Just a general comment:

I'm in Land arch and have noticed, looking at portfolios from both professions, that arch portfolios have comparitively very little hand drawings/coneceptual sketches.

The diagrams are good, but I would think that hiring managers would want to see more about how you think and your personality. I think so much of that can be interpreted from how a person draws/scribbles/notes. It's also evidence in my opinion for thinking.

Maybe hand drawing/sketching is obsolete in architecture today?

agreed, it seems like landscape architects have more hand drawing work. I tried to focus more on the finished product with this, than on process.

At one point I had a few rough, hand sketched diagrams in there but they got weeded out. It seems like once I put in one, I needed a few more throughout and they just clashed with the cleaner finished product.

I don't think hand drawing is dead, I still try to sketch a lot. One reason I've been working on some new projects is actually to up my computer skills, so perhaps I overcompensated.

Thanks for the comment.

It is obvious that you have a completely realistic attitude towards architecture, and its really good that you know about your interests.
To be honest, and as far as I have seen in portfolios, I think that it would be better if you work a lil bit on the total graphic applied in the total presentation. Just decrease the sizes of your images, and try to organize em a lil bit better, though its clearly presented now.
Also, I believe that working a lil bit on sketches on the last page would be great.

Wish u all the best

Agreed, the sketches could use some work. Judging from this and some of the other threads, it would be good to integrate some rough concept sketches. I'm planning to spend a month or so before work sketching and retraining my hand. Thanks c-anad for the advice and congrats on your acceptances. Did you figure out where you're going to school?

Yeahh, lol. looks like Im famous because of that story (choosing the school) :)) Im finally headed to USC. Hope that I would like it...

I will be at USC as well C-anad see you there

haha, you are! You'll have a great time there. USC's program is on the up and interesting to me because it's being redefined. The work coming out of UCLA and Sci-Arc is really good (and surprisingly pretty different if you take the time to look at it), but I could see USC becoming this really awesome place to be, because you might get more of a hand in defining it's direction. It feels like the other two programs already have their pedagogy nailed down.

I know a quite a few people in the urban planning program there, if you want a tour or whatever when you make it to the city or have questions about LA, drop me a line.

As for my portfolio, a few hundred views and... a Blast of Silence. I guess it's ok then? make a few changes and ship it out?

One thing I really like about your portfolio, which you should keep, is your use of the diagrams and little icons to convey your ideas ... that conveys an image that the portfolio author has analytical thinking capabilities rather than just being a pure technician. There are some pages that seem very heavy on the 3d/digital side, but then you have other pages with some hand-drawn elements that may balance that out. Including your drawings from your construction work would be a good idea, I think ... it would show a wider variety of your capabilities.

I've always thought a cool process spread, which I've yet to see in any portfolios, would be one where you showed like a rough sketch of a wall section, which led to a drafted, more refined drawing and finished with a clean vector-based line drawing. I'll try to work something like that in.

Thank you very much for your help intotheloop:) I will ask u for some help when I get there...good luck

Have someone proof-read a printed copy for grammar and spelling. Tailor instead of tailer, suite instead of sweet et cetera. Otherwise it won't matter if your projects are crayola or Revit produced, it will come across poor.

Although to be fair, I could've been talking about the ghost of colonial-era politician, William Tailer in that paragraph, and just making a play on words about how sweet those suites will be, in the other.

Comment noted, thanks for taking the time to look and read what I wrote. I agree with you that actually printing it out and reading it off the screen with others to catch mistakes is crucial.

honestly from a graphic perspective it's one of the better portfolios I've seen posted here. There are just a few things I would take issue with...

1) your table of contents feels like it's trying too hard to fill up the page. It doesn't need to fill up the whole page at all, and the little icons aren't really very attractive. I would set the text at a more reasonable size and just place it well on the page instead of trying so hard to blow it up.

2) your footer combined with the bar that appears when a project starts are making those pages very boxed-in. Also, the sideways text bugs me because it's reading down (negative association. Also, architectural drawings use the text in the other direction, up-reading), and I don't feel like you're getting a lot of impact for all the trouble it's causing. I'd get rid of the left sidebar altogether, and integrate that information into the footer. For example, maybe on the first page of a project the footer uses the big text for the project name, in a great bold color perhaps?

3) kill your right-aligned text. It doesn't occur often enough to be make any sense, and it's perfectly fine in all of those situations to left-align.

4) I think your lineweights on the footer and on the rules dividing the descriptions from the images are a bit heavy. Try a .5 or .25 line.

5) Maybe I should have mentioned this first, but it lacks pacing. Almost all of your pages have the same amount of information on them, which makes your eyes get bored (even if the images are great!). Another alternative to problem #2 would be to add a page to each project that was a solid color or full-bleed images with the project title on it, and that way your eyes would get a short break. I know you're trying to get the page count down, but adding three pages to the whole thing would make it so much more readable. Just remember that filling up every inch of every page isn't the goal.

copper, I take it as a huge complement from you, since you've got some amazing Graphic skills. I have gotten a few people who don't dig the side bar; I like your idea about using the footer as a way to differentiate between the projects and eliminating it, so that the layout can feel a bit more dynamic. Really great idea. Ditto w/ the right-aligned text.

I like your idea about adding some more full-bleeds and spacing it out. It has gotten more cluttered again.

I was thinking of switching the font from Helvetica to Akzidenz-Grotesk. Thoughts / feelings on that? I dig its proportions a bit more, and I like that it's a text that still doesn't draw attention. I tried messing around w/ some serif fonts but they seemed distracting.

If anyone's paying attention, you'll seem less like a trend-follower using Akzidenz. But honestly, most in this format won't pay attention, and half will mistake it for Helvetica anyway. That's all to say that if you have the time, go for it, but there are bigger fish for you to be frying first.

fyi, I took it down while I make the changes. Already implemented most of your comments. Thanks again everyone.