Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:20
Right episode 106 We’re back and we’re back with a special guest. Rachel, how are you Rachel?
Rachele Mock 0:24
I am full of sushi.
Don Mock 0:26
Yes. It’s like a tradition. If anybody comes here to grab lunch next door the always delicious Wagaya Shout out. It’s like all right, let’s do a quick pod real quick while you’re here.
Rachele Mock 0:35
How many people do you think have gone to Wagaya? Since we’ve mentioned it on the pod?
Don Mock 0:40
Lots? I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re directly related to our unofficial sponsorship of
Rachele Mock 0:48
we are sponsoring them. They’re not sponsoring us
Don Mock 0:50
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Hey, man. It’s a delicious if you’re ever on West Midtown, you know, do yourself a favor and get yourself some delicious lunch over Wagaya, yeah. All right. Well, we’re back 106. What are we talking about Rach? What’s about to happen?
Rachele Mock 1:05
I think we’re going to talk about portfolios and not financial portfolios.
Don Mock 1:09
no, let’s talk about graphic design copywriter, art director portfolios, right portfolio reviews, putting together a portfolio What that means, how to structure a portfolio, that type of thing. Right? So Right. And this all came about because you had to just put together a portfolio for for a quick little review. Right? And haven’t done that in a little while?
Rachele Mock 1:33
No, So when I went to open my portfolio, the last time I updated it was 2012.
Don Mock 1:40
Wow, it’s been a while.
Rachele Mock 1:41
Yes. And so a client, potential client said, Send me your portfolio so I can look at it and we can start to dance.
Oh, wait, I haven’t done that in a while
so I went into my iCloud and started gathering projects from the last 11 years. Our son said to me yesterday in carpool he goes, Well, why don’t you just keep your portfolio up to date?
Don Mock 2:08
yeah. I mean, there’s good news, bad news. It’s like, Hey, I haven’t needed to do this. Because I haven’t needed to do this. I’ve got a great core set of clients. I’ve got a great referral network there’s trust involved there. I’ve talked at length on the pod about trust, you know, in terms of clients trusting us, right? So it’s like, yeah, it’s been a great run. I was like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, I need to show someone new outside the circle, something, you know, and it’s like, oh, man, I haven’t done that in a while, What a beating, you know, right. And then I think you suffer from the same affliction I have, which is, man, and my portfolio would be 386 pages, if you let me, you know What I mean? Like, I want to put every single thing in there, you know, like, look at how much work we did on this, or look at how awesome this is, or look at that, you know And then, you know, from the big stuff all the way down to the small stuff, you know, it’s like nobody needs to see that
Rachele Mock 2:56
And for my portfolio, I have three sides to it. So I do break it up, or I did break it up now. But I have my professional portfolio, which is work that I’ve done. I have What I call my academic portfolio. So that’s mostly grad school work. And then I have my students portfolio. So a portfolio of projects my students have done under my tutelage. So
Don Mock 3:22
That’s kind of cool.
Rachele Mock 3:22
Yeah. I mean, I need to go back and look, but man to not have put anything that I’ve done for the last 11 years in any kind of digital format is just crazy. I mean, it’s crazy. So I didn’t even know where to start. And then I think I was telling you at lunch, I was like, Well, the one that looks the best I completely forgot was even my client.
Don Mock 3:41
yeah. Hey, man, and that tends to happen. You’re like, oh, yeah, I did that. We joke here in the office, someone will be like, hey, yeah, send me some websites you’ve done. And it’s like, Oh, my God, And it’s like, What websites Do we do? Anybody know What we you know? And it’s like, Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was awesome.
Rachele Mock 3:58
And I’m grateful for the cloud, because you just opened it up, and they’re in alphabetical order was a lot of stuff. But then, you know, I mean, I have one, one client, I think I’ve been working for since like, 2010. And I mean, you have clients like this, too. But my project number is up to like, 169 with them.
Don Mock 4:18
Yeah.
Rachele Mock 4:19
Just like, What do I show?
Don Mock 4:22
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we yeah, we absolutely have clients where we’ve done, you know, 400 individual, right, you know, and each one of those job folders may have multiple jobs even within that. So, I mean, realistically, you’re looking at, you know, 1000s of individual touch points, things like that, right? Yeah, you can’t, it’s like, Oh, we’ve done everything for you for 10 years. Right. What do we show?
You know, and as far as
An you show the newer stuff
Rachele Mock 4:48
Yeah, you do, but there is there are some ways I’ve seen some other people’s portfolios. I mean, I had things in my portfolio that I gave today that were from 1997 um, You know, some really cool art direction things that I still want to show, you know, I have a blurb about that
Don Mock 5:05
timeless design.
Rachele Mock 5:07
Yeah, it’s a little bit timeless. I think also because the 90s are coming back in interesting forms of fashion.
Don Mock 5:15
Well everything’s on the 30 year cycle. Right. Isn’t that kind of the way the fashion works? I’m not really a fan of the fashion. We’ve talked about that on the podcast. I do subscribe to, you know, your mentor Maximos thoughts on that right in terms of being inherently destructive is kind of diametrically opposed to the concept of timeless design and great design should be timeless right? Now I’m very much putting much smarter people’s words into my mouth and you know, word salad in it. So that is not a direct quote by any stretch. Right? Right. But that general thoughts. Alright, so having just gone through all this have any any tips, any thoughts? Any, any anecdotes, any for like aspiring art directors or designers out there thinking about applying for jobs?
Rachele Mock 6:01
It just beamed in my mind really quickly, as I was thinking about, I was thinking, why don’t I have a process for when I finish up a project or, you know, give something to a printer? At my old studio, when you finished and went to build a job, you were to put like, five to six, high resolution JPEGs in the job folder and then you package it up and archive it. why am I not doing that? So So that’s number one. That’s a really good best practices if you’re working. Also, if you’re working for somebody else, you don’t know when you’re gonna get kicked out the door. So no, I’m serious, you know, so you make sure that you have, you know, email yourself a JPEG or a PDF of your final thing, if you’re allowed to obviously. make sure yeah, that you have it. Because you, you could say that you worked on such and such for five years, and then you were shown the door and you didn’t but I mean, going back to bare bones. We started portfolios when we were students. And then when I was teaching, I taught a portfolio class, which tended to be the last class before graduation. And that would not only cover your print and digital portfolio, but it also cover putting your resume or your CV together, and maybe a stationary system. I don’t know if people still do that. What do you do you think they do?
Don Mock 7:25
People still do some pretty god awful stationery system, and personal portfolio, you know, like, cover letters on the world’s worst designed, you know, Word doc, or, you know, somebody illustrator template, or whatever with, with their own personal logo, which I think says a lot about who you are, as a designer, if you decide to really put a personal mark with your initials, or or whatever the case, right? And so
Rachele Mock 7:55
well do they do it at like five and a half inches by five and a half?
Don Mock 7:59
I don’t know. It’s pretty, it runs the gamut. It’s pretty. I mean, we see all sorts of funny stuff here. So I mean, the thing I don’t understand why people still do, and I’m interrupting your story about portfolio is, you know, those little infographics have like little pie charts and little circle graphs, or bar graphs, whatever. It’s like, oh, I’m 89% proficient in Illustrator and Oh, only 50% bilingual and you know, the people put their resume into infographic charts. And it’s just like, dude, if you’re not 100%, efficient in Microsoft Office, you know, it’s like, why are you even putting that on there?
Rachele Mock 8:39
Well, I never wanted my students to write their GPA unless it’s over four.
Don Mock 8:47
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, if this is the best foot forward, and the best foot forward has a 65% creative cloud proficiencies. Like, right, you’re going right to the recycling bin. I hate to say it. That is, but so I don’t know. But yeah, you’re correct. I mean, when we were in school, and when you taught, it does seem like unfortunately, you kind of get to the end of your education, and then boom, all of a sudden, the portfolio class, and you got to, you got to jam everything together and work on your portfolio and work on your resume. And all of a sudden, it’s this mad dash scramble at the end, when your advice is sound you should be gathering as you go. Right.
Rachele Mock 9:27
So that I need to figure out a new system for myself and I was I was laid off from my first job, and they were literally waiting for me to package up the files to give to the printer. Unbeknownst to me at the time. Yeah, it was a major project we were working on for months and months. And for some reason, the HR person kept coming by and saying,
Don Mock 9:52
Hey, are you done yet?
Rachele Mock 9:53
Yeah. I heard you..t’s funny now I heard you had to deliver some files to the printer Today, you know, and then I handed it over on What big jazz drives or jazz discs or something. And then they called us into the conference room and let us go. But to my point, somehow I was able to get maybe I went back or somebody was nice it was a big project and I wanted samples of that. So also gathering samples from your clients, it’s important going back to so when you when you leave school with advertising, graphic design, copywriting any other form of art, you want to leave with a portfolio I’m sure mostly everything’s digital these days, no longer are we printing out these major pieces. But so What do you want to see from like, some junior designer, when they send you something to look at?
Don Mock 10:48
What do I want to see?
Rachele Mock 10:49
Yeah like if you were hiring somebody to come work here, What would you want to see in their portfolio?
Don Mock 10:55
Well, I would want to see a portfolio that’s reflective of the types of projects we do. Right. And that is one of the greatest pieces of advice I got many, many moons ago, 20 plus years ago, when I was out freelancing around right, because I’m kind of a tweener. I was tween, between sort of graphic design, hardcore, graphic design, and then art direction, and I remember a career director went like, Hey, dude, What What do you want to be like, What are you, you know? And I’m like, Well, Hey, What do you mean?
Rachele Mock 10:55
What do you want me to be?
Don Mock 10:57
Yeah, I need a job. You know? Yeah. So it was, you know, and I was like, Okay, that’s a great idea. Let me split my book in two halves, instead of having a commingled, right. So it was like, Hey, Here’s more art directional stuff, right, which is more big brand more conceptual thinking, more advertorial, right. And then Here’s good old fashioned, like, straight design, like, Here’s design stuff, right. And then I, you know, thankfully, I had the ability to sort of play in both worlds, right. But when I started teaching, and then when I started reviewing a lot of books that always stuck with me, right, which was a make sure that I don’t know how to say it outside of, you know, show something that’s reflective of the type of place you’re interviewing at, right. And so in today’s day and age I get, and I forward them along to you and to our oldest and somebody that whenever I get, like, you know, copy and paste emails that have the wrong name, and they’re the wrong company, name, the wrong this, and that, get it, you know, What I mean? Like, don’t type out that email ever, you know, but like to proof your own work, right? So if you’re sending a portfolio here, right, for a job here, it’s like, well, don’t send me an entire portfolio full of double page print ads for trucks. You know, it’s like, we don’t we don’t work on automotive. You don’t I mean, like, it needs to be reflective of What the, you know. So, I mean, that’s the biggest thing that sort of we look for here is, you know, hey, are they gonna be able to work on the types of things we work on? Right, especially with the speed that we need them at? So yeah, yeah. Does that make sense?
Rachele Mock 12:56
No, it absolutely does. And, but it is hard for a junior who still doesn’t necessarily know exactly. Maybe they know, these days more so than we did, but
Don Mock 13:04
Well, it’s the age old, how do you get experience without Experience Right,
Rachele Mock 13:09
you know, and I always thought I wanted to work in publication design. And I don’t know, that might have been extremely boring.
Don Mock 13:17
I think you know, it’s all about versatility. Unless you are a one trick pony. And I don’t mean one trick pony in a bad way, right? It’s like, Hey, I’m an illustrator. This is my illustration, style. This is What I do. If you want that style, come to me for it, right? Versus being a graphic designer. And it’s, Hey, I need to do logos over you know, I may need to do some logos, I may need to do some print collateral, I may need to do some interactive, I may need to edit a video, you know, versus Oh, no, no, no, no, I’m only a video editor that works on this one. But you know, so like, you can be specialized. There’s no harm in that. Right. So that’s kind of What we look for.
Rachele Mock 13:52
One thing I used to like to have my students do was to show the process for at least one project. What do you think about that? Somebody who’s hiring,
Don Mock 14:02
I’m not anti process. I mean, I think that it’s a visual medium. I love it when people can draw, right? So if there’s a way for you to display in your portfolio that you can illustrate that you can draw, you can thumbnail ideas out without naming any clients and naming any names. I mean, for the last week I’ve been working on in store rendering displays, right, that are very much all still sketches, right? It’s not, hey, Here’s the design of the backdrop. And Here’s the whole thing here, you know, it’s just, hey, Here’s how your product could be displayed. Here’s different conceptual ideas, and that is still very much literally just illustration, loosey goosey drawings, loose measurements, you know, you can display a lot of different ideas that way without the time and energy and effort of actually designing anything yet, right. It’s just hey, What if it’s this What if it’s us? What if you know, it’s all still very conceptual, right? So being able to draw I think it’s huge
Rachele Mock 14:55
and then to show What, What you thought of to like the 5 different concepts and how it whittled down to something else. And Here’s the final product. And I’ve always liked process. I’m sure I’ve said it on the podcast before, I love to see how people get to their end result. But I do think it’s very important for a young designer to be able to show how they get to something, because you don’t necessarily know who really did it
Don Mock 15:20
A lot of times the process is more interesting than the end result. I think that’s probably why we’re all addicted to time lapse photography on Instagram of someone painting a painting and you know, it’s like, who cares What the end result is Oh, wow, this is cool. This is how he did that, you know, that type of thing.
Rachele Mock 15:35
Okay so how many pieces should you have in a portfolio?
Don Mock 15:40
That’s a great question. I mean, if I get a PDF emailed to me, or if I get somebody that’s it’s, you know, 47 pages, it’s way too long.
Rachele Mock 15:49
Okay. Well, that was mine today.
Don Mock 15:50
Yeah, it’s too much. If you’re someone that’s presenting something to it, I’m not necessarily stressed about page counts, and whatnot. But if I’m on my own, I’m a little bit more selective about how much time I’m going to devote to What I’m about to commit to right. So I don’t know, I think, you know, 10 to 15 different projects is probably a good maximum for me, right? If you can’t show me who you are within 10 projects, yeah. You’re kind of doomed from the start. I don’t wanna be Negative Nelly on that. But like, you know, I should be able to see a packaging project, an advertising project, you know, a brand, you know, some interactive, you know, something along those lines, right, right, within 10 or 15 projects. Right.
Rachele Mock 16:32
That makes sense. How do you how do you organize it? Like, What is that first project that you show? I mean, ideally, all 10 projects are just as strong as the
Don Mock 16:44
Yeah, but we know that’s not the case of course.
Rachele Mock 16:45
So how do you grab them with that first project,
Don Mock 16:47
you always put your best projects first, right? Or What is most indicative of who you are as a designer, right? Or the type of projects that you want to do Is was should always go first, there’s no guarantee that anyone’s going to get to the end of your portfolio, right? Even if I’ve been in situations too where even if it’s like, oh, this is great. Oh, this is great. Oh, man, this one’s awesome, too. Okay, I don’t need to see any more. Right. I don’t need to see 567. I’ve already seen everything I need to see. So you know, yeah. Is there a method to the madness of how you order? You know, your display? Sure. There should be, you know, thought behind how you unveil your portfolio to people. Right. But you shouldn’t save your good stuff for the end. Like, it is kind of, you know,
Rachele Mock 17:33
should be solid, but it shouldn’t be the most
Don Mock 17:36
I mean, it’s kind of a joke. You do the good stuff at the beginning and the end and sandwiched in the middle the ones that are medium or whatever, basically just display capabilities. Like yes, I can do, I can do multi page design. This might not be the most amazing brochure on the face of the planet. But yes, I did a 100 Page catalog, for example. Okay, they’re proficient in that, but you don’t lead with that. You know?
Rachele Mock 17:59
Are there any.. So today I sent my portfolio as a PDF. I put it on Google Drive folder.
Don Mock 18:09
Yeah. Sometimes you just can’t compress it down enough.
Rachele Mock 18:11
No, so but I thought it would just be easier for her to do to like, google drive and wait but are there any, like portfolios sites out there that people send you to? Because I was definitely googling to see if there was an easier way or a way to update? I mean, yeah, there were things that were called
Don Mock 18:28
like the Behance. And those things,
Rachele Mock 18:30
I don’t know, I mean, that I’m wondering, maybe we’re dating ourselves, because we don’t totally know. But you know, things came up like you know, you this will help you build your portfolio. But I don’t really know What I was looking at. It was more like, just an overall layout. And they would take your thing. And maybe
Don Mock 18:47
I think if you are a creative individual going to an art school to get a job and a design firm, right, in an advertising agency, or even in a creative department on client side, right? I’m going over work for an auto manufacturer, but I’m on the design side, right, right. I think if you use Behance, and any of these template wicks, that’s a humongous strike against you. I feel like like, you absolutely need to have your own website. Now, if you use cargo collective as the coding back end of your website, fine, whatever, like, I’m not gonna knock you on that. But if you’re using some type of automated, easy, breezy portfolio, like, Ah, no, no, no, no, I need you to, like, put some energy and effort into your own craft, and build your own sites. I don’t need to know if you coded the whole thing. I mean, I’ll ask you, you know What I mean? Like, what’s your capabilities on that side of life and things like that, right. But I would say no shortcuts. For me. I mean, that’s, that’s, uh, I’d rather have someone email me a PDF, you know, then send me to a Behance .net site. Just kind of feels schlocky to me.
Rachele Mock 19:53
Right. So one thing I noticed on my portfolio today, I was reminded of is, my portfolio used to be Eight and a half by 11. Like, perfect bound book. So it looked like a magazine from the outside a beautiful way, a lot of white space, a lot of pages with the index and table of contents, my CV is on the first page and everything. But when I went to update it, I decided that it would be better to be 17 by 11 pages spread for her to look at but it was interesting, because I would have had like page numbers. I took those all off. I had little headers and footers. But to make it look and I had to sort of bring things to the middle because they were spaced out down the margin. Yeah. Because initially it was a print. And I would just do like a one off print. You know, if I was going to meet somebody, because they’ll probably the last time I interviewed or had to show somebody something was in person. Yeah.
Don Mock 20:53
So so the question is what
Rachele Mock 20:56
It’s not really a question. I’m just telling the difference between today I showed a digital portfolio. I mean, that would have been amazing. If you did not spend all that money on printing Back back, you know,
Don Mock 21:07
yeah. But well, I think there are some of the rules that we were taught that aren’t necessarily needed anymore, right? Like, I mean, I don’t know I can make an argument always have your contact information on every single page, because you never, even if it’s small, 50% Gray down in the corner. You know, it’s like you never know at What point someone’s going to stop, or even old school print something out to show something to somebody or whatever. You know What I mean, like, so, and you know, yeah, I mean, do you need page numbers anymore? I don’t know. You know, I mean, it’s whatever. You know, whatever looks the best. And it’s your portfolio. It’s your design, right? So yeah, I would say though, that you don’t need like, like, if we were thinking about it as a traditional book, you know, you’d have endpapers you’ve got all your blank pages. You got your two indexer I would say I don’t want any of that crap. Unnecessary, right. Yeah. Just give me to the meats. I also don’t want the whole soliloquy, the six paragraphs about how amazing you are and your backstory, you know, like, put that at the end. You know if you need to give me something it’s like, oh, I got through this. Oh, okay. This is interesting. Yeah, most of those things don’t do anything for you. They don’t help sell you. You know What I mean? So
Rachele Mock 22:23
I think you’re right. I think that’s actually really good advice. If if anyone is building a portfolio listening to this, because I think I think if you, you have the strength at the beginning, if somebody wants to continue to look at your things, just because now you’ve grabbed them, they will continue. And then maybe yeah, if you want a blurb about yourself or something, put it at the end, you know, or if you want to do a funny illustration of something. Something that I did today is I gave her just my quote unquote, professional portfolio. So I edited out a lot of stuff. And then, but in the Google Drive that I gave her, I did separate. My student work is another portfolio and my graduate work is another so hey, maybe she’s like, totally like, wow, I want to know more about her. You know, so so she could or she, she could just close it. I don’t know. I think digital really makes things cool and easy now, too.
Don Mock 23:17
Yeah, it’s it’s, but it also shortens the attention span and make things not necessarily as special. So to a certain extent, yes, the access is a lot easier, but it’s also a lot easier to reject.
Rachele Mock 23:29
Yeah, I mean, remember when we would carry a big box book or whatever it was, and people would touch the paper. Oh, how did you print this?
Don Mock 23:41
Good times. Good times. All right. Well, I think that’s enough for today. our portfolio review, how to build a portfolio, all that all that sort of stuff. Where can everybody find us Rach?
Rachele Mock 23:51
On the interwebs @mocktheagency
Don Mock 23:55
www.mocktheagency.com All right. Thanks, everybody. We’ll talk to you next time.
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