The malaise of this run-down economy still hasn't been shaken and there's a feeling that the construction industry is a sore-headed bear slowly coming to after months, or rather years, of hibernation. Is it coincidence that the Smith's song 'How soon is now?' has popped onto itunes right now, or that I can't get 'the boys from the black stuff' out of my head.
OK, so things aren't that bad - still, in a bid to finance this pilgrimage of mine, I have managed to get a CV and portfolio together.
This is the second incarnation of a portfolio I worked on at the tail end of last year in preparation to moving up to Skye. I say second incarnation because I found it incredibly difficult to create any continuity throughout, at least in the layout format if not in the content. It may just be me or the fact that it's a portfolio of architecture but I found this incredibly difficult to do. There is no end to examples online and there are great ideas and graphical work available to inspire, not to mention some nice books on layouts and portfolio design such as:
Both are reasonably priced and great for graphic ideas and generating ('borrowing') layouts.
So, after lingering in the art department in Waterstones for days on end I finally got to grips with Portfolio Mark II. This one is tailored to just one architecture practice in Skye, which is lucky really considering how long it took to make but is conjuring up the old basket of eggs idiom.
Job success aside, I've decided to blog it and show you some pictures:
This is the folder I made to house my work - I kept it blank to create intrigue - I guess I could've placed an image on it but the paper is A2 format and this would've been difficult to get printed. A sketch would've been nice but carbon smudges. No, nice and white!
Flaps to hold it down. These tore a little the first time I tried it out. I resorted to strengthening them with masking tape - not sure how effective this is but it seems to help. The paper is 300gm cartridge.
Inside I created slots for the A4 portfolio, an A5 'extracurricular things' and a personalised letter.
Obviously this kind of portfolio requires a lot of work and can't just be run off the printer but that's the point really. Being at a stage in life where I know exactly where I want to work and why helps - making this kind of impression is really important to me.
The layout of the A4 portfolio was, after many convoluted attempts, reduced to a simple A4 image on the left with text regarding the project and all remaining images to the right. The layout is unashamedly taken from the Wire magazine and is very effective yet simple.
The idea of the 'extracurricular things' booklet was to give a graphical/arty impression of what else floats my boat, outside of architecture - yes people, there is an 'outside' to this architecture machine
I have a thing for 'word art', unwittingly inspired by Nathan Coley who was a guest at our second year crit at the Edinburgh College of Art
The booklets were printed out in such a way that the front cover, for instance, would contain half of the first image on the left hand side and half of the last image on the right hand side (confusing, I know) so that when it came to binding them, I simply placed them one on top of the other and sewed them right up the middle - this was tricky in that there had to be an even number of pages for this to work, and the printer had to be exact in making sure that two half images would read as one when the booklets were bound. With the exception of one small quote which ran across both pages, the result was pretty good as you can see from this image.
With a bit of luck this'll get sent in the next week - getting to a post office is pretty tough up here, then again, I could strap it to a sheep...
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