It's hard to know how to create the best design portfolio that will get your noticed and get you a new job. This episode will teach you the 5 things you should do and the 3 things you should never do in your design portfolio from creating my portfolio site and reviewing thousand of other portfolios.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-9-design-portfolios-the-biggest-opportunities-secrets-and-mistakes/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
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It's hard to know how to create the best design portfolio that will get your noticed and get you a new job. This episode will teach you the 5 things you should do and the 3 things you should never do in your design portfolio from creating my portfolio site and reviewing thousand of other portfolios.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-9-design-portfolios-the-biggest-opportunities-secrets-and-mistakes/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Well, hello there crazy ones. Welcome to the ninth episode of The Crazy One podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership design, and a whole host of other things that are relevant to all you creative people out there. So for the last three shows, we've been talking about your career, how to build your personal brand, how to bring it to life, and even how to give a better interview. And so this is going to be the fourth and final show on this topic. And today, we're going to do it on portfolios and talk about some of the things over my career is somebody who has had one for a long time, but also somebody who looks at thousands of them. What are some of the things you should be doing and what are some of the things you shouldn't be doing? And just to be a little bit more specific, we're just going to talk about online portfolios because I don't think that I remember the last time I've had I've needed or I've even seen a physical portfolio and we'll talk a little bit about kind of what is the the power of your portfolio and especially having and being online. But just to be clear, that's what we're going to talk about is just online portfolios. And to be clear on another little point, I know that whenever I've been doing this show, I keep saying that this podcast is for everybody who's creative. And so for this one week, this is going to be a little bit different. Because this is just for the people who need to be able to put their work out there who need to be able to get things done, who needs to be able to kind of socialize their work with the world. And so for those of you who don't have to do that, well, you get the week off. So let's start with the basics. And the basics probably for me are that I constantly obsess over my portfolio. I constantly obsess over my brand. A lot of that is quite honestly born out of insecurity if I'm being honest, because the very first time I got laid off from a job, my portfolio wasn't ready. My Portfolio wasn't done. my resume wasn't done. My personal brand was a mess. And as a result, it took me far longer than it should have to find a new job. And out of that was born paranoia and insecurity about how do I never let that happen to me again. And so as a result, I obsess. And people ask me about my portfolio all the time, I got an email honestly, just last night. And what they usually want to know whenever they see it is what agency have I hired to do my portfolio. And because it's interesting is they most often can't seem to believe that I do all the work and then I maintain it myself. The funny part is, whenever I get those emails, I often can't believe that people wouldn't actually put in all this work and wouldn't think that this makes a difference. Because the reality is, if you're a creative professional, your portfolio dictates a hell of a lot of really important stuff. It dictates what is the next job you're going to get. How much are they going to pay you And then how much they pay you leads to all those materialistic things that are all important and necessary for us. What kind of house do you have? What kind of car do you drive? What kind of vacations Can you take? What kind of lifestyle Can you have? And can you provide for your family? And I think whenever you think about it that way, which is the way that I think about it, there is no extent to the amount of time that I'm willing to spend on my portfolio, there is no extent to the time I'm willing to spend working on my own brand. Because that's you. It's your brand. It's where the rubber meets the road. Because the work that you do is the truth. Because at the end of the day, I've met plenty of people. They talk a really good game. They can talk about their process, they can talk about their ideas, they can talk about how they work with clients and unique methodologies. They've done, you know, their unique way of having insights and things like that. I am very clearly falling in that bucket as well. But the work is the truth. Because after all of that, if you look at the work, and it's not great, it's not different, it hasn't made a difference, it hasn't done something different. Well, then you know that honestly, it's just talk. And I think that for me, as somebody who also has reviewed thousands of portfolios after a while, you start to see that portfolio is really start to become a bit of a crystal ball. Because you can look at them and you can see common mistakes so you can see the things that people do and you can start to get insights about them. But just let's not make the mistake of just how important your portfolio really is. It goes to the extent where I quite honestly I definitely won't hire but in many cases, I won't even talk to somebody if they don't have one. So let's get started. Let's talk about just kind of the the basics of how do you put together a great portfolio and we talked before about in the episode on creativity about framing the process. problem the right way. So let's do that here. And I think that there are two things, two basic things that you need to do honestly, before you even start working on your portfolio, or before you start to rethink it or anything like that. And I think that the first one is that you have to develop your palate. And for those of you who listened to Episode One, and creativity, this will sound very familiar for those of you who just tuned in, listen to this episode, and then it might be worth going back and listening to that first one. But developing your palate is this concept that I really came to understand. Talking to it's one of the world's greatest sushi chefs. I'm a huge foodie. I love to cook I draw a tremendous amount of inspiration from chefs. And if you've ever seen the documentary, Jiro dreams of sushi, it's that chef Jiro. No, and there is one particular part and he talks about in the documentary and he talks about it whenever I spoke with him whenever I'd asked him about how do you inspire young chefs how Do you get them to do great work. And what he would talk about is for you to be able to understand how to do great work, you have to have consumed, you have to have experienced great work. So in his case, to be a great chef, you have to have eaten great food. Because you have to have a palette, you have to have a measuring stick, that lets you understand what grade is and so that you can put your work in context. Because it's that context that becomes so incredibly important. And I think this is the sort of stuff of why I talk to chefs. I'm not just going out and getting recipes, that for me, it really is about understanding what is their creative process, and how do they take the same ingredients that everybody else gets, but they do something different with it, they bring a perspective to it, they bring something really unique to it. But I think that's the first step is that honestly if you're going to start working on your portfolio, if you're thinking about redoing your portfolio, you have to have a measuring stick you have to understand what's out There, what is average? What's great, what's differentiated. So the first thing you need to do, and its simplest ways, go check out your competition. This is this, if you were your own client, that's what you would do is they would come to you with a problem, you would go see what their competition is doing. So this should be no different. But take the time to just go out and understand who you competing against Who do you need to beat? What How are they putting their work out there? And how can you differentiate yourself against that? So you have that measuring stick. The next thing is going to be I think you need to take the time to think about who are you talking to? We talked in the episode about putting your brand out there and bringing it to life about how many of these things are probably a bit more like advertising than actual pieces of branding? Or you could argue there really is no difference between those two. But you need to understand who are you talking to? And you need to understand that because you need to tailor your portfolio to help you get more of the type of work that you want to do. Because if you're in a job where you're doing all production work, and that's not what you want to do, you want to be doing more creative work within, you need to make sure that the pieces that you're putting in your book, the pieces that you're talking about, and the way that you're talking about them, is going to lead you to that sort of job. I will say there's a bit of a trap here, as we talked about knowing your audience, that you don't want to get it to be too specific. Because if you get too tight on who your audience is, you can actually start to alienate people. I saw this the other day, I got a portfolio I clicked on the link, and it said hello, headhunters. I'm not a headhunter, so that what that told me was this is a person that was only looking for transient work, they just wanted to be a freelancer. The problem was, I had a full time job. So whether that was true or not, I'm not really sure because everything was tailored to just headhunters. So I think that was a case of them getting a little too specific with their audience. They got a little bit too small on it, but I think that you have to have Have this sort of Northstar to be able to understand what is it that I want to drive towards. So that's the homework, the pre work the stuff that you have to do before you actually start working on your portfolio. And so whenever I sat down and thought about this, and I was trying to think about what makes up a great portfolio, whenever I've seen ones that really stand out, or whenever I think about why I think mine has been successful, what goes into it, what makes those things work, or in other ones it doesn't. And I boiled it down to three basic things that I think go into that. But before we get to that, I think it's worth taking a minute just to try to understand what is a portfolio meant to do? And I think this is a question that I wrestled with for a long time. And honestly one of the best answers that I ever got about what what should a portfolio do what should it communicate whenever somebody looks at it? What are they really looking for? Well, the best answer I ever got actually came from a college professor of mine. Because whenever I went to art school, you had to go through this process of actually putting together a physical portfolio. And they would have these portfolio days. And this would be, it's kind of like speed dating for art schools is the best way I know to describe it. And you would go to some particular university or something and there would be 10 or 20 or 30 different schools all lined up on these little card tables, the University logo hanging on a eight and a half by 11 printed sheet of paper hanging off the front of it, and one at a time, you would go around the room and kind of speed date with everybody showing off your portfolio and talking to them trying to get it admitted into art school. Well, the interesting thing was, so I ended up going to Syracuse University because Syracuse for me was a really good fit. I really liked the atmosphere, but also, it was the first university that gave me a degree in computer graphics because at that point, digital design was a very young thing. Well, the professor who did my portfolio review turned out to actually be one of my professors freshman year. And he was somebody who I really liked and really respected. And even then I was very kind of curious about the whole business of creativity. And so I asked him, I said, you know, you get these portfolios that you have to review at these events. And I'm sure that they vary wildly, because you would get kids who I'm sure are coming out of a basic public school that probably has an underfunded arts program. Or you had somebody like me, whose father was in the industry who had shown up at this event with actually professionally designed work that was currently running for clients that I had spent my summers studying art and technology at Carnegie Mellon University that this was not probably the average high schoolers portfolio. So how do you look at that sort of a continuum that sort of a spectrum and decide who do you lead into this university? Who do you lead into, you know, this group. And I thought his his answer was incredibly insightful. And I've never heard one that was better. And what he said whenever he looks at the book was that it's one of those things where he could teach you how to hold a pencil. He could teach you technique. But he couldn't teach you how to think. And he couldn't teach you what to draw. And I thought that that really probably summed up the best because it was that delineation between the real asset of this, the real intangible thing here is the thinking, because that's what sets people apart. You've heard me talk about that multiple times before. And it's true. It's it's held up for me that in many cases, I've hired people who have come from 2d from print from product design and brought them onto digital teams and, you know, a very of other different combinations the same way because the reality is, is that if I know the person can think I can teach them an application, I can teach them a workflow, but the problem is I can't teach somebody how to think. And so I think that is really the underpinning for all of this. And it's the first thing that I think makes your portfolio stand out or makes it great is that it tells your story. It shows your process, and it shows how you think, because that's what genuinely sets you apart. Because one of the things that I found after a while is that, and especially in a market, like New York City, there are a lot of people that can make beautiful work. They can make pretty pictures, but finding people who can do that, but also have a depth of thinking, a quality of thinking and understanding of leadership or their creative process that is so much harder. And this is the problem is that so many cases whenever people put their portfolios out there, it doesn't tell their story. It's the name of the client, the name of the project, and it's a bunch of screenshots or it's the copy they wrote Or the sitemap they made or something else? Well, the problem with that is it doesn't really talk to the thinking. And then I'm left to wonder, well, is this somebody who really thought this through? Did they have the idea? Or is this somebody who just simply was able to execute on it? And that's a lot of what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to figure out that difference between are they somebody who just need to teach how to hold the pencil a little bit differently? Are they somebody who, I'm not really gonna be able to help because they don't have the depth of thinking I need. But it is thinking about your portfolio as a storyteller. We've talked about your brand, defining your brand, building your brand. And so this needs to bring it to life because this gives color to the places you've worked to the experience you've had. This because of your portfolio is the reason why I've never had an employer ask for my grades. I never asked them, have them ask where I graduated in my class. They've never done any of those things. Because, like I said before, the work is the truth. And so that's truth that you need to be telling is your story. And you need to be talking about how did it get there? Because the reality is, we all know that your work didn't just magically appear in your portfolio. You didn't just kind of one day show up. And we talked about before about how creativity and light bulbs, that's not really the way things get done. So this is where you need to show how it gets done. Show me your sketches. Show me your inspirations, talk me through the process that you went through, talk me through how you worked with your client, and the problems that you overcame, not just the happy stuff that we started and then everything went great. And I think that part of this is also getting used to if you haven't already becoming a bit of a hoarder, a hoarder of the artifacts of your process in creating that work. of taking the time to take a photo of that sketch that you did on the whiteboard that led to the work of saving the first comp that you did have Doing some of those things so that you can document and tell your story about the work that you did. Because I think that's the important part is to let somebody into that process, because that's really what we want to see is we don't want to just see the end. Because I think too often in portfolios, people pay attention to the initial 10%, the client came to us with a big problem, we started on this, the team came together, this is, you know, there's that, you know, if this was a startup, this would be the moment where we all met in a garage and started the company sort of thing. And then people want to focus on the end. They want to focus on the launch the awards at one and the metrics at God. And it's not that those aren't unimportant. But that's the 10% in the beginning, and it's the 10% at the end, the 80% in the middle of actually doing the work well for somebody who's going to hire you for somebody who wants to understand your thinking. That's the part that I really want to understand. Because that's the part where the thinking happens. And so the best way that I know to kind kind of walk you through this is to probably walk you through how do I tell my story? or How have I put my portfolios together? Because it's the easiest reference point that I have. And so the thing that I usually start with is that, as with most of my creative projects, I started in Evernote. And I started a new note. And whenever I go in, I just start making a list of what are all of the projects that I'm proud of what are all the projects that were significant? What were the things that if I wanted to tell my story that I felt like they did something that supported my brand? What were those, and I just go through and write all those down. And then whenever I go back and think about the audience that I want to talk to, well, then I take that list, and I start to try to break it up into groups. Because for me, I wanted to be able to try to show diversity because I've worked across digital and branding and television and print and a whole bunch of other things and that as a creative director, I'm not just kind of this one hit wonder. So in that case, I want to make sure that I have a good representation across all those different categories to show the breadth and depth of my work. But maybe you're different. Maybe you're somebody who just wants to focus on digital, maybe you're somebody who just wants to focus on just websites or mobile. And if that's the case, then make sure that that is really well represented. And that if you do want to focus in on that, that that's where the majority of your work is focused, and that you aren't doing that even distribution, because then that's telling a different story. And so, what I'll do then is now I have the projects that I want to show, I have them put into groups. And what I'll do is I'll take one particular project at a time. And what I'll do is I'll actually go in, and I'll start to write an outline. And I think about every project like a story, and every story is, you know, has a beginning, a middle and an end. And so how do I tell that story the same way I talked about that 10% in the beginning 80% of 10% at the end, and the beginning needs to set up the challenge. What was it the problem we needed to overcome? What did the client need to have done? What What were those things that this was was being asked to do? Because that's the other part of this that I need to understand is, even if it's a great execution, even if it was beautifully done, even if the concept was really smart, if it didn't answer what the problem was, well, that's a problem. So I'll do that. I'll start with the beginning and set out the challenge. The middle part really then explains the journey, the journey to get to the solution. And like I said before, this shouldn't just be the happy fun stuff that we immediately got the idea that, you know, everything worked out perfectly. It's okay to talk about the challenges you had to overcome in time and budget in clients if there are former clients in all these different things where you can then really just kind of lay out that it was more than just the work because it's always more than just work. It's never that simple. It's never we just showed up and design something. There's always more to it. But talk about how you overcame those problems. And then when you get to the end, then it's the glory days. It's the payoff. It's the awards, the results, the metrics, that the reason why this was so successful, the reason why it's in your book, but I think that like I said, before, too many people just focus on the beginning in that big finish. They just they want to get to the end and and to be able to pay that off. But don't don't overlook and don't underestimate the importance of that middle. So I go through and do that is I just rough out, one for each one of these projects one at a time. What's the beginning, the middle and the end? And I just do it very simply because the idea here is that I want to go through and I want to figure out what's the story I'm going to tell this is the process that I use for everything that you'll notice and none of this have I even started designing have I even opened Photoshop, because if you're trying to tell your story if you're trying to build your brand You don't do that through Photoshop. You don't go in and say, Hey, here's a design I really like. Now, what's the story, it's going to tell, you have to start the other way around. So I go through and I do these outlines, then again, I go back one at a time. And I take the outline, I start to fill it in, I start to write in the content, I start to write in the story. And I think that there's a few different ways that you can do this because I know not everybody's a great writer, I think that's incredibly natural. So I think if you do want to start writing it, and see how that comes out, one of the tricks I'll have some people do is I'll actually have them turn on dictation. And I'll just simply have them talk about it to talk through what was the project to do things like that, because that'll get the vast majority of the content that they want. They can start to record it, they can get it down and it can cover a lot of ground which then they can go back and they can edit and it's a it sounds much more natural and it's much easier for them. This often works incredibly well for people that tend to fall into the buzzword bingo category, that whenever they start to write, they start to fill what they're saying with this litany of just overused over abused business terms that they think makes them sound really smart. But at the end of the day, if you genuinely read it, you find that it just it doesn't say a whole hell of a lot. So I think you can do either one of those, I think in either case, have somebody else read it, have your wife, your husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other moms, you know, best friends, somebody, read these somebody with patients, you might have to bribe them with a dinner or two, just because again, this may not be an insignificant investment in their time. But have them read it and then ask them what they would do differently. What were the things that they liked, what were the things that they didn't like, but also just what what did they take away from it? Because I think that is incredibly valuable. And I think that whenever you do it, make sure it has your voice and personality, because that's really what This is if it's about your brand, it should talk like you walk like you look like you. But to be able to do that. And so then once I've started to get that story told, as I'm starting to flesh it out, only then do I start to pull in the artifacts and the designs that go with that story because I know what the story is, I'm going to tell. And then as I get those together, then and only then will I start doing the design to pick the format the pages, and to start assembling everything together. And it's that order to make sure that I'm telling my story clearly and because for me and probably like a lot of other designers, I see this happen a lot. You want to run to the execution. That's the sexy part. That's the part you can share with your friends. You can put it on dribble, you can put it on behance. You can do these other things about what's coming, you can tease it. You can't really tease an outline, you can't tease a copy deck. And I think that this is one of the challenges though, and this is where you do have to have that focus and that restraint is to understand And that order of operation, so your story is right and strong and clear. And so I think this is why people think I hire an agency, it's a lot of work. It takes a lot of time, it's taken me years and multiple evolutions to do all this. And the reality is, it would be a lot easier just to throw those designs into a page and throw them up there. But I think here again, you have to take a moment to think about your audience to put the shoe on the other foot. And so that if you were somebody who is going to hire you, what would their perspective be? Because the reality is, is that whenever I talk to somebody and I asked them how they work, you know, what, what was their process, what their portfolio together? And they said, oh, there was a holiday weekend and I just, you know, had six or eight hours so I just threw this together. Or it was something where you know, they just did it and left it sit out there. You have to stop and think what does that say? Because this person is what To spend so little time on what represents them, their brand, their future, their livelihood, and in a large, in a large part, probably their happiness. What does that say about the work they're going to do for me about the investment that they're going to put into it about the time that they're going to take, if their brand matters so little to them. But I get it. Nobody is sitting around with some huge amount of free time. Nobody wants to work the nights and weekends to be able to do this stuff. This is so often why whenever you hear me talk about creativity as a blue collar profession, it's it's what I mean. Because to be great at it to be great at anything is a lot of work. But I think that's really the thing is that this says something about you. And I think that taking that time and doing that investment, even before we've met even before you say a single word, it says something about you. And it says that you aren't afraid of doing hard work. It says that you can think about your audience. It says You can tell a story, that you understand this process, and that you care about your career. And that you the vision of who you are, and the pride that you take in your work really matters. And those are absolutely not insignificant things. Those are the sort of things that will really put a high level professional, somebody who people want to give opportunities to, and separate away from somebody who just is in it for a paycheck. And I know that may sound overly harsh, but I do think that trust me, I have seen and I've worked with, and I have, unfortunately hired both. And that the people that you want to be a part of are the ones who care, the ones who are passionate and that that comes through in their work, and it comes through in everything they do that these aren't people who will ever say to you, oh, it's just, oh, it's just an enhancement. Oh, it's just a quick project. Oh, it's just whatever it is. Because to build a great team to do great work to do something different. Nothing can ever just be anything. It all matters. And so I think this is why these sort of things are so important. So that's the first thing. tell your story, show your process, show people that you can think. The second thing, which is really a sister to this, it's something that goes hand in hand with this is that you also have to make sure that you explain your role and your contribution. Because the reality is, and again, you've heard me talk about this before, creativity is a team sport. There isn't a single piece of work in my portfolio that I did myself. There has never been anything that I've done. That was just an AI, or anything like that. And so I think that you need to understand that this is the case and as a result in your portfolio, you need to talk about what was your role and what did you do in this process and this is easily easily The most common mistake that I see that's so often leads to bad results in this career development and interview process, because, again, let's think about it from the outside perspective. I'll talk about it from my perspective, because I had this happened very recently yet again, I get somebody book, I go through and I look at it. And there's some great work in there. There's a brand or a site or an experience or a campaign that I've seen and really liked. And the problem is that in this person's book, it is that name of the client, and then a bunch of screenshots with no idea of what the story was or no idea what the context was, have no idea even what their role was. And the role, I think is also equally important to telling your story, simply because it can lead to several frustrating outcomes. I think that if you did have a significant role in something if you did make a significant contribution that for your brand you need to call That out. And you also need to think about this because if you don't, the experience that I had recently was, there's somebody that it seems like there's a preponderance of work that is in there, that's big enough that I'll take a chance on them. I'll bring them in, even though they haven't done the description or something like that. I'll just I'll bring them in just because I'm curious. They come in and they sit down, I start to talk to them about this particular design. And what they do is I said, Well, can you tell me what your role was? Tell me kind of what did you do on the team? What What was your part of this? And then the two most frustrating answers are? Well, no, I didn't really have a very big role. Like, you know how to this whole big site, you see a little banner ad down in the corner. Yeah. And I designed that placement. Well, the problem is that it's not a lie. But it's it's sort of it's sort of a lie by omission almost. Because by putting the work in there, you let everybody believe that your role was much bigger than it actually was. Maybe that's, you know, a naive or a hope part on whoever's looking at your book. But you still have to understand that that by omission, it is misleading. And that now I needed the person who'd be able to design this entire site. And instead, I ended up with the person that can just design the ad placement. And that's fine, I may have a spot on my team for the person who just does the ad placement because maybe that was a significant contribution. But without understanding the scale of that contribution. It makes it very hard to understand how it is that I'm should work with them, or should I hire them or not. And I think that the other thing in terms of rolling contribution, which is usually also the equally frustrating is if the person will say, Oh, that's student work, or it's pitch work, and it wasn't labeled as such, because I think there's certainly a place for pitch work and for student work, and we'll talk about that more in a little bit in a second. But I think that it's one of those things where student work is just viewed differently and pitch work is viewed differently. Because of the fact that you don't have a client, and then often cases, you don't have restraints. And in many cases for some of the brands I've worked on, I've seen people who will do concepts for the websites or the apps or things like that, that I've designed. And in many cases, it is better looking, it is better design, the experience may be better. But the reason why is because they are completely free of the constraints of time, budget, client, technology, engineering, technology, stack launch dates, you know, a whole host of other I mean, I could stand here for 10 minutes and go through the list of constraints that you have to work against. But so again, it's not that it doesn't have a place because I do think that if you aren't whenever you think about the audience, and you think about where you want to go with your career, if you aren't having the type of projects and doing the type of work that would get you there, then I do think doing these concept projects is insanely valuable, to show off your thinking to show what it is that you can do it And know about tons of people who have gotten fantastic jobs with fantastic companies because of work like this. But in those cases, they labeled it as a concept. They talked about their role, they went through their thinking, and it wasn't just simply put out there that this was the design that for whatever reason, you know, by some inference, maybe just didn't launch. But I think that this is this is where you need to think about this stuff is to talk about what was your role? What was your contribution? What was the thing that you did? Because here again, if the projects aren't where they need to be, come up with the concepts, if your role isn't what you wish it was, then take that as an understanding to look at your career to say, is this something that's on me? Is the opportunity there in my current job, and I'm just simply not taking advantage of it? Or is that having because those opportunities aren't there, and I want them and I can't get to them and something is in my way, and I need to think about maybe getting a different job. But I think in either case, use these as these self reflective moments to just look at how can you build your career and get you want to go, don't let them become the stumbling block and stop you from that. But I think that these are the things where you just you need to think about how important it is to talk about what your contribution was, as you went through this. And so finally, the third thing, it should seem like it's really obvious. I feel like a lot of the stuff I talk about seems like it should be really obvious. And in many cases, it is I think, you know, there's a lot of what I talk about isn't rocket science, I recognize that. But I think saying it out loud and trying to hold people accountable to it. That does seem to be rocket science. But the third and final thing I think, is just to make it well designed, and make your portfolio well thought out. Because this is your chance to show off. It is your chance to show what it is that you can do without a client without a budget without a timeline to be able to do something like that. Because of this is the expression of your brand, then you need your brand to be unique. You need to go back to that step in the beginning about developing your palette and seeing how can I create something that will stand out from the crowd. And I think that standing out, though, means that it needs to be smart, not gimmicky. And I think that differentiation sometimes can get lost on people. Because I think at the end of the day, we all have to remember that technology isn't an idea. No production technique, no execution will ever be as powerful as a story well told, as a concept well thought out as a design Well done, that these are just simply executional techniques. And so over the years the problem is I've seen so many portfolios that have been littered with production techniques masquerading as brands, all the rage for wireless do an html5 parallax whenever you see Scroll everything scrolls sort of a thing, which is great. I think it can be used incredibly effectively to tell your story. But whenever it's just a technique for the sake of technique, and it's not being done in the service of telling a story, then you have a problem. And this is true no matter what your medium is, this isn't true just for portfolios. This is true in digital and anything in video and filmmaking and print in any medium. A technique for a technique sake, is a problem. And so I that's why I said as it needs to be smart without being gimmicky. I think your design also has to be meticulous. You need to think this stuff through you need to pay attention to the details. This is what I said before, it can't just be anything. Oh, it's just my portfolio. I don't know that I've ever heard dumber words spoken by somebody who will then turn around and complain about this tiny apartment they're living in. It's not just your portfolio. It's your way to get to where you want to go. And so I think over the years, I've done my portfolio site a whole lot of different ways. And I do think that this is where as we talk about the different platforms that have come into technology, there is an interesting intersection point here. How do you approach this problem? And I think I've swung from one side of the fence to the other. And it doesn't mean that what I'm I do is right, but I will at least kind of walk you through, how are the ways that I do it. And so over the years, I started being the guy who custom designed everything, I custom coded everything I spent, at one point for one of my sites an entire year, custom designing and custom coding a flash site, which will date it a little bit, but the whole thing was done with these dynamic templates that had these data arrays so that I could just put in new pieces and it would look at the content and automatically understand which layout that it needed to use. It was probably the best piece of coding that I've ever done in terms of its just sophistication and elegance to be able to do something like that, but it was a year before Anything went out the door. It was a year of design a year of coding of testing, of doing all those things. And honestly, the last couple of months was me just getting so fed up with it, that I just threw a stake in the ground said, Look, damn it on this day, I'm gonna launch no matter what. And so I started to just really look at is that level of investment worth it? And so I looked at but what were the other options out there and you see that there are sites like behance have pro site or that, you know, Adobe or others have Muse or these other things, you could just throw them into these kind of standardized templates. And so I felt like, well, maybe that swung a little bit too far the other direction, because well, no, I didn't want to comply. I didn't want to spend all the time to completely design from scratch. But at the same point, this is I needed something this needed to be me, I wanted to tell my story the way that I wanted. So how can I find this middle ground between creativity and speed to market? And so for me, I switched all my sites over to WordPress. And so what my process is is that whenever I designed my site, I spend a lot of time and I go out and I look at the different themes that are available to buy. And how customizable are they? And what do they allow me to do. And I take that theme, and it very much is a starting point. If you look at any of my sites, I don't know what maybe 40 50% of it is really done with the out of the box theme. The other part of it is all really highly customized sort of stuff. And so I know that that's not original, but for me, it really was just trying to figure out how do I balance that uniqueness, the telling my story, but also with the investment in my time, because at the same point, if you spend a year working on this, pretty soon you're gonna like turn into Radiohead, where you release one album every eight or nine years, because you're just so obsessed with the process and not the production. And so I take this and like I said, I customize it, I put my own touches on it, but that's the sweet spot that I've found is this balance between the unique expression that I can go in, you know, there are great plugins that I have for html5, I can create custom animations, I can put a lot of my skills to use to make it feel richer and better than what it would be. But then again, since it's in WordPress, it's very easy for me to update, I can do it on any device, I can do it at any time. It's just, it's a much easier way for me to work. So that's the three kind of basics. So I also wanted to call out just a few of the most common mistakes that I see because like I said before, your portfolio can kind of be a crystal ball. And I think a lot of people maybe don't recognize this just because they haven't looked at a lot of them. But I think that there are a few things that I see that I find to be telling hints of the person to come the person that I'm going to meet. The first one that I see a lot is you go into somebody's portfolio, maybe even in the resume or other places. And the first thing you see is a quote from somebody else. Steve Jobs, Einstein, somebody it doesn't even matter who it is, but some you know reasonably famous person I think that that sounds innocent enough. But I guess I look at it that slightly differently. Because for me, the purpose of your portfolio is to show off your creativity, your body of work, your thought leadership and your contributions. So why the hell would you start a sales pitch about all those things with somebody else's words and somebody else's creativity? And why? See, this is always my thing is I look at things like this, I look for the psychology and I look for the underlying kind of social dynamics underneath that. And because I think that in a lot of cases, it really results from people who have a weak personal brand. They aren't clear about what their story is, they aren't clear about who they are, and they aren't clear about where they want to go. But what they can do is they can say, well, that person is somebody that was in this field that was well regarded that person, they did something smart, they did something that they're, they think that there's going to be this like Halo brand, because if I associate myself with Steve Jobs, well, then I'm associating myself with innovation, with change with Apple with design, with all these other things. And so instead of being able to actually do the branding exercise themselves to say this is actually who I am. They're using them as a surrogate, and they're doing it to try to help define their brand. And because I think that the reason why I think this is a mistake is for a few things. One is because like I said, if I'm looking to you to be a creative voice to be an original voice, the fact that you lead with somebody else's voice is concerning. Because you want to hire people that are originals. I want your voice I want your brand. And so this is one of those things where I don't want to get somebody who every time they come in and they talk to me about an idea. Their pitch is going to start with Well, this is going to be our version of another brands execution. This is gonna be our version of Amazon's echo. This is gonna be our version of Apples pencil, like whatever it would be. But what I want is I want people who have the confidence and the perspective to do something on their own. So I think that's just understand that and is that saying something about your brand and kind of where your confidence is. And I know some of you who actually pay attention, some of the more enlightened versions of you may be saying, well, Steve, wait a minute. You kind of sound like a hypocrite right now, and that you can't take your own advice. And the first thing that I will say, and if you have any questions, I'm sure you can ask my wife is that I have never said that I actually can take my own advice. And the reason why I say that is because if you simply look at the name of the show, and if you look at the tattoo that is on my arm, these are quotes from somebody else, or they are based on somebody else. The crazy ones was a jack Kerouac poem, which Steve Jobs then co opted for his commercial. So as I sit here talking about not leaving your brand with somebody else's words I'm doing the exact same thing. And so kudos for you to paying attention. But here's what I would say is that it wasn't something that I did lightly. And it wasn't something that I did without a tremendous amount of thought. And because it was something for me that I really felt like one, the tattoo was originally something that was for me that it was something that has grown into something bigger than that. But the the words behind that, and the thing that it meant, were probably written better than anything that I could be able to say. But that doesn't excuse me doing it. But what I did think of whenever I put it in the show name and wherever I've started to do talks and things like that about it was that my career was at a point, and that my brand was strong enough that people wouldn't see that quote, first. They would see my accomplishments, my career and things like that, and that my brand was strong enough to be able to do it. And that it became a bit of a rallying cry became a bit of one of these things that start to work. A little bit better, it started to really become something that I could start to rally around and that people could easily connect with. Because I started to talk to audiences of all levels. There were people who were students are trying to get into the industry through really seasoned professionals. So that's why I said it. The irony of this is not lost on me the the even mild hypocrisy is not lost on me. But for me, it was a, a very diligent choice because of the maturity of my career and of my portfolio, that I would be able to do that. But that being said, the only place where those things appear are on my arm and the name of the show, there are no quotes from anybody in my portfolio that were not people that I worked with are not quotes that were said about me. They're not there's no general quotes about creativity or anything like that, because again, I still believe that holds true. So just wanted to point that out. For those who are paying attention will save a couple of emails, a few little comments. But again, that was just the thinking behind it. Whether or not you believe it totally up to you. The next mistake that I see and again, a really common One is people who show everything in their portfolio. And I see this all the time with these portfolios that are packed with every design that somebody has done, I swear since like kindergarten, that this isn't about volume. It's not about the quantity of things that your portfolio, it's not an archive, if you want an archive, buy a hard drive. your portfolio is about telling a curated story. And that what you don't want to do is just show 3040, this huge volume of things because what that does, is it forces your audience to go through all that work, to dig through it, to find the gems to find the highlights to find the things that are really going to support the story that you want to tell. And because the reality is is that I would rather see 345 even even if it was just that few. But if that few projects were really incredible. I would rather see just that few really important projects, overseeing 30, mediocre ones, because the story and the strength behind those few that are that well done, will carry the day, as opposed to 30 really mediocre ones that may show range, but they don't show depth. And so I think that you have to pick the projects that show off your skills that builds your brand and get you to the work that you want to get to. And that's why I said, as I think you know, and this can be hard sometimes because there are projects that I love, I love the design of the story isn't strong enough, the role wasn't big enough for where I am in my career, there are things that I've had to leave behind even huge brands, top 10 brands in the world that no longer appear in my book, because the story isn't strong enough. And I don't want to dilute the story that I'm telling by having those in there. The next thing and I think this is probably the biggest problem, and we talked in the beginning about why online portfolios, why is that what we're going to do here, and I think that the reason why I would say online portfolios And the third biggest problem that I see is really for the fact that people who do these things, and they can't figure out how to build their brand, they can't figure out how to communicate it, they can't figure out how to get new opportunities. And I think that this is why putting your portfolio online is so great because it's open 24 seven, it is something that people can find at any time at anywhere. Some of the best opportunities, some of the most surprising, delightful, fantastic things that I've been so privileged to be able to do in my career came out of people who found my portfolio in other parts of the world and other time zones, and these are people that I never would have met, never would have known to have sent my book to never would have had the opportunity to have interacted with if my book hadn't been online. And so I think this is why I say that the portfolio does need to be online because if it's anything else, it's so compromises the potential power, and honestly, I feel like it undermines just simply the amount of work that you're going to have to do and get put into something like this, to have it be be successful. And so the mistake that goes with this is that once you do put it online, you need to keep it up to date. Because so often, those positions don't necessarily always hit the street. Because I find that most of the jobs that I think are really great, are done through referrals are done through somebody asking somebody else, hey, do you know anybody who's really great to do this particular thing? And then that person will come back and give them a name a person, somebody be able to look at somebody be able to check out? Well, you're not gonna see that coming. You weren't a part of the conversation, you didn't have the heads up. So this is why keeping your portfolio up to date is so important, because the reality is that opportunities like this aren't going to call ahead. They don't make reservations and they don't tell you that they're coming. The challenge with this is that it does require you to have the discipline to keep it up to date in the hopes that something like this happens, and it's not going to pay off until it does. But this is why I think if you're gonna put it out there you have to keep it up to To date, and I've found that keeping it up to date quite honestly, is so much easier if I just do it a little bit at a time. Whenever I launch a new project, I take the time, take a couple hours go in, add the project into my portfolio, as opposed to if I do it once a year, then all of a sudden, it's a lot more work, that's a lot more that I have to be able to do. And then it becomes just simply more daunting, because then I have to find more time I have to invest more, the problem becomes bigger. But I think this is the thing is to be able to keep this up to date, because so often All I see are creative people that only update their portfolio whenever they're looking for a new job. Or you can tell them that they stopped updating their portfolio shortly after they got their last job. But this is the thing is you think about your career arc. And as you want to continue to drive towards that goal. Just leave the opportunity open. And keep working through this and just keep it up to date because I think you'll be amazed at some of the opportunities that might come your way. And so those are the three most common mistakes. That's why There are a ton of other smaller ones. So where do we end all this? Where do we end? Talking about your portfolio? Where do we I'm talking about your career. And I would end talking about your portfolio because I think there is nothing that I've seen that builds your personal brand, like a portfolio, because it's like I said before the work is the truth. This is where all that thinking and methodology and all that stuff comes to life. And so having one putting it out there for the world, taking that risk, build your brand in incredible ways. And I think whether you want followers who you know, want to listen to what it is that you want to talk about, whether it is you want new freelance opportunities, whether you want new, permanent, full time opportunities, whatever that is, I think this is just such an incredible gateway into that, which is why I wanted to give it its own show is because of just the incredible power that it has. And so this is the fourth and final show on career development. And where do we end that Where do we what? What is it that if I had to say just one thing about how to grow your career and about how to think about it, what would I say? And so I think this is something I've spent a long time thinking about. There's some part of me that is you want to try to teach and you want to try to share, how do you get people to understand what it is that you think is important. And for me, it really does come down to just one single phrase, honestly. And I think that whenever it comes to your career, and all of its different facets, it comes down to the fact that success is a choice. That whether it's taking the time to build your personal brand, whether it's getting your resume, right thinking about if you need business cards, the way that you treat your social media profile, the way that you prepare for an interview, the way that you build and maintain your portfolio and the litany of other things that go along with this. Your careers a job, your career is something that if you want it to make a difference That not only in the work that you do, but the impact that you have. It's work. It's blue collar. It's something you have to put your back into. And I think that seems to be what frightens so many people away because they want it to be easy. They want it to be something that they can just do now and again. But the reality is our industry, creativity in general is just so debatable. It's so conceptual. And it's so competitive with so many people doing these things. With so many great teams out there. There's always somebody better. There's always somebody doing something more interesting. It's an industry that rewards the latest, greatest shiny thing. So how do you compete with that? I think you compete by the fact that you just say that you know your success and your brand is not going to be optional, that I'm going to put in the work that I'm going to do what it needs to do that I'm not going to leave this up to chance to happenstance to just see what comes floating along. I'm going to put in the work and that the outcome is just simply pre determined. It's just how am I going to be able to get there? And this is where I honestly have to say that I get more than a little irritated for people who want to ask me. What's the secret to having the success that I've had working with Apple or the success that I've had my career? Or will tell me how lucky I am because of all this. And don't get me wrong. There are places where the universe has lined up and given me the opportunity. There are places where, you know, those sorts of things and the people that I needed, were there when I needed them. This was not something that I did on my own by any stretch of the imagination. But I'll be damned if it was luck. Because for me, honestly, luck is the residue of skill. Like there wasn't anything lucky about any of this, that this was something for me that is a insane amount of work, that there are no secrets to that there is no substitute for hard work and to be able to put in the time and I think generally that's What I preach, right? I'm not the easy self help guy, I'm not the two things you can do to get better guy. I think that a lot of what I asked you to do is to put in the work and to put in the thinking about you, and how do you make it better because, as I said, in the very first episode on creativity, so much of this is so incredibly personal, because the way you do things is so personal. But I think that you being the master of your own destiny of taking control of your career, there is incredible power in that. And I think that there's an incredible amount of work that unfortunately has to go with it. So I think that would be the thing is we close this part of this is just to think about an understand that success is a choice. And what are the choices that you're making? What's the work that you're doing, to improve your situation to change where you are to make your work better, to make yourself better to make your job better, to make the lives that your family have better? Because it's that work that leads to where you want to be. It's not working That leads to that success. And that it is a choice and that you will do the hard work and have the discipline to do it, which is not sexy. It's not easy. It's not some tweetable little nugget that everybody's going to be able to latch on to. But it's the only truth that I've found. And maybe that's just a deficiency in my skill set. Maybe I'm not as talented as I wish I was that maybe this is a lot easier for other people. And maybe there are podcasts out there that have the secret, but for this one, for this guy at this time, that's the best piece of advice that I can give you. So with that, we will put a bow on talking about your career, and we're gonna move on to some other pretty cool subjects I've got about I think about at least the next 30 episodes mapped out so I'm gonna be here for a while. I hope you are too, if you are, and if you've liked the show, as always, I really appreciate it. take a couple minutes. And again, it's the only payment that I asked for. Go and leave a review on iTunes, Google Play SoundCloud wherever you want, because it really does make a difference. It gets Some more readers gets listeners numbers up. And I think ultimately that's the goal of what I'm trying to do here. As always, you can find out more about this podcasts related to articles that I've written and just kind of listen to a bunch of episodes and things like that at podcast dot Stephen Gates, calm, show notes and everything. They're always up to date. The boys on illegal as always want you to remember that all the views here and everything I talked about are my own. They don't represent those of my current or former employers. This is just me out here ranting. And I say it every time because I mean it but thanks for the time time is the only true luxury that we have. And I'm always incredibly appreciative of yours. So until next time, stay crazy.