ 20 drawings per page, and no white space.
• Page 9: Simplify...not a fan of the colored stripes on the left of your project title pages.  I get that you've color coded them by category, but so what.  It's not adding anything, so get rid of it.  Same for the horizontal bar w/ the diagonal - Just use s thin (black or gray) line.  Get rid of 'place'...you're already said it's in Birmingham on the same page...add "innovation district" up next to the first Birmingham reference if needed.
  I know it's exciting to have to many text options...all caps, bold, different fonts.  But you don't have to use everything on one page.  Do the text that starts "vocational school..." in the same font as the 'space' text, and give this text a title "intent" too.
  I like the little "1 of 4' icon at the bottom of the page, but you can't use it consistently through the whole book (only one professional project, doesn't work w/ personal projects), so get rid of it.
  Lose the "portfolio A + D and dates on the lower right.  Again, they don't add anything, and you're using them inconsistently throughout the book.
  Apply everything above to other project pages.
• Page 10: Nice
• Page 11: Did you think that I forgot the name and location of the project?  You already told me this on the last page, get rid of it.  Also get rid of the vertical lines, you've already visually broken the text into three groups w/ the titles and spacing, Give it a rest already.  Why is the text under 'disciplines' left hand justified, while the text under 'process' and 'public' are justified on both sides.  Also, don't ever justify text on both sides...trust me on this.
  Why is are the line heights different on the different sections of text?  Fix.
  The map tells me nothing.  Get rid of it, you've got a nice site plan on the next page.
  Why is "culturally and practically bold, in all caps, and above a line?  I know what you're trying to do, but it looks like another title, not the first line in a paragraph.
  Get rid of your name, and the "file under.." at the bottom.  They won't forget your name.  If you want page numbers, that's fine.
  Your black line above these last items is bleeding into your rendering.  Did you mean to crop your rendering above the line like on other pages?
• Page 15: I would get rid of this text, and incorporate it on page 13 with the rest of the text.  And keep your writing brief, you can't explain the whole project in a portfolio w/out writing a lot, and no ones going to read something too long, so keep it the critical items, and trust the reader to be able to figure it out.
• Page 18.  I like white space, but that seems like an awful lot of space to use for keying in your drawings.  Make your site plan a bit larger, and arrange the page (both 18 & 19) site plan, ground plan, ground plan key, 2nd floor plan, 2nd floor key.
• Page 20/21: Combine these two elevations into one, and put the section on the bottom of 20.
• Page 22,23: Move both of these diagrams b page 21, which I conveniently made available by moving your section.
  I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me here.  I know the sun shines through windows, but is there something, maybe to do w/ transparency, that you're going for here?  Some notes/leaders explaining things (briefly!) would be helpful.
• Page 26: Not a fan of this sketch at all.  And it doesn't seem to have anything to do w/ the project on the next pages.  What happened to the nice black/white project image that you're using on the other projects.
• Page 38/39: Combine onto one page.
• Page 40/41: Nice.
• Page: 42: Don't use an entire page for that little quote.  Put quote on page 33 (so you're using the quote similarly to how you positioned the Khan quote).
• Page 48: I though misspelled lynchpin, but apparently linchpin is ok. too.  Not sure which is the more common spelling but I'd find out, or just use a different word.  Typos are a huge red flag - basically if I find a typo, you're not being asked in for an interview.  But maybe my spelling it with a 'y' is the rarely used version.
• Page 49: Someone put giant white lettering, w/ a black outline, all over your section!  Have them fix that by using the same font you're using elsewhere in the book.
• Page 50/51: These feel very empty.  Find a way to make plans larger, if needed, get rid of the least critical upper plan to make room for enlargement.
• Page 54: Why is this full width, when other projects are not...move diagram on 58 to the right of this page.
• Page: 55: Meh...and too small.  Black/white perspective?  Move the quote to page 57.
• Page 58/59: I don't know that the Indian structure diagrams mean.  Move to the right side of 54, dress it up a bit, and add notes/leaders to guide the reader to understand what you did.
• Page 65: On your resume, you list three jobs where you were involved in CD's.  But other than a couple of small details, you don't show any CD's in the professional section.  Big mistake.  Don't tell potential employers that you've worked on CD's, show them.  And if the CD's didn't look too good, redo them so they do.  Showing CD;s is literally 10,000 times more important than having a philosophical statement.  That doesn't mean you'll be a CAD monkey, it means you're showing me that you have some exposure to how we document those great designs.
• Page 66: Now you've squeezed the title into a narrower column.  Make the same as academic projects...same for all title pages.  On this page you say "Existing:" with a colon, on 68 you say "Exist" with no colon.  Be consistent.
• Page 75: This is why you don't justify both sides of the text.  Some lines here look like one continuous stream of letters, with no spaces between words.
• Page 78: I strongly recommend you rate yourself on how familiar you are w/ the software you list.  So if you've used sketchup 1000 times, and Rhino 2 times, indicate with either bar graphs next to each, or say "Sketchup 4/5"  And don't be (too) afraid to admit that you're not an expert in every software package.  The reality is for any recent grad, you may think you're a 5/5, but may not know what an xref is or how to draw w/ perfect precision.  That's ok.
• Page 79: the text under River Street Architecture is a different size...and you've got different line heights here too.

For your drawings, you'd greatly improve them is you used line weights to your advantage.  Look at drawings on line to see how others do this.  And the overlay between your line work on renderings and the rendering itself are misaligned...it feels sloppy to me.

This is a long list...what can I say, it's a very slow day in the office today.  But again, I'd say for a recent grad, it's a B level portfolio, and you can easily raise that grade.

Good Luck.

I agree with a lot of what's been said above, but I'll add:

- Your representation is very similar across all your projects, which means that you could kill some projects and/or spreads.

- I also think that logical flow is important. Since you aren't doing any crazy integrated graphics, I'm going to assume that each spread is to be read left to right. Look at page 17: why is process on the far right? Even though a lot of process diagrams are post-rationalizations, I would prefer you tell a little lie by showing process first, then a more detailed look at the result.

- Also speaking of page 17: placing the drawing titles underneath that horizontal bar is weird. With the way you've laid out the footer you can't center them under the drawings. The need for (Left) and (Right) labels suggests you have a layout problem.