I don't have much constructive feedback, other than my impressions:

-love the cover

-like the index for table of contents

-overall format is consistent and clear

The only thing that bothers me (and this is a very small detail) is that the rendering on page 11, the guy sitting on the bed looks out of scale...he looks like he is floating and would barely fit on that bed if he where to lay down....

And again, minor detail: I'm not sure how you chose the color for the bands on the first page of each project.  If possible, it should be consistent with the color code you already established on the table of contents...

Page 12 ..The scale of the building / reveals / people is unpleasant, and the rendering is below the level of the rest of your work..and the 3D puzzle bench looks very much like a chair designed by Schindler. Otherwise, nice job....Oh..not crazy about the cover.

thanks for your comments :)

magentasky - i know what you mean, and i struggled with that...i will fiddle some more until it looks more realistic!

kavin wagner - do you mean page 14? if you could define 'unpleasant' that would be helpful - like you feel it's under-done/unfinished? or it's just a bad idea to have it at all?

13 perhaps...the bulky white building just dwarfs the 3 little umbrella'd cafe tables. Are the reveals supposed to represent floor levels? If so, looks too much like reveals, and ruins any pedestrian scale. The growies don't really help on the building, just seem to make it look more out of scale and proportion. The growies also look hastily done, and could use refining.

i hope you have back up schools. you won't get into an ivy with this

blackharp, would you be able to elaborate on specific problems with my portfolio?

i'm at an ivy right now and i DO think you could get in with this. 

i like your renderings of the first bike trail project, perhaps more so than the final two renderings on the sunset background.  also, on pages 14-15, maybe you could show a full section of just one of the buildings and leave the rest as renders as opposed to the cut-away look.  i love the cover!

lemony88 - i appreciate the reassurance, but more importantly i appreciate the suggestions you gave on improving my portfolio! thank you :)

Don't be an asshole blackharp.

I am just thinking out loud here.

frangipani, I would try to keep your fonts consistent... as in, choose 1.

I am also not a fan of the condensed text you have throughout... it looks heavy handed.

Not a bad start though.

2 fonts max! one for headlines one for main text.

Drop the condensed font as already mentioned it's awkward and doesn't match the horizontal layout at all.

Forget about the bottom bar and its fancy colors, your portfolio is not a hunk of a book so no need to color code different chapters. if you REALLY want a bar consider using half the length or the like otherwise your'e practically cutting your page in to.

You need to redo your colorscheme, look at http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/all-time/meta for some easy to choose combinations. again simple does it.

Consider applying said colorscheme to a selection of your fullcolor presentations.

Last but not least you need to be more frugal with your whitespace, the margins are not good, you need to give some more space to your presentation. cheap=too little whitespace.

Columns! your txt lines are running too long.

http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

Make content stay on the same line both horisontally and vertical, adapt one scheme and stick to it throughout. Right now photos and drwaings are dancing all over the place.

Take a look here for some guidance to (old) modernist approaches

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/17/lessons-from-swiss-style-graphic-design/

and here for the classics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canons_of_page_construction

- yes it could be much worse, keep it up.

i was just playing a little game. a simple 1_1. i mean let's be honest, you need to sky it.

scale the font down, darken the color blocks on the contents, bring them down and center it. keep a more consistent layout. page 7 is weak, scale down the drawing and bring in some images from page 6 and align them. the rendering on page one is nice, full bleed it. too much text though. the lighting on page 11 doesn't look like it was generated from the same colour as the sky condition. the nighttime sky is a little mickey mouse on page 15 but the diagrams are nice. tone down the color though. make it a bit more evil. the talkscape is a bit fluffy, so the bench on the next page doesn't work well in that order. could you explain why you put a thesis adviser report in your portfolio? i apologize if i am not understanding correctly. also, the color bands at the bottom seem a little distracting.

sorry if that was harsh; i'm just thinking out loud here.

and i was kidding about the ivy thing. u guys didn't get that was a satire on cliche posting

thanks everyone, that was incredibly helpful.

@bixmol - your comments and those links are really useful...the only thing i don't quite understand is your comment on white space.  do you mean my margins should be bigger/my images + text are crowding the page?

@blackharp - looking at it again, i agree that it's silly to waste portfolio space on thesis reports - my thinking at the time was that since i couldn't include the whole thesis, i would include an abstract and comments. i'll just remove the comments, though!

also, i'm not toooo sure what you mean by "fluffy" to describe the talkscape - not developed enough?

again, thanks all!

@frangipani

Yes indeed you need more whitespace. Yes your images and txt are crowding the page in the sense that your margins are far too small.

Glad you could use it.

one question that might seem silly. i did a lot of theatre in college (and all my life, actually), and got a theatre minor. would it be silly to include just one page of stills/photographs from my thesis performance in my portfolio?

i ask because some of the schools i'm applying to have visual arts programmes that offer performance arts courses cross-listed with architecture, and while i think they would be interesting electives, i'm also very interested in the intersection between architecture and performance.

i've never seen any performance art in arch portfolios, though, so i don't know if admissions committees would frown upon it.

thanks!

Do you mention in your statement of purposes that you'd wish to take advantage of those cross-listed performance arts courses, or want to further explore arch/performance? If you do, then I'd say go ahead and add that page (so long as they're decent stills that convey something substantial).

yes, i have mentioned in my SOP that i'm interested in arch/performance. i'll add that page for appropriate schools, then. thanks!