Here is some car designer portfolio advice, aimed at what a designer’s portfolio should contain –
Design is all about opinion, this is one. You can take all of it on board, some of it on board or none at all.
Unlike other designers giving you advice, this is from someone who actually employs both graduates and established designers .
PORTFOLIOS
From designers to alias modellers, we are all aware that our industry doesn’t tend to favour the conventional CV and cover letter with a careful placement of buzz words/phrases like ‘I can manage a team of people and take on individual responsibilities’. Although these are areas we all have to consider, at the end of the day it is the your Portfolio that we are discussing here.
KNOW WHO YOU ARE APPLYING TO
If all you have is speed boats and lawn mowers in your portfolio then I would say it is quite rare that an automotive studio will consider you. Research the studio / brand and try your best to think of what they might look for in a candidate.
“You are only as good as your worst piece of work”. As a designer, your portfolio will mainly be put under the eyes of other designers, we love looking at them, we want to be excited, we want to see that sketch or render that inspires us and then we will want you! So reduce or throw away lifeless package drawings of translucent, colour filled boxes that say “batteries” or “motors”, and the 97.5 percentile Dutch males that you’ve squashed into your vehicle.
Keep your projects to a minimum, we see 56 page portfolios with about 10 projects in. These are too big to keep/capture attention for the period of time it would take to digest that amount of information / wade through it. We are designers ourselves and therefore have to do the day job designing and unfortunately we can’t spend all day every day looking at portfolios!
DISCARDING OLDER PROJECTS
This is the hard bit, discarding older projects as your skills have improved …. nearly impossible to do sometimes as you probably hold emotions for each project as if they were your own child. They aren’t your children and they don’t have emotions, cut them out and be brutal. Do it, cut it down, get through it. Even if you are left with 3 projects of a high standard, we will think that you can do everything of this level.
Cut out some of the projects you may have done like – 1. Clay head project 2. Any ergonomics based project with lights that reflect your mood 3. An alias model or render which is then repeated in different colours to show colour choices up to 5-6 times (padding out your portfolio?).
VARIATIONS OF DESIGN WORK
This topic divides people when asked, and can be difficult to answer without causing a whole world of LinkedIn design debates. I prefer the overall portfolio to be focussed. Try to mix it up, don’t just have 3 projects of space ships and fantastic speed painting art work, show that side of you by all means it’s great to see, however try and include some good old fashioned automotive design, displaying an understanding of surfacing, brand interpretation and proportion over 4 conventional wheels.
Your portfolio should be a reflection of yourself, it should be presented in a way that you are comfortable with. Your style should be natural rather than something that is forced. Always be honest with the way that you work, whether you are all about hand sketching or a Photoshop wizard, show how you work as we all have different ways we do things.
DESIGN COMPETITIONS
A great way to stay sharp, promote your name and they really keep you on your toes. Polestar, the Michelin design challenge and interior motives to name but a few, the briefs are usually fun, and if it is not fun then you need to twist their brief to do so! No one wants to design something boring in their spare time. These usually have no engineering requirement, package constraints or a need to convince university tutors to what you are doing, go forth and have fun!
CV WRITING
Like my car designer portfolio advice – Keep it simple, if you don’t have that much to show it’s ok, we have all been in your shoes at some point and we don’t expect to see years of experience from a student. Whatever you do, please don’t write that you have been ‘freelancing’, unless you can back it up with examples to prove you haven’t just living at home with your parents with a part time job. Better to say you have been working on your portfolio and design competitions in an evening, but again you have to back it up with the evidence!
SELF RATING CHARTS
My last thought on this topic, which I could probably continue to preach about for another hour whilst I annoy my colleagues by seemingly moaning endlessly is this …. the self-rating skill charts! Now I’m not sure what the universities have been preaching to the students of late, but here’s my number one pointless thing to put in your portfolio if you are applying to be a designer or alias modeller. Grading yourself out of 10, maybe out of 5 stars even and stating how good you are at alias, photoshop, design or sketching.
The idea of your portfolio or data you send is that we will be working out your abilities. Then deciding the level we see you, and where we feel you would fit within a studio. Whatever you do, please don’t include ‘football’ as a skill set, to which you then score yourself higher on this than any other design skills. Makes me think you should be a professional footballer instead! (NOTE: Only exception is if you are applying to drive where your karting lap times are important)
Have an opinion, perhaps a photo of you applying a tape to a clay model or sketching revealing some of your personality and be protective over your pen. Talk about sketches with emotions and feelings and never be truly happy with your work. Keep portfolios to no bigger than 5mb (if possible)
Although car designer portfolio advice is aimed at graduates, I hope it helps everyone.
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