combining papers, transparencies, vellums, leather, etc. I've seen all that. but I would say be careful if you do use something other than paper. make sure your work reads well on all mediums used, and the concept of using a different material comes through in the work. in other words dont make it just some simple gimick thing, relate it so it becomes more of a package than what it is printed on/contents.

photocopy a mirror image and then use acetone on the back of the paper to release the ink onto what ever you want to print on........ has to be a photocopy.....

that is a nice technique. we did a model of philly out of grey illustration board for a studio, and used that technique to get all the windows and building details onto it withough having to draw it on. came out very good.

There is a story I heard that an Arch student printed his/her portfolio on a roll of toilet paper, and then snuck into the targeted practice's bathroom to substitute the rolls. Needless to say, they gave him a job.

i did it for this model

www.237am.com
model section....second page.....3rd one down with the clear acrylic bldgs....transfered the site onto the aluminum.......

I have done that transparency thing back when I took printmaking in school... results can be so-so. I'm looking at having some parts silkscreened, and photos mounted by hand, then possibly a protective coating over the entire substrate. I'm thinking wood veneer, since much of my furniture projects involve reclaimed wood.

i would say go ahead and print on whatever turns your crank, but they are still gonna look at the content, and paper is just fine for that. the cheese danger comes from the gap tween novelty and creativity. the former has little staying power and likely won't impress.

seems you are maybe printing on alt material just to be different, and not to make a point. for me that would be a turn off. unless the content was brilliant. in which case you could print on whatever you want. even toilet paper.

in my old office we made books for each project after hiring photographer etc. now my own portfolio is a bunch of sheets slipped into a 30 ring binder. no one has commented on either format, looking only at the projects inside. sometimes, just sometimes, the medium is not the message.

but anyway, good luck on applications. hope you get in to good school

i say good packaging could help heaps, esp. because your work could look like others then what would set yours apart?

just because it's different doesn't mean it's good.

i'd say that you should concentrate on making the work stand
out. hand make the cover..print on an atypical type of paper...
but in the end they need to see what you're doing...and if the
material makes it hard to flip through they're not going to like
it. and aren't people/schools looking for computer skills? hand
mounting photographs seems so twenty years ago...i did it for
my first portfolio out of school..and i can't even look at that thing
now.

Every situation is different, and if your portfolio is rock solid both in content and conceptual format then whatever you do will be impressive and memorable.

But let me just relay a story: when I was a Cranbrook - an ART school, and known for encouraging wackiness - one of my student jobs was to help the admin office sort through the applications when a bunch of them came in right at the deadline. Honestly, and this sounds painful but it's true: our job was to tear away everything that wasn't directly content related and throw it away so that the professors only had to look at the content of the applicant not the froufrou container. Granted, as it was mostly art students (some architects, of course) the applications tended to be WAY over the top: I distinctly remember one black folding portfolio that had been trimmed with fuschia fake fur - I took the slide sheets and letter of intent/etc. out of the beast and tossed it - the reviewer only saw the applicant's work, not the package.

In my humble opinion, you shouldn't do wacky for wacky's sake. Your portfolio will be memorable if the work it shows is excellent, your written documentation is honest, and the overall package is neat.

But of course you need to do whatever feels right for your particular situation. Just make sure it doesn't look hacked together. Good luck.

Haha lars I just read what you wrote: 12 years ago I did B&W photos mounted in little retro black photo album squares on heavy soft printmaker's paper - and yeah, I can't stand to look at it any more either!

s6- make sure that whatever you make can't amputate any fingers. Most schools won't even look at portfolios that have sharp edges (metal, plastic, et cetera) because of so many injuries to the admissions commitee in the past.

Focus of making a great cover/binder and have great page layouts/images for the rest. You want to make the job of the reviewers easier to see your potential, not harder (acetate transfers can be really muddy and difficult to read).

But then, I have gone the minimalist road with much success and use a black plastic profolio binder.

slantsix- go for it, but mind the legibility. I would probably discourage an architect trying too much to do this, but your ID background will probably come through really well in making the book. Just yeah, make sure you're not making anything harder for them.

LB- I'm so sad that you've said that.... I've been planning to do some great cover art for my portfolio (most schools want cd's). I hope they look at it, I'd be really sad if they didn't...

anything that would lead you to refer to your own portfolio as "wacky" is probably a very bad idea... just print on good quality paper and possibly do something interesting for the cover...

I think it would be better to "reflect your former degree in industrial design" by including some examples of this work, in simple layouts, with clear descriptive text.
I've been on a couple admissions committees and I've never seen anybody get in - or even generate positive discussion of their candidacy amongst the committee - because of a wacky portfolio.
While the schools I've been involved with have not done what Liberty Bell describes in separating portfolio content from covers - or tampering in any other way with the portfolios - I did notice when I had a workstudy job in the registrar's office in college that I spent a lot of time packing up and mailing back a lot of very colorful and creative portfolios (furry, metalic, rubbery, glow-in-the-dark, you name it) while the box of portfolios that was waiting to be picked up in person by the new admittees in the fall was filled with a lot more plain black binders with white paper.

Also I've seen committee members criticize and curse at portfolios that cause trouble - like the kind that are folded in a manner that takes more than 2 seconds to put back together, or the kind that have things attached by strings that fall out and get tangled, or even the kind that reek of spraymount. Try not to be memorable for something like that.

Finally: make sure it can stand up to repeated handling by many people. In grad school they let us (the students) stop by the admissions office and look through portfolios before they ever got to the committee meetings. So: fragile materials, things that will get smudged, delicate hinges, etc. are all a liability. They also doled out piles of portfolios to each committee member to take home each week and study on their own time - so it needs to be able to survive in a backpack or briefcase, so a plastic or leather cover with a simple, durable binding is safer than something that can get scratched, squashed, or separated easily.

I sent in a red duotang. with color copies. What matters is the work, although I did have a friend that did the nicely crafted wooden box.

print your portfolio on money. money is made from cotton and this uni will see that you will gladly throw your cotton at them...

Be sure to send them:
- construction drawings of your parents newly built mc mansion
- pictures of your parents mc mansion's pool
- pictures of your parents mc mansion's feature stair/chandelier
- pictures of your bedroom, capture the widescreen TV if possible
- pictures of the 4 car garage from driveway
- pictures of your sportscar in the garage
- pictures of your moms new SUV

Although not requested, you should also send them a shoebox with a glued together plastic replica of your sportscar to demonstrate your model making ability.

just build a portfolio case and print on 11x17

i built about 6 cases over the years...

www.237am.com in the products section....... the first one is the one i use now for meetings/interviews/etc...... it's about 4 years old now..... the pics are from the time i finished it...... i refinished the wood and polished the aluminum about 3 months ago......

the wood is babinga


b

I was the student member of my school's admissions committee one year. We'd divide up the portfolio stack so each of us would spend some quality time with a few of them until the next round. Everybody would try to avoid the heavy looking ones so they always ended up going to the professor who skipped most of the meetings and just handed in 2-sentence reviews on each. So I don't advise wood or metal.
Also if you decide to do loose pages or boards in a box make sure it doesn't matter what order they're in. They won't stay in that order after the first person looks at them. Make sure each page or board has a complete project on it and tells its own story. Also make sure it has your name on it so it doesn't get mixed into someone else's box. If you can't stand to limit a project to one page then don't use the loose-pages method! Some schools don't allow it anyway.
What most others told you is very true. Plain black binders are perfect. I know it really bothers potential design students to think that something like a spiral-bound, cardboard-backed kinko's production is acceptable and that they not only don't need to but probably shouldn't build some kind of fabulous vessel. But just don't. And make sure you check what the school has to say about portfolios. The list of do's and don'ts that some send out is pretty specific, sometimes telling you even exactly how many pages and how thick it can be.

just show up with your stuff say...here it is.....BAM......

take matters into your own hands and dont let them choose you, you choose them so keep that mentality

b

or you could tattoo your portfolio on your body and just show up as your portfolio.

hey, vado, that would also be a good halloween costume! two birds...

"Arch student printed his/her portfolio on a roll of toilet paper, and then snuck into the targeted practice's bathroom to substitute the rolls. Needless to say, they gave him a job."

might have helped backup that line in the resume that said,"skilled at industrial espionage. do you reallly want me working for The Other Guys?"

milk chocolate, if the weather's cool.
engraved glass
steel cut cow patties
dried blood
slices of wonder bread
whole sheets of currency from a country no one's ever heard of, lettered with alphabet soup letters.

have you considered how much will each copy of the portfolio cost you?

don;t forget to pay me when you get paid.

"or you could tattoo your portfolio on your body and just show up as your portfolio."

Excellent. I work at a tattoo shop, so this feasible.
But woud it be worth it? Hmmmm..... Geeze. Maybe. Uh oh!

You guys and gals are awesome, even the sarcastic comments are funny and helpful. For now I'm just happy to be working on the content of the portfolio, so I'll get to presentation when the time comes. You've made me think a lot about this!

As Sagmeister said "STYLE = FART" and It's true. If printing your portfolio on something funky serves no purpose it is just fluff, and purely for style, which in turn = FART.

don't do it...you'll regret it and feel like a damn foo. Spend your money on nice binding, and your time on making your projects better

Binding is a crutial but often overlooked aspect I've seen from many other students' portfolios. I personally prefer a nice parallel hoop wire binding, usually available in white or black (and if you can find it, the holy grail is the silver) because it's durable and allows the pages to flip over without moving up or down like crappy plastic coil bindings. Also, if possible, make sure you get the binding done at a real binding operation or copy shop where the wire thickness is a little thicker as opposed to the anorexic ones found at Staples, Office Max, Kinkos, etc. - the place I found in central Ohio was the only place that still did nice wire binding and wasn't listed in the yellow pages or anything; I found out about it by asking my undergrad arch school where they had their program booklets bound.

<<just build a portfolio case and print on 11x17>>

But first, watch out that you can even send 11x17. For several of the schools I am applying to, they have maximum dimensions that are smaller than that. Some require it to be on 8.5x11 letter size, some say 9x12, some say 11x17. I find it easiest to make my portfolio the size of the smallest allowed maximum dimension for all the schools I'm applying to. So that means mine is going to be a plain old 8.5x11. I don't want to design 4 different portfolios in 4 different sizes just so each one can be the maximum allowed size wherever I go! Thankfully my images would not benefit from being huge (as opposed to simply a clear, decent size), either.

Some places probably have size/material limitations for professional applications as well, but it seems that when you are jobseeking as opposed to trying to get into school, you are afforded more leniency in format.

I have seen some excellent portfolios (because of the graphics more than anything else) printed on opaque coloured plastic in similar coloured embossed ink. It was trippy to say the least

shit its been a while since i've posted