Portfolio Development

Hello Students,

Having a polished and professional looking portfolio is key to your success in finding work after High School and moving on to developing a career. Download the ROP Portfolio Handbook to use as a guide for creating your own portfolio, a requirement in all ROP classes.

Portfolio's are due by January 12th and must be ready for presentation, evaluation and critique (make it perfect!). You should put great time and care into creating the professional side of your portfolio.

Remember that the best portfolio in class will be sent to the portfolio design competition that ROP has at the end of each school year, your portfolio will compete against other graphic design classes across the county, and there are prizes!

A judge evaluates print portfolio's from past entrants...

Portfolio Cover Design Assignment:

• Design an eye catching cover design for you your portfolio
• Include your name, the title of this class, the school you are currently attending and the year
• Design your cover for standard letter size 8.5X11 inch paper
• When you are done post your portfolio cover design to your blog
• Cover design is due on Thursday

Portfolio Development Long Term Assignment:

• Your portfolio must be created in Indesign and the final file must be a multi-page PDF document
• Use the Pages palette to create multiple pages for your portfolio with Indesign
• Your portfolio cover, table of contents and all materials should look clean and consistent. Use consistent design style across all aspects of your portfolio, this includes color, typography, layout and style

Your Portfolio must contain in this order: See portfolio handbook for more details...

1. Cover page with your name, class title, year. Spend some time on this, it should show good design skill and be reflective of your personality
2. Table of contents
3. Letter of Introduction
4. Resume
5. Handwritten Job Application 
6. List of References
7. Letter of Recommendation -  cannot be from your ROP teacher or a family member
8. 3 or more work samples with written explanation about the work, why is it important to your career choice? What did the project entail, what were the challenges and difficulties? Give us details.

How Your Portfolio Is Evaluated:

• Contains required content and format
• Well organized
• Free of grammar mistakes
• contains ROP related work samples
• Shows creativity
• Nice appearance
• Shows skill development
• Appropriate for use in job search
• Professional appearance
• Nice presentation
• Shows good design and wise choice of color palettes
• Shows consistency across all pages
• Reflects your style, personality and interests

A print portfolio can take many forms, it can be professionally bound, stitched by hand or bound with a spiral ring... how will you create your portfolio, what will make it stand out above the rest?

Tips For Winning The Portfolio Competition:

In the last few years the portfolio competition has gotten fierce, especially for the graphic design category. Other schools have printing facilities that we don't, so you must use your creativity, ingenuity and eye for design to stand above the rest. Consider purchasing a large format portfolio binder and printing work samples at 11X17", or consider making a hand-bound book format to showcase your work. The limits are only contained by your creativity!

Use this as a rough guide to laying out your own portfolio...

Ok, have fun!

Previous Student Portfolio Cover Design Samples:

P.S. There are more samples on the back table for review...

Hello Students,

To develop your print portfolio we will use Adobe InDesign's powerful layout software to create multiple page document with compelling design, color, typography and content. Use this post and the details below to explore and become familiar with InDesign

Launch and Explore InDesign

• Go to the dock and launch InDesign, or look in your Applications folder to find the app
• Go to the File Menu and create a New Document
• Go to the Window Menu and set your Workspace to Advanced
• Explore the tool bar, click on the text tool and draw a text box to create text, try the shape tools and look for the color modifiers to change colors at the top of the screen
• Open all the palettes under the Window Menu and explore all the functions, look at the quick guides below for reference
• See if you can create text of different sizes, change the colors, modify the text kerning and tracking and draw shapes in different colors and with different borders
• Try importing an image, use File Menu/Place... you can insert a photo into a shape, or drop it onto the page you want
• Try opening the Pages Palette and create multiple pages
• When you are comfortable, begin creating your portfolio!

Hidden Tools and Shortcut Keys

Character Formatting Panel In InDesign

Paragraph Formatting Panel in InDesign

Invisible Camera Self Portrait

Hello Students,
Your next photo challenge is to replicate the effect in the photo below. The concept is to create a self portrait, taken in a mirror, where the camera is hidden through photoshop trickery. I loved this technique so much that years ago I emailed Josh Dunlop and asked his permission to use his photo below and challenge my students to replicate his method, fortunately for us he loved the idea.

This high performing student example shows good technical skill and attention to lighting and exposure.

Assignment:
Check out his image below... how do you think it was created? Follow this link and try to replicate the process. With some additional searching you can find more resources on the steps required to replicate the effect.

Tips:

• Follow the steps on the expert photography website to create your own invisible camera self portrait
• Take a few practice shots against the mirror to make sure you are exposed properly and in focus
• Lock down focus/white balance/iso/shutter speed so your shots can be blended together in photoshop
• Think about how you can use creative photography methods to make your own "hidden camera portrait" unique...  think about color, setting, attire, extras (other people), mood, lighting, color or b&w, image enhancement, etc...
• Read and study the methods used, if your first attempts aren't successful, try again...

Photo by Josh Dunlop at ExpertPhotography.com

Examples:

Have fun!

 - Mr.W

Create A Comic Book From Photographs

Hello Students,

Your new assignment is to create a comic book with a comic book cover using photographs. Check out the guidelines and follow the filter process to create cool comic book styled art from photographs. You could also use the warhol style to give your photos an artistic look. Your comic should tell a short story or at least be the beginning to a longer story. Use exaggerated facial expressions, camera angles, word balloons and different panel layouts to give your comic that air of authenticity.

Comic Book Assignment:

• Brainstorm a short comic book story that will fit into 2 pages of 6 to 8 panels
• Sketch or storyboard your scenes on paper, create 1 full page cover image complete with title artwork and 2 comic pages with 4-6 images per page
• Your comic book story could be an action scene, a dramatic scene, a scary story, a dream sequence, a slice of life or a funny story with a punchline... use your imagination. Use this comic to tell a joke, recreate a story or recreate your favorite superhero comic
• Check out the comic book panel layouts below for different page design ideas
• Research comic books, look at how the people are posed, color usage, angles, and try to capture that style in your images. The more exaggerated the camera angles and facial expressions the better. Don't limit yourself, super powers and special effects can be added in photoshop
• Get your models together, pose and arrange them and shoot your panels
• Lay your photos out and crop/resize to create your comic book panels and cover
• Post the comic book cover and pages to your blog when complete

Comic book pages can have lots of different panel layouts, here are 8 different page layouts

How To Style Your Photo Into Comic Book Art:

You have lots of options to stylize your artwork to make it look like a comic book illustration. Use different filters, half-tones, bright colors, warhol style or other filters. Try the process below and see if you like the results. You could even print your photos, trace them with a felt pen and scan them to make your artwork if you wanted too. Use your imagination and experiment for the best results.

• Open photo in Photoshop
• Go to Filer > Artistic > Poster Edges
• Adjust sliders for desired effect
• Edit each image for the comic-look, clean up the backgrounds and add bold and bright colors for visual appeal
• Create your "panel" template with the line tool or a brush tool
• Copy-paste your processed photos into each panel, use "Paste-Into" for ease of placement and scaling
• Create text bubble and add text
• Add finishing touches and post to when complete!
• Don't stop until it's perfect! Your results should look as good or better than the examples below.

Due Tuesday, have fun!

- Mr.W

Research comic book typography to make your design look the part.

Think about timing and emphasis when designing your panels.

Use simple word balloon graphics and line art to stylize your comic book.

Source images used for the comic above

Advanced Portrait Study Part B: Left, Right, Front...

Your next assignment is another exercise in portrait photography and this time we are testing a theory that a persons left side of their face shows more emotion that the right side of the face, and that viewers find the left side more aesthetically pleasing. Read through the 2 links below. Take your portraits and write a 2-3 paragraph summary about your findings. Do you agree with the theory proposed? If not why? What are your personal findings and thoughts?

Does the left side of the face show more emotion? 

Links for required reading:

 - Science Daily: Your left side is your best side

 - Petapixel: Photograph the left side of peoples faces to capture more emotion

Assignment Details:

• Pick 1 person (doesn't have to be the same model from part A) and create 3 portraits of them each showing their face from the right, the left and straight on.
• Take multiple shots (like a professional) and choose your best example to show the left, side and front portraits
• Post your 3 images to our flickr page when complete, post processing is encouraged to enhance your portraits, try B&W, cross-processing or basic color enhancement.
• Write a 1 paragraph summary of your findings. Do you agree with the theory proposed? If not why? What are your personal findings and thoughts on this theory?

Student Work Example:

 Studies have consistently shown that the left side of the face not only tends to be more aesthetically pleasing, but displays more emotion than the right. As for the model I chose to use for this assignment, I would agree that this theory, in part, remains true. While the left side of my models face may present more emotion, I would argue that the right side of my models face, contrary to common belief, is more aesthetically pleasing. The reason for this is that the jaw is much more accentuated on his right side creating a sharp and intense- but not particularly emotional-look. In the photograph displaying the left side, his features appear much softer. Interestingly, I tried this again with three other people (including myself) and found that both parts of the theory applied. While this generalization may not apply to everyone (as many do not), I do agree that there is truth behind it.

                                                      - Veronica Madrid

 - Mr.W

 This project is due Friday. - Mr.W