I'm a humble female architecture school graduate who lives in Saudi Arabia...
Now its been 2 years since my graduation and I have been on a permanent vacation since then ... been to all the small and big architectural and consultant offices in my city that I came to know of . During every interview ,when I feel like my potential employer is impressed with me overall , they keep a copy of said portfolio of mine and they basically see me off saying I will be getting a call soon...which never happens .During that period until the current time I've simply become a Jack of all trades just to survive ...
I'm at a point where I'm not quite sure what is going on ?!.It would be tremendously appreciated if I could get tips or any form of criticism on my portfolio which is uploaded in the link down bellow .....
I've seen and received way worse portfolio's of people that did get hired somewhere.
Might be a cultural/religious thing first and foremost, with only 13% female workforce and SA being ranked 141th out of 144 countries when it comes to gender parity.
How would you get to work or a job site when you are forbidden to drive or be out on your own unaccompanied by a male relative etc. it is just too impractical for offices, even if they might be more progressive in nature. My advise would be to try your luck elsewhere where there is no Islamic dictatorship.
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 10, 17 9:22 am
141 out of 144 ..that is a new one !!!!
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 10, 17 9:25 am
Thank you .. You really gave me hope ❤️
El_KK
Sep 10, 17 5:53 am
Hi I saw your portfolio, I think that you have done some very good projects, but inside your portfolio they are not legible. I had a lot of difficulty to understand them and very often I just went ahead. I think you have to simplify all the pages. Find a layout and try to maintain coherence on the entire portfolio. Try also to reduce the number of images! They are really too many, as opposed to what you think, too many pictures, colors and texts, make it very difficult to read the projects. This is my point of view, I hope I have been helpful.
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 10, 17 9:26 am
Yes ,it was very helpful
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 10, 17 9:27 am
Thank you , I will definitely work on that
nonneutral
Sep 10, 17 11:45 am
I think that (in the context of trying to find an architecture job at any firm) the layout/design of this portfolio is more of a problem than the content itself. The mock handwriting font looks unprofessional and is an immediate turn-off, along with the pink color scheme and pre-made stock bullet points. Try spending more time looking at other people's portfolios and how they approach graphic design.
Some other more specific points:
- The stick person and pitched roof house in the diagram on pg. 5 also reads as unprofessional, like red flags suggesting someone hasn't studied architecture. Another more standard way I've seen is to do a blocky outline of the body w/o necessarily showing arms & legs. And also drawing the person at a roughly comparable scale to the house, if you even need a person in that diagram at all. (It could just be for instance simplified into two colored blocks.)
- Many of your other sketches, ex. on pg. 8, also stylistically remind me of a child's kindergarten drawings. I'd try reducing the number of colors and the color saturation, maybe making them entirely monochromatic.
- Replace the garish color coding of the floor plans on p. 12-13 (and 16) with color fill at partial opacity (like you did for the sketch on p. 16) so that it will look more professional and be less distracting for people trying to read the plans.
- It's often impossible to read the headlines on the introductory pages for your projects. You could also add descriptions here for whether each project was done for work or school.
- Some more nuanced issues: several of your renderings look overly saturated. Try desaturating them and see what happens - my experience is that it can instantly make an image look more professional.
- Not all of your projects are the same quality, and you should decide if you still want to include certain ones at all. If you decide to leave in some of the lower-quality ones you could make the pages describing them shorter to downplay them. I'm thinking of the amateur-looking conceptual development on pg. 16 for instance. Think about whether each project shows the reader something new about your skills and abilities.
- Get rid of the light grey background image behind the maps on pg. 18 & 19, since it's making the text harder to read. It's worth pointing out that the sketch here looks better than some of your other sketches, probably because of the muted earth-tone color scheme.
- I'd also make the font size of descriptive text smaller, and make many of your descriptions shorter. Employers are less interested in reading about the concepts. etc behind a project relative to academics.
- You devote way too many pages to the utopian megastructure. I'd cut the five pages of renderings down to one page of the best ones, if you still want to include that project at all. Rewrite or eliminate a lot of the vague and wishy-washy conceptual development, ex. taking out vague terminology about "fantasy" and the milky way inspiration and references to your youth and replacing it with buzzwords like sustainability. The inclusion of images from other people's projects you looked up online is also unprofessional. If this was a personal project I'd leave it out, since projects of similar quality done for work (or to a lesser extent school) at least leave some benefit of the doubt that their weaker portions were not entirely your own ideas.
- Redundancy is a problem for you in general, ex. the two very similar images of the residential tower on pg. 7-8.
- Provide more information about the project with the CAD drawings (p. 30-31) in the "miscellaneous works section," and move it forward in your portfolio, since it might be the most relevant to employers of anything you've done. Maybe re-titled it something like "professional experience" if that's what it was, or at least something else more descriptive. Make the CAD drawings black-and-white instead of the direct color-coded output from the software program, to show how you understand line weights etc. and to make it look more professional.
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 10, 17 3:01 pm
Woow I'm forever thankful to you sir/ms .. you opened my eyes on alot of things honestly .. about the part you mentioned where I took people's project .... I just refrenced it , absolutely was not in my intention to claim it or anything of that sort ...I honestly did not know it was unprofessional but it does make sense now ...
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 10, 17 3:01 pm
But I'm thankful to you for life you dont know how much I appreciate your help and time .
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 10, 17 3:17 pm
I might sound sooo unprofessional
but you are my favourite person right now
Beepbeep
Sep 10, 17 11:59 am
With above - redo the layout. Keep it simple and keep white space.
The project images on page 28-29 the interiors are probably the strongest, dial back the colors on the other projects and get rid of the work that is absolutely not your best. You can re-work your school projects also and clean them up and refine/hone your skills and keep learning. Remember the portfolio is a design problem in itself.
Only show what you want them to see just like in practice.
Absolutely , I 100% agree with you as well , now that I took a 3rd look at this mess !
placebeyondthesplines
Sep 11, 17 11:28 am
holy shit.
archietechie
Sep 11, 17 1:35 pm
Yes
Nats
Sep 12, 17 4:53 am
My opinion on porfolio itself - its far too long for posting to people you need to just show your best and a variety of things - construction, detailing, concepts visuals. Your work seems to be mostly visuals and sketches with very little construction details on show.
Secondly its far too jumbled and all over the place with different styles of text, some unreadable etc needs more white space coherent titles some easy text that is quickly readable to highlight important things.
CV also need a lot of work you could do with looking at standard CVs online and altering it to say more about yourself, more detail, one A4 page only.
As for applying for jobs send your single paged A4 CV and one page of work only, leaving some mystery to be revealed at the interview.
At the moment it looks cluttered, hapzard, and too arty farty - thats the image it projects of you, you need to show people you are ordered, organised, creative, but also practical and knowledgable about advanced construction methodology - a few good sections and dimensioned general arrangement drawings wouldnt go amiss. I tuned out after about the 3rd 4th page so definitely dont send all that to jobs online, keep it sharp.
Hope that helps!
marwahal-sobaihi
Sep 14, 17 12:16 am
Thanx .. yeh I actually compared it with other portfolios online and its a ratchet mess indeed ! I will fix it !
Good day fellow Archinets
I'm a humble female architecture school graduate who lives in Saudi Arabia...
Now its been 2 years since my graduation and I have been on a permanent vacation since then ... been to all the small and big architectural and consultant offices in my city that I came to know of . During every interview ,when I feel like my potential employer is impressed with me overall , they keep a copy of said portfolio of mine and they basically see me off saying I will be getting a call soon...which never happens .During that period until the current time I've simply become a Jack of all trades just to survive ...
I'm at a point where I'm not quite sure what is going on ?!.It would be tremendously appreciated if I could get tips or any form of criticism on my portfolio which is uploaded in the link down bellow .....
http://docdro.id/maAlJLU
Thank you
I've seen and received way worse portfolio's of people that did get hired somewhere.
Might be a cultural/religious thing first and foremost, with only 13% female workforce and SA being ranked 141th out of 144 countries when it comes to gender parity.
How would you get to work or a job site when you are forbidden to drive or be out on your own unaccompanied by a male relative etc. it is just too impractical for offices, even if they might be more progressive in nature. My advise would be to try your luck elsewhere where there is no Islamic dictatorship.
141 out of 144 ..that is a new one !!!!
Thank you .. You really gave me hope ❤️
Hi I saw your portfolio, I think that you have done some very good projects, but inside your portfolio they are not legible. I had a lot of difficulty to understand them and very often I just went ahead. I think you have to simplify all the pages. Find a layout and try to maintain coherence on the entire portfolio. Try also to reduce the number of images! They are really too many, as opposed to what you think, too many pictures, colors and texts, make it very difficult to read the projects.
This is my point of view, I hope I have been helpful.
Yes ,it was very helpful
Thank you , I will definitely work on that
I think that (in the context of trying to find an architecture job at any firm) the layout/design of this portfolio is more of a problem than the content itself. The mock handwriting font looks unprofessional and is an immediate turn-off, along with the pink color scheme and pre-made stock bullet points. Try spending more time looking at other people's portfolios and how they approach graphic design.
Some other more specific points:
- The stick person and pitched roof house in the diagram on pg. 5 also reads as unprofessional, like red flags suggesting someone hasn't studied architecture. Another more standard way I've seen is to do a blocky outline of the body w/o necessarily showing arms & legs. And also drawing the person at a roughly comparable scale to the house, if you even need a person in that diagram at all. (It could just be for instance simplified into two colored blocks.)
- Many of your other sketches, ex. on pg. 8, also stylistically remind me of a child's kindergarten drawings. I'd try reducing the number of colors and the color saturation, maybe making them entirely monochromatic.
- Replace the garish color coding of the floor plans on p. 12-13 (and 16) with color fill at partial opacity (like you did for the sketch on p. 16) so that it will look more professional and be less distracting for people trying to read the plans.
- It's often impossible to read the headlines on the introductory pages for your projects. You could also add descriptions here for whether each project was done for work or school.
- Some more nuanced issues: several of your renderings look overly saturated. Try desaturating them and see what happens - my experience is that it can instantly make an image look more professional.
- Not all of your projects are the same quality, and you should decide if you still want to include certain ones at all. If you decide to leave in some of the lower-quality ones you could make the pages describing them shorter to downplay them. I'm thinking of the amateur-looking conceptual development on pg. 16 for instance. Think about whether each project shows the reader something new about your skills and abilities.
- Get rid of the light grey background image behind the maps on pg. 18 & 19, since it's making the text harder to read. It's worth pointing out that the sketch here looks better than some of your other sketches, probably because of the muted earth-tone color scheme.
- I'd also make the font size of descriptive text smaller, and make many of your descriptions shorter. Employers are less interested in reading about the concepts. etc behind a project relative to academics.
- You devote way too many pages to the utopian megastructure. I'd cut the five pages of renderings down to one page of the best ones, if you still want to include that project at all. Rewrite or eliminate a lot of the vague and wishy-washy conceptual development, ex. taking out vague terminology about "fantasy" and the milky way inspiration and references to your youth and replacing it with buzzwords like sustainability. The inclusion of images from other people's projects you looked up online is also unprofessional. If this was a personal project I'd leave it out, since projects of similar quality done for work (or to a lesser extent school) at least leave some benefit of the doubt that their weaker portions were not entirely your own ideas.
- Redundancy is a problem for you in general, ex. the two very similar images of the residential tower on pg. 7-8.
- Provide more information about the project with the CAD drawings (p. 30-31) in the "miscellaneous works section," and move it forward in your portfolio, since it might be the most relevant to employers of anything you've done. Maybe re-titled it something like "professional experience" if that's what it was, or at least something else more descriptive. Make the CAD drawings black-and-white instead of the direct color-coded output from the software program, to show how you understand line weights etc. and to make it look more professional.
Woow I'm forever thankful to you sir/ms .. you opened my eyes on alot of things honestly .. about the part you mentioned where I took people's project .... I just refrenced it , absolutely was not in my intention to claim it or anything of that sort ...I honestly did not know it was unprofessional but it does make sense now ...
But I'm thankful to you for life you dont know how much I appreciate your help and time .
I might sound sooo unprofessional
but you are my favourite person right now
With above - redo the layout. Keep it simple and keep white space.
The project images on page 28-29 the interiors are probably the strongest, dial back the colors on the other projects and get rid of the work that is absolutely not your best. You can re-work your school projects also and clean them up and refine/hone your skills and keep learning. Remember the portfolio is a design problem in itself.
Only show what you want them to see just like in practice.
Check out these and then re work yours:
http://www.archdaily.com/87241...
https://issuu.com/issuustaff/s...
Absolutely , I 100% agree with you as well , now that I took a 3rd look at this mess !
holy shit.
Yes
My opinion on porfolio itself - its far too long for posting to people you need to just show your best and a variety of things - construction, detailing, concepts visuals. Your work seems to be mostly visuals and sketches with very little construction details on show.
Secondly its far too jumbled and all over the place with different styles of text, some unreadable etc needs more white space coherent titles some easy text that is quickly readable to highlight important things.
CV also need a lot of work you could do with looking at standard CVs online and altering it to say more about yourself, more detail, one A4 page only.
As for applying for jobs send your single paged A4 CV and one page of work only, leaving some mystery to be revealed at the interview.
At the moment it looks cluttered, hapzard, and too arty farty - thats the image it projects of you, you need to show people you are ordered, organised, creative, but also practical and knowledgable about advanced construction methodology - a few good sections and dimensioned general arrangement drawings wouldnt go amiss. I tuned out after about the 3rd 4th page so definitely dont send all that to jobs online, keep it sharp.
Hope that helps!
Thanx .. yeh I actually compared it with other portfolios online and its a ratchet mess indeed ! I will fix it !