Communicating Creativity. How to Make Your Portfolio Stand Out

October 1st, 2015

You’re Going to Hit the Time of Your Life a.k.a. Your First Internship

September 28th, 2015

Find a Job You Love and You Will Add Five Days to Every Week

Communicating Creativity. How to Make Your Portfolio Stand Out

October 5th, 2015 / by Ioana Popica

If you perform your everyday work in the visual or creative industry, you certainly know that your portfolio is your career
calling card. From your first internship to your most recent job, your portfolio is an essential marketing tool. It's not only a way of displaying your work; it should be telling your story without you being present in the room.

Today, technology is progressively taking over the old way we used to communicate and apply for jobs. And with that, design
portfolios are changing also and starting to look a whole lot different than they used to. Here are a few hints on how to keep up:

1. Go online
It's becoming essential for creative minds looking for jobs (but not only) to provide a digital version of their portfolio. Not only in terms of look and feel, but also in making it easier to share. FrameSplash provides you with a great, fully customizable way of showcasing your work and credentials the right way and sending it effortlessly, all through an intuitive and easy to use interface, that requires no coding knowledge.

2. Introduce yourself and add some personality
The black & white, restrictive portfolios and job/internship applications are long gone. Adding a cover page to introduce yourself is your chance to engage your audience from the very first glimpse. Use FrameSplash to create a remarkable landing page that speaks about your individuality and customize the entire look of your presentation by choosing fonts, colors and backgrounds.

3. Be consistent
Sticking to a uniform theme throughout your entire portfolio is important in order to get a clean, professional look and feel.
Think of what represents you and choose professional color schemes to keep all the way from the top to the end.

4. Always tell a story
To convince your audience today, just showing your work through beautiful visuals is not enough anymore. You need to wrap your work in a story, so that it's not just showing a final product, but it also reveals your creative process. Go deeper into each project. Let people have an insight into how you develop an idea, how you enforce it, so that they know what to expect from you. Only this way you will earn trust and set yourself apart.

5. Don't go too complex
According to BDP, "The best portfolios demonstrate the candidate’s good judgment in selecting the most appropriate material to include rather than just throwing in everything possible". Choose quality over quantity. Focus on choosing only a few of your best works that reveal your full set of skills. There's no need for complexity; rather, make sure your portfolio is simple and easy to scan.

6. Know your hit list
Targeting your audience is crucial. Always pair your content with your target, rather than just sharing one single generic portfolio with everyone. A targeted portfolio demonstrates that you care and you understand your future employer, their business and their industry. With FrameSplash 'Show or Hide Sections' option, you will be able to easily choose which sections are relevant for each and every one of your applications in order to better personalize them for every company.

You only get out what you put in. So go for it!

You’re Going to Hit the Time of Your Life a.k.a. Your First Internship

October 1st, 2015 / by Ioana Popica

You've just decided that the next smart thing to do in your life is to take off to this new place where learning opportunities turn into new experience. New is the main keyword, and this is exciting! You want it to be special and to shake your life a bit.

Here are some friendly hints on how to make this experience a completely mind-blowing and disruptive one:

1. Make clear what you want to learn from it - What are you actually looking for out there?
Knowing your purpose in everything you do is the best way to tackle the core of it. Get to know what you want to accomplish. This will help you build your objectives. The main focus should be on understanding where you currently are and where you want to be at the end of it. Set up some milestones. Then map out the activities and learning experience that will get you from one point to the next.

2. Prepare to meet some pro’s.
Learning new things that will add to your studies and kick-off your working experience is an important step in jump starting your career. Get ready to make contacts, keep your eyes open, ask questions to the pro’s you will meet in this wanderlust place called an office. You have no idea what a privileged position this is - to be the “apprentice”. It’s really not as bad as it sounds. Being able to talk with people working in the industry is priceless. So go for it!

3. Explore that “new”.
Being on your own in a foreign geography and dealing with fresh situations is soul-enriching and a maturity test altogether. Take time to learn something new about yourself as well. Living far away from family, old friends and habits makes space for you to uncover things you didn’t know about yourself, discover new interests and find the time to nourish them.

So pack your enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, and fly by!

Find a Job You Love and You Will Add Five Days to Every Week

September 28th, 2015 / by Ioana Popica

When we are engaged in a job, we seldom rise our head from the sand and look around to check what is the real relation that we have with our everyday work: is it enriching for ourselves, is it enriching for the people we work with, is it of value for the people we offer it to?

But when we do ask ourselves these questions, we sometimes find ourselves disliking our job and wishing we were elsewhere. We are all looking for a form of making ourselves useful while expressing our creative talents, feeling that our work matters, finding a purpose in it and of course, getting remunerated for the effort we put on the way. But we all know that making a career out of something we love doing it’s not as simple as it sounds.

What if you were to look at the process of finding that new job as being transformative as therapy is? Because if you are really going to do this, then indeed getting down with who you are is part of it.

1. Find your talent/passion.
The dictionary defines talent as a natural ability or aptitude. Discovering your talents really starts with (re)assessing and understanding what you do best and with ease, and of course, with joy. What is your passion? What do you like spending time on and you’re also good at? How can you use these in your career? Because something you enjoy will better lead not only to a fulfilling job, but also to success.

2. Know where you want to get.
As with most things in our lives, our career will benefit if we set goals and make a plan for it. Look at what is important for you. What are the major accomplishments you hope to attain, the level or position you hope to reach, and the lasting impacts you hope to make? Map out where you want to go with concrete milestones. Then find out what is important in terms of shaping your core abilities. But mind that we often think we know what success means, when in fact our ideas about being successful are not our own, but absorbed from the people around us. So be honest with yourself in order not to find yourself at the end of the journey discovering that it doesn’t, in fact, bring you the satisfaction you wanted all along.

3. Face your fears.
When talking about change, in every aspect of our lives, understanding that fear is normal and acceptable as we go through the whole process is essential. Life is a learning experience and sometimes we need to take a leap of faith. The best way to overcome your fears is to first identify them (whether they’re about financial security, failure, image or just about the unknown) and then shine the light of reason and logic upon them. Are they realistic or irrational? Gather information, think of small steps to build your confidence, because fear can’t exist if we transform the unknown into knowledge.