Portfolio surgery with Chris Jackson, Elmwood

Today was my portfolio surgery with Chris Jackson from Elmwood. I went into this one with a lot more confidence than with Tom yesterday, because now I know what to expect. It was different, of course, to the one I had yesterday but equally as helpful. Of course, there were contradictions to the advice that Tom had given me but that is to be expected.

Again, he liked the custom folder rather than having a generic black portfolio, and his favourite out of my work was the Tea Hugger brief again. This one is proving to be pretty popular, I must have done something right here. There were a couple of things that he thought could have been pushed further, such as the Tree Surgeon identity so he suggested removing it, as well as the Fedrigoni brief. While it was a nice piece of graphic design it didn't fit in with what I was going for. He also suggested spreading my bigger briefs across a couple of pages. Also, more in context shots and product shots to show how something worked o folded down or was constructed.

When I mentioned embellishing the pages a little, he suggested only doing it to the folder rather than the pages. He found the blue logo a little distracting on the pages as it was so that's something I need to address, perhaps fading the logo out and having it full colour on the folder and business card alone.

I mentioned the tea bag that I discussed with Tom and he advised against it, saying how it would be too gimicky and there was the risk of the tea bag bursting. The advice I got here was more about letting the work speak for itself.

Portfolio Surgery with Tom Eales, Plus Minus Design

So today I had my first portfolio surgery with Tom Eales, and it was safe to say that I was pretty nervous. I knew that these were casual and all but still, I was nervous about seeing him and showing him my portfolio.

Anyway, I was nervous about nothing. It went really well and I got a lot out of it. I think my idea of creating a folder for my portfolio rather than having it in the standard black folder went down really well as I was told that it looked instantly professional, which was most excellent.

He really liked my work, in particular my Tea Hugger brief, which I had at the front of my portfolio. Which is where it's going to stay and be the first piece of work that people see of mine. He liked the layout and the clean white look of my portfolio and thought I had a good number of pieces in there. He mentioned maybe getting some print finishes on it to make it a little less flat, like spot varnishing the logo on the front of my folder and maybe on each of the pages.

The format would work really well as a miniature mail-out version and he mentioned perhaps adding something extra at the back of the mail out, like one of the teabags from the Tea Hugger range. It's definitely something to consider and something that would perhaps make people remember my work more.

Other things included re-ordering the work in my PDF and making the size smaller to be easily emailed and to add it to my website as a download-able option.

The Case Press

The visiting professional of the week is Barrie Tullet of The Caseroom Press, a old friend of Fred's. The Caseroom Press deals in books and publications and he brought it a wide range of things for us to look at. I learned quite a lot about the book binding process in the short workshop that he held after the talk. In particular I loved his personal project illustrating Dante's The Divine Comedy using typography. It was a huge project spanning over 21 years and he's still only a 3rd of the way through. I would love to see all of them in a publication together.

He also brought us a present too. We're quite good at getting freebies it would seem. It's a newspaper that was produced by the students at Lincoln School of Art and Design.

Generation Press

The wonderful Generation Press came in to talk to us today as our 'Friday Visiting Professional' and he brought Anand back with him! It was a good talk and they brought lots of gorgeous printed material for us to rummage through and keep what we wanted pretty much. Very nice of them.

It was a good talk and interesting to listen to. It makes me want to visit GP but with no money and no transport that's a little bit difficult for me.

They brought us a present too, which therefore sets the bar for all visiting professionals in the future.

Specifically for us, ooer.

It was a really nice white foil that the photograph didn't  really pick up the detail of. Anand is their adopted northerner so it's sort of a running joke.