The Importance of Having a Portfolio
Lesson 1 from: Design, Print, and Build Your PortfolioBonnie Christine
The Importance of Having a Portfolio
Lesson 1 from: Design, Print, and Build Your PortfolioBonnie Christine
Lessons
Part 1
1The Importance of Having a Portfolio
09:03 2What to Include & Why
09:27 3How to Stand Out from the Crowd
10:59 4Having an Online Following Behind You
06:25 5How to Show Your Work & to Whom
15:47 6Gathering Inspiration
08:33 7How to Set Up Your Artboard
05:38How to Build Your Intro Page
09:12 9Build Your Table of Contents Page
10:05 10Creating Your Online Presence Page
11:12 11How to Design Process Page & Collections
21:01 12Build a Sample & Examples Page
07:12 13Create a Contact Page
17:30 14Printing Options & Digital Publishing
13:29 15Ready Your Supplies
05:09 16Going Over the Process
03:48 17Prepping Your Pages
09:09 18How to Build a Portfolio Cover with Fabric
42:13 19Add Final Touches on the Cover
07:19 20How to Stack & Bind Your Portfolio
08:41Part 2
Part 3
Lesson Info
The Importance of Having a Portfolio
Welcome to creative live. We're so happy to have you here. This is designed print and build your portfolio with bonnie. Christine, my name is chris jennings, and I'm going to be your host for our session today. We are thrilled to have bonnie here. I want to tell you a little bit about bonnie. Christine if you don't already know who she is, she is a surface pattern designer. She has been here on creative live before and taught a fantastic course and we're so thrilled to have her back, so please welcome bonnie christine, come on up, bunny. Hello. Good morning. So good to have you back here on creative live. We're thrilled to have you once again. I know I was on your course last time and learned a time and we have so many people out there who are eager to learn even more from you. So I'm gonna let you take it away and get into the content. Great. All right, thanks. Thank you. I'm so excited to be back on creative, live teaching in another class and I just want to welcome you to class toda...
y. I'm really excited to specifically share this course with you if you feel like you have work ready to show to the world than this course is designed for you several years ago, I had a dream to become a surface pattern signer, but no formal training, so I spent years studying myself on how to do this, and I'm happy to say that my dream came true, but a huge part of that was through my portfolio, so I've shared a lot of my story in my previous course if you're interested in hearing more about that, but for this course, I really want to focus on sharing with you how to bring your work toe life through your portfolio. Are you ready to get started? Great, so I want to start off by just covering an overview with you of what we're going to cover in this course. In part one, we're going to discuss why we need a portfolio who would benefit from having a portfolio also tips on branding and how to make your book a reflection of yourself and your work how to gather inspiration and also had a pack get to work in order to start showing it to people. Part two is going to be entirely based in adobe illustrator, so I'm going to teach you how to design your pages and illustrator how to set up a template, publish and a digital version of your portfolio online, and then we'll also talk about printing options part three we get to get our hands little dirty and actually build a portfolio oh we're going to be binding it and building it from scratch today in part three there's also going to be a challenge for this course and it's going to be really fun to participate in, and I'm going to give you details on that at the end of the course. So I first want to talk about the importance of having a portfolio. One question you might have is why should we have one? And I feel like if you have a body of work that you're ready to show tio the world, or maybe that you feel like you're not getting noticed in your industry, this is why you need a portfolio. Personally, I feel like I wouldn't be where I am today without my portfolio. A little bit of my back story is that after I studied and learned how to do surface pattern design, I created several collections that I felt like were ready to present, so I handmade a portfolio, and I took it too. The trade show of my industry, which is called quilt market on I was able to sit down with the art director of my top choice company, and I felt like when I put down my hard copy of my portfolio, it immediately communicated my voice and my brand where I wanted to go with my business and it literally was like she was holding my brand in her hands, and so she was able to offer me a contract on the table that day, and so oftentimes I wonder what kind of an impact I would have had had I simply may be emailed her digital a version of my portfolio if I would have had the same result, possibly I'm not sure that it was entirely due to my portfolio, but I do think that having a book toehold and really have that personal connection was a huge part of it. So I do think it's important to have both a digital and hard copy portfolio, and we're going to discuss both today, but everyone has a digital version a lot people have digital versions and that's important because we live in a digital online world so it's nice to be able to send those links, tio people that you want to be able to view, you work. Um but the reason it's important to have a hard copy is that everyone does have online version and it's a really nice way to kind of start standing out from the crowd to have ah hard copy to show people so another question you might have is who needs a portfolio? I want to say that anybody literally anyone who has a body of work that you want to start sharing with people this is a great way to do it is through your portfolio so that includes artists, photographers, illustrators, painters, writers, surface pattern designers like me students anyone who has a body of work. So even though I'm a surface pattern designer and that I will definitely come through in this course, I hope that you'll be able to translate it to your own industry too. So I have a couple of questions that I want to ask throughout this course to everyone at home and also here in the audience to really help you create a portfolio with purpose and get you really thinking about the steps that you need to take in order to build a portfolio. So I want to ask you what your name is, what your industry is or what you do and then where you hope your portfolio is going to take you so everyone at home if you will think about that and any your answers in the chat room we're going to give you a minute while we introduced the students we have here in the audience would you like to start? Yes, my name is lisa harbin and I create and design greeting cards and stationery and I just began to stab willinto surface pattern design probably let two years now and where I want us to take me is to introduce mar my work tio to the world wonderful, perfect I need to see the head and I'm currently an artist a visual artist and the painter but I definitely want to find out how I can get my artworks translate onto fabric so I want to recreate that portfolio eventually with my fabric design okay, wonderful my name's tracy worth I'm a stay at home mom. Well, did you want to know? Sorry, let's question e need to know. Okay, so I'm interested in surface pattern design I you know, I tend to be more interest in the fabric, but I understand the greeting cards in paper and wallpaper and yes goes on right can translate to the right for different areas. I'm a stay at home mom too. We do lots of different things as a stay at home on yes, hi, I'm lisa davis and I'm an interior designer, so I've basically used of digital purported portfolio, the show clients on a tablet or something that I want a more personal touch with a handmade perfect portfolio fate welcome when it was a media rapkin almost a freelance takes talent surface parent designer I worked for various markets and I hope to create markets pacific portfolios so that I have to us re portfolios great, great those air all perfect for this course yeah, we have people in the chat room who are sharing some of their examples here maggie who's joining from ireland we've got a huge global audience right now, people tuning in from around the world, maggie says. I'm a photographer and an artist. I'm also dipping my toe into the surface pattern design world. I have so many photographs, drawings and illustrations that I would love to pull together into a presentable form in a portfolio and neelam who's joining from india hello, neelam, who says I would like a portfolio to reflect me and establish my brand really help me stand out and I just started my career as a surface pattern designer. So thank you for tuning in and and all of you out there who in the chat room, please let us know where you're joining from, and throughout the day we'll be relying on you to share your comments, your examples and hear your story. So if you haven't done so yet, click that chat icon to the right of the video window jump in there. Vanessa is hanging out in the chat room with you, so if you have any questions about how creative live works or how the broadcast goes, go ahead and ask vanessa, and she'll help you out great, lots of surface pattern signers, uh, exciting.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials
Bonus Materials
Ratings and Reviews
user-d55306
Bonnie, I want to give a super big Thank You! You have helped change my life. I was recently laid off from my full time job. Due to your courses, I have dedicated my time to continue designing. You have helped my heart come out on the pages. Thank you sooooo much! :) thankful & very happy, Dawn Stratchko https://www.behance.net/dawnstrat5b137
KarenEm
I thought this class was engaging and informative. Bonnie Christine has such a natural way of presenting the information and never seems to lose her concentration. I really wanted to learn more about how to put together a professional but handmade portfolio and that is what you get. Thanks for the great class!
a Creativelive Student
Absolutely loved this course! I learned so much and feel confident now on how to present my company in a consistent and professional way.