i'll suggest you sort thru the Academia post..there are tons of questions regarding Portfolio production and a lot of useful responses as well..my personal advice...Invest TIME into it..work and rework it until you can finally say to yourself...I am satisfied! best of luck

I would save the money on the book and spend more on the quality of the prints at the end. If you need examples of what to include, look at the student samples pages on school web sites and in journals, not just architecture sections. That'll give you a sense of how to present a work or project.

If you must get a book, I would recommend some nice graphic book like Bruce Mau, or something you'll want to keep in the future.

I knew someone would say something like that. But I'd definitely recommend picking up the book. In the long run you're right that it will be an investment, and honestly, when it comes to your portfolio it is not an expensive investment.

I bought Linton's Portfolio Design a year ago and at first it intimidated me. I put it away for a while and forgot the images that it had in it and then was able to start creating my portfolio. Not quite sure just how much influence it had on me, but the point is you should explore all resources and then step away and start thinking on your own. You will take the important points from the things you've read but not feel compelled to emulate what you see...ideally.

thanks for all the insight!

I have another portfolio question...

Would it be better to take digital photographs of sketches and artwork with my slr(6mp) or use a scanner? I don't have too much experience with scanners. Would you suggest the Epson 1670 or a UMAX? I checked passed threads and no one was really clear on a good one out there.

I used both a scanner and a digital camera. I used the camera quickly one day to capture some 14x17 pages with drawings. A year later I am now scanning some drawings as well (9x12). I will admit that I did not set myself up properly for capturing images, especially considering that they would ultimately be used for my grad school portfolio (which I'm trying to finish up this month). Plus, I am now living in Japan and I have zero access to any of my original materials so I have to work with the digital media that I have (no recommended).

Anyway, I had to tweak the digital photos quite a bit in photoshop to bring out the contrast and get the gray out of the negative space a bit. Now I kind of like that you can see all the grain and wrinkles in the paper. It makes it so the negative space of the drawing does not get lost in the negative space of the portfolio page. On the other hand, with the scanned images, I am able to do just that, let the negative space of the drawing mix with the negative space of the portfolio page so that the image floats on the page with no clear border. This is good with smaller sketches and notes.

So, I don't know if that helps, but maybe it offers some examples of the differences between the two. I know nothing about the scanners you mentioned but I can say that if you have large format drawings then scanning just might not be an option. In that case there are very easy ways of setting up a piece to be photographed. Put it on the wall place two lamps at 45 degree angles to the image, set up a tripod with camera...google it.