“Where the f*** is Matt Lauer at? Somebody get Katie Couric in here” – Chance the Rapper

With Chicago surpassing New York as the murder capital of the U.S. in 2012, the windy city could use a gust of change.

But could hip-hop be what Rahm Emanuel, city mayor, is looking for?

Rapper and actor Common was visiting his hometown on Saturday when he was asked about the recent attack at a Chicago park that left 13 wounded, including a 3 year old. “It makes me think I got to do more; we got to do more,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Chicago’s murder count for the year is at 305, down considerably from 389 at this time in 2012. Chicago has always been a hot spot for up and coming hip-hop artists, and the music inevitably has an impact on the city’s culture. Some critics have proposed that the music is part of the problem, particularly the violent lyrics of young rappers like eighteen year old Chief Keef, who drew criticism when a video was posted of him on Pitchfork freestyling at a gun range last year.

But Common sees Keef and others as a potential solution to the problem. He is proposing to hold a “peace summit” with young rappers like Keef in hopes of ending violence in the city. 

It’s a nice thought, but it’s not very likely that the young man dubbed “the prince of violent Chicago rap” is going to change… 

Luckily there are others who may be willing to step up to the plate. Chance the Rapper, another up and coming artist with a lot of MTV buzz, made the plea for less violence in his breakout mixtape Acid Rap.

“Everybody’s dying in the summer/So pray to God for a little more spring.”

Common’s efforts will likely not show an immediate impact on gun violence in Chicago. Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco have been drawing attention to city violence over the past decade, even though the city has seen little decline in the murder rate. 

Still voices like his are welcome. The power of hip-hop to change the culture may be uncertain, but at least music can draw attention to local issues that are often ignored by mainstream media.

What do you think? Can hip-hop heal Chicago?… or is it part of the problem?

More cleverness by Nikita Vasilyev. The blue glow outline that surrounds focusable elements when they are in their :focus state "flies" (you have to see it) to the next focusable element. So when you tab around, it is very clear where the focus has moved to.

I think it's a light enough effect that the cognitive gains are worth the animation. No feedback yet from anyone visually impaired. It would be great to know if this is helpful to them.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

Focus transition is a post from CSS-Tricks

Security expert Linda McCarthy has written a 48-page book, Digital Drama: Staying Safe While Being Social Online, aimed teens and their families on how to manage online behavior to enhance safety, security and privacy. McCarthy is an author and computer security consultant with more than twenty years of industry experience in educating families, security auditing, consulting, training, research and development, and leading high-performing teams.

Click to access

In support of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Microsoft has provided support to allow her to offer free downloads of Digital Drama from Amazon in both English and Spanish. The free offer is only available this week, from today through 3:00am (EDT) Saturday, September 28.

Kim Sanchez, who heads Microsoft’s Online Safety – Trustworthy Computing Communications efforts, interviewed McCarthy last week about her new book and it’s goals. “Digital Drama has something for everyone.”, McCarty said about who she write the book for. “Parents can read it and get ideas about how to talk with their kids about online safety. Even if you don’t have kids, you’ll find guidance that will help you, a family member, or a friend. So download the ebook and share it with everyone you know.”

Here’s how the book is described on McCarthy’s site:

Every day, millions of teens log on and make decisions that can compromise their safety, security, privacy, and future. If you are like most teens, you are already using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and have your smartphone super-glued to your hand. You tag your friends in photos, share your location and thoughts with friends, and post jokes online that later may be misunderstood. At the same time, you might not realize how that information can affect your reputation and safety, both online and offline. We’ve all heard the horror stories of stolen identities, cyber stalking, pedophiles on the Internet, and lost job, school, and personal opportunities. All teens need to learn how to protect themselves against malware, social networking scams, and cyberbullies. This book helps you learn crucial skills:

• Deal with cyberbullies
• Learn key social networking skills
• Protect your privacy
• Create a positive online reputation
• Protect yourself from phishing and malware scams

Microsoft (@Safer_Online) will hold an online Twitter chat at 3:00pm (EDT) on September 25 with Linda McCarthy (@ddramabook) and other online safety experts about how her ebook can help people talk with kids about digital safety. Use #ChatSTC to ask questions or join the conversation.

Meet Samantha, she is an Anthropology and a INDS major. 

The focus of her research will be to preserve a part of Baltimore's history by documenting the memories of those living in Charm city. By investigating the many facets of Baltimore's identity (both positive and negative) through the stories of real people, she will fill a void in the publics perception of this city.

How did you find your mentor for year research project?
I met Professor Sarah Chard after taking her Anthropological Research Methods course last semester. I loved her passion and commitment to the field and thought she’d make an excellent mentor. To top it off, she teaches the Urban Anthropology course at UMBC-- it was as if we were meant to work together!

I’m a local titleholder in the Miss America Organization! As a titleholder I serve as a goodwill ambassador for the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and a representative for the Miss Maryland Scholarship Organization. I frequently travel the state to perform my talent, speak at community events, and raise money for local charities.

Read her abstract here...

Happiness is so interesting, because we all have different ideas about what it is and how to get it. It’s also no surprise that it’s the Nr.1 value for Buffer’s culture, if you see our slidedeck about it. So naturally we are obsessed with it.

I would love to be happier, as I’m sure most people would, so I thought it would be interesting to find some ways to become a happier person that are actually backed up by science. Here are ten of the best ones I found.

Read More...

The aim of republishing the original article by Yoav is to raise awareness and support the discussion about solutions for responsive images. We look forward to your opinions and thoughts in the comments section! – Ed.

It’s been a year since I last wrote about it, but the dream of a “magical” image format that will solve world hunger and/or the responsive images problem (whichever comes first) lives on. A few weeks back, I started wondering if such an image format could be used to solve both the art direction and resolution-switching use cases.

I had a few ideas on how this could be done, so I created a prototype to prove its feasibility. The prototype is now available, ready to be tinkered with. In this post, I’ll explain what this prototype does, what it cannot do, how it works, and its advantages and disadvantages relative to markup solutions. I’ll also try to de-unicorn the concept of a responsive-image format and make it more tangible and less magical.

“Got Something Against Markup Solutions?”

No, I don’t! Honestly! Some of my best friends are markup solutions.

I’ve been participating in the Responsive Images Community Group for a while now, prototyping, promoting and presenting markup solutions. Current markup solutions (picture and srcset) are great and can cover all of the important use cases for responsive images. And if it was up to me, I’d vote to start shipping both picture and srcset (i.e. its resolution-switching version) in all browsers tomorrow.

But the overall markup-based solution has some flaws. Here’s some of the criticism I’ve been hearing for the last year or so when talking about markup solutions for responsive images.

Too Verbose

Markup solution are, by definition, verbose because they must enumerate all of the various resources. When art direction is involved, they must also list the breakpoints, which add to that verbosity.

Mixing Presentation and Content

A markup solution that is art direction-oriented needs to keep layout breakpoints in the markup. This mixes presentation and content and means that any layout changes would force changes to the markup.

Constructive discussions have taken place on how this can be resolved — particularly by bringing back the media query definitions into CSS — but it’s not certain when any of this will be defined and implemented.

Define Viewport-Based Breakpoints

This one is proposed often by developers. For performance reasons, markup-based solutions are based on viewport size, rather than on image dimensions. Because the layout dimensions of images are not yet known to the browser by the time it starts fetching images, it cannot rely on them to decide which resources to fetch.

This means that developers will need to store some sort of table of viewports and dimensions on the server side, or maintain one in their head, in order to create images that are ideally sized for certain viewport dimensions and layouts.

While the addition of a build step could resolve this issue in many cases, it can get complicated in cases where a single component is used over multiple pages, with varying dimensions on each.

Results in Excessive Downloading in Some Cases

OK, this one I hear mostly in my head (and from other Web performance freaks on occasion).

From a performance perspective, any solution that’s based on separate resources for different screen sizes and dimensions will require the entire images to be redownloaded if the screen size or dimensions change to a higher resolution. Because most of that image data will very likely already be in the browser’s memory or cache, having to redownload everything from scratch would be sad.

All of the above makes me wonder (again) how wonderful life would be if we had a solution based on a file format that addresses these issues.

Why Would A File Format Be Better?

A solution based on a file format would do better for the following reasons:

• The burden is put on the image encoder. The markup would remain identical to what it is today: a single tag with a single resource.
• Automatically converting websites to such a responsive-image solution might be easier because the automation layer would focus only on the images themselves, rather than on the page’s markup and layout.
• Changes to image layout (as a result of changes to the viewport’s dimensions) could be handled by downloading only the difference between current image and the higher-resolution one, without having to redownload the data that the browser already has in memory.
• Web developers would not need to maintain multiple versions of each image resource, although they would have to keep a non-responsive version of the image for the purpose of content negotiation.

This is my attempt at a simpler solution based on file format that would relieve Web developers of much grunt work and would avoid useless image data from having to be downloaded (even when conditions change), while keeping preloaders working.

Why Not Progressive JPEG?

Progressive JPEG could serve this role for the resolution-switching case, but it’s extremely rigid. It comes with strict limits on the lowest image quality and, from what I’ve seen, is often too data-heavy. Also, the minimal difference between resolutions is limited and doesn’t give enough control to encoders that want to do better. Furthermore, progressive JPEG cannot handle art direction at all.

What Would It Look Like?

We’re talking about a responsive image container, containing internal layers that could be WebP or JPEG-XR or any future format. It uses resizing and cropping operations to cover both the resolution-switching and the art direction use cases.

The decoder (i.e. the browser) would then be able to download just the number of layers it needs (and their bytes) in order to show a certain image. Each layer would enhance the layer before it, giving the decoder the data it needs to show it properly at a higher resolution.

How Does It Work?

1. The encoder takes the original image, along with a description of the required output resolutions and, optionally, directives on art direction.
2. It then outputs one layer per resolution that the final image should be perfectly rendered in.
3. Each layer represents the difference in image data between the previous layer (when “stretched” on the current layer’s canvas) and the current layer’s “original” image. This way, the decoder can construct the layers one by one, each time using the previous layer to recreate the current one, creating a higher resolution image as it goes.

Support for resolution-switching is obvious in this case, but art direction could also be supported by positioning the previous layer on the current one and being able to give it certain dimensions. Let’s look at some examples.

Art Direction

Here’s a photo that is often used in discussions about the art direction use case:

Let’s see what the smallest layer would look like:

That’s just a cropped version of the original. Nothing special.

Now, one layer above that:

You can see that pixels that don’t appear in the previous layer are shown as normal, while pixels that do appear there contain only the difference between them and the equivalent ones in the previous layer.

And here’s the third, final layer:

Resolution-Switching

A high-resolution photo of a fruit:

Here is the first layer, showing a significantly downsized version:

The second layer shows the difference between a medium-sized version and the
“stretched” previous layer:

The third layer shows the difference between the original and the “stretched” previous layer:

If you’re interested in more detail, you can go to the repository. More detail on the container’s structure is also there.

“But I Need More From Art Direction”

I’ve seen cases where rotation and image repositioning are required for art direction, usually in order to add a logo at different locations around the image itself, depending on the viewport’s dimensions.

This use case is probably better served by CSS. CSS transforms can handle rotation, while CSS positioning, along with media-specific background images, could probably handle the rest.

Note: If your art direction is special and can’t be handled by either one of these, I’d love to hear about it.

How Is It Fetched?

This is where things get tricky. A special fetching mechanism must be created to fetch this type of image. I can’t say that I have figured that part out, but here’s my rough idea on how it could work.

My proposed mechanism relies on HTTP ranges, similar to the fetching mechanisms of the <video> element, when seeks are involved.

More specifically:

• Resources that should be fetched progressively should be flagged as such. One possibility is to add a progressive attribute to the element that describes the resource.
• Once the browser detects an image resource with a progressive attribute on it, it picks the initial requested range for that resource. The initial range request could be:
  • a relatively small fixed range for all images (like 8 KB);
  • specified by the author (for example, as a value of the progressive attribute);
  • some heuristic;
  • based on a manifest (which we’ll get to later).
• The browser can fetch this initial range at the same time that it requests the entire resource today, or even sooner, because the chances of starving critical path resources (including CSS and JavaScript) are slimmer once the payloads are of a known size.
• Once the browser has downloaded the image’s initial range, it has the file’s offset table box, which links byte offset to resolution. This means that once the browser has calculated the page’s layout, it will know exactly which byte range it needs in order to display the image correctly.
• Assuming that the browser sees fit, it could heuristically fetch follow-up layers (i.e. of higher resolutions) even before it knows for certain that they are needed.
• Once the browser has the page’s layout, it can complete fetching all of the required image layers.

The mechanism above will increase the number of HTTP requests, which in an HTTP/1.1 world would introduce some delay in many cases.

This mechanism may be optimized by defining a manifest that describes the byte ranges of the image resources to the browser. The idea of adding a manifest was proposed by Cyril Concolato at the W3C’s Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee meetings week last year, and it makes a lot of sense, borrowing from our collective experience with video streaming. It enables browsers to avoid fetching an arbitrary initial range (at least once the manifest is downloaded itself).

Adding a manifest will prevent these extra requests for everything requested after the layout, and it might help to prevent them (using heuristics) even before the layout.

Creating a manifest could be easily delegated either to development tools or to the server-side layer, so that developers don’t have to manually deal with these image-specific details.

“Couldn’t We Simply Reset the Connection?”

In theory, we could address this by fetching the entire image, and then reset the connection once the browser has all the necessary data, but that would most likely introduce serious performance issues.

Here are the problems with reseting a TCP connection during a browsing session:

• It terminates an already connected, warmed-up TCP connection, whose set-up had a significant performance cost and which could have been reused for future resources.
• It sends at least a round-trip time’s worth of data down the pipe, the time it takes for the browser’s reset to reach the server. That data is never read by the browser, which means wasted bandwidth and slower loading times.

Downsides To This Approach

There are a few downsides to this approach:

• It involves touching and modifying many pieces of the browser stack, which means that standardization and implementation could be painful and take a while.
• The monochrome and print use case cannot be addressed by this type of a solution.
• The decoding algorithm involves per-layer upscaling, which could be processing-heavy. Therefore, decoding performance could be an issue. Moving this to the GPU might help, but I don’t know that area well enough to judge. If you have an opinion on the subject, I’d appreciate your comments.
• Introducing a new file format is a long process. As we have seen with the introduction of previous image formats, the lack of a client-side mechanism makes this a painful process for Web developers. Because new file formats start out being supported in some browsers but not others, a server-side mechanism must be used (hopefully based on the Accept header, rather than on the User-Agent header). I’m hoping that this new file format’s simplicity and reliance on other file formats to do the heavy lifting help here, but I’m not sure they would.
• As discussed, it would likely increase the number of requests, and could introduce some delay in HTTP/1.1.
• This solution cannot address the need for “pixel-perfect” images, which is mainly needed to improve decoding speed. Even if it did, it’s not certain that decoding speed would benefit from it.
• Relying on HTTP ranges for the fetching mechanism could result in some problem with intermediate cache servers, which don’t support it.

So, Should We Dump Markup-Based Solutions?

Not at all. This is a prototype, showing how most of the responsive-image use cases would have been solved by such a container.

Reaching consensus on this solution, defining it in detail and implementing it in an interoperable way could be a long process. The performance implications on HTTP/1.1 websites and decoding speed still need to be explored.

I believe this might be a way to simplify responsive images in the future, but I don’t think we should wait for the ideal solution.

To Sum Up

If you’ve just skipped to here, that’s OK. This is a long post.

To sum it up, I’ve demonstrated (along with a prototype) how a responsive-image format could work and how it could resolve most responsive-image use cases. I also went into some detail about which other bits would have to be added to the solution in order to make it a viable solution.

I consider this to be a long-term solution because some key issues need to be addressed before it can be made practical. In my opinion, the main issue is decoding performance, with the impact of downloading performance on HTTP/1.1 being a close second.

Continuing to explore this option is worthwhile, but let’s not wait for it. Responsive images need an in-browser, real-life solution two years ago today, not two years from now.

(al, ea, il)

© Yoav Weiss for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

I’ve traveled to many art schools, being asked to review senior student portfolios, and speak on professional practices in the design business, and the one thing I always notice is the lack of direction in student portfolios.

Even with professionals, there is often no idea what, or even how to present work to a client.

Without senior level courses on portfolio preparation, or classes taught by those who have been out of the field too long to know current trends, it is confusing, and students are left with their own thoughts on what a client wants to see.

The biggest misconception is you need printed, or live web pieces to show a client. To this end, as many professionals complain, students will do free, or lower paying work just to garner a few “professional” samples to say, “SEE! Someone has actually hired me.” 

If you think about this practice, what students are actually doing is chipping away at their own future and the industry itself. By doing this underpaying work, they are just teaching clients that they can get work for little or nothing.

Contests, and crowdsourcing are the equivalent to slave labor to some designers (others see a virtue for those just beginning). Essentially, you are doing free work, or speculative work at its best, to which the source usually owns all rights, in the hope for an iPod or pat on the back.

Most professionals will suggest doing pro bono work for charity, but always retain total creative control as the fee, or you will be taking art direction from an entire board of directors, who are volunteers looking for some kind of power to exert. 

With that important issue and hot topic out of the way, if you don’t have “professional pieces” to show, then how do you get work?

“Professional” is not in the printed or digital piece; it is in your demeanor and work ethic. Great work is not a process of design-by-committee but of your thought process and how you create a message from nothing. How do you reach the end user, or consumer, and how effective is your communicated, visual message?

A new hire at a large corporation at which I worked, showed me his student portfolio. Not one piece of published work, but he was incredible. There were two-dozen student projects and each one was bright, engaging and drew me in. I wanted to see more only because he was so talented. I knew he had the thought process to do great things and the technical savvy to create the finished project. 

Why is it my “book?”

Do you have one of those black, vinyl portfolio cases with two handles and black filler pages and acetate covers? That’s been the standard case for a thousand years. Skip the vinyl and go for leather, metal, plastic or anything that has a little pizzaz, but is business-like.

Make it easy to lift, get through and remember, that using small printed samples pasted on the black pages, is not a “book” (see more tips on portfolio accessibility from Gary’s tips, in the next section). Samples posted in such a way are random and won’t tell a story about you, your thinking process and just looks sloppy. Fill the page! Design a BOOK! It’s a book on your career, and a huge part of your brand. Get the best quality prints you can if you’re filling a sleeved portfolio case, or creating your own book. Sloppy designers have sloppy books, both digital and print.

The design images are the most important as many people will look through your book at a quick pace. Having copy about your thought process may not be read, but for those who are interested in that, better to have it there and its presence won’t take away from the focus images.

Although it’s not editable — people miss typos and it will cost a good amount of money (less these days due to print-on-demand) — you might want to consider creating a printed book, not only to show your work, but as a leave behind piece (make it coffee table book sized).

Any unused books can be given to family for birthdays. “A signed book about you?” they will bubble with delight.

Expert advice

I asked several friends in the position of hiring designers and illustrators what they prefer to see in a portfolio. My friend Alex, who is the Design Director for Disney Publishing, said: 

In brief, I look for diversification. I like to see that someone can work with innovative type treatments, as well as being able to make bulleted lists appealing. They should show an ability to frame up large amounts information in a clean, and easy to follow layout, as well as working with only an image, and headline. Most importantly, they should work with a sense of information architecture… It doesn’t matter if something looks good if it doesn’t visually convey the message, or the needs of the project. 

There is a difference between just making it pretty, and making it work. I’ve known too many designers more interested in the look than in the message. Both need to work in tandem. Type has to be readable, colors need to excite, or calm, or persuade, and the message must hit the consumer fast, and hard. 

Another friend, Gary, who was the head of Cartoon Network Creative Services, had a bullet pointed list: 

• Customize it for the job you are applying for. If you are trying to get a design, or illustration job at a specific company, then focus on showing work that relates to the type of things that the company specializes in. Do research on the company that you are interviewing with. Know what they do, and who their clients are. 
• Only show your very best work. Better to have fewer great pieces than many average pieces of work. I know it’s tempting to show a lot of stuff in order to show off your versatility, but if the work is mediocre, it won’t do you any good. 
• Be able the talk through your thought process for each example you have in your portfolio. Be ready to talk about why you made the design, and creative choices that you did. But also, in the interview, read your interviewer, he or she may not want to hear the full story about every single piece. 
• If you are doing a non-digital portfolio, make it easily accessible. I’ve had a lot of designers show me portfolio packages that were way too complicated. The designer thought they were being very clever with their kit designs, but they were frustrating because the portfolios were too hard to open, or too hard to look through.
• In the past several years, more and more people just show up with their portfolio on their laptops, on a thumb drive, or direct their interviewer to a website. That’s fine, just make sure it all works, and it is tailored to that company. Also, it’s never a bad idea to have some hard copies of some of your work. 

Bhaskar, a connection of mine in India is a Marketing Strategist, and he adds: 

If I were to hire an unknown designer I would look for back-stories to the logo designs. Typically every client has some expectations from their logos, which are outlined in the creative briefs, or answered in formatted questionnaires. 

How did the final logo fulfill those expectations? What were the alternatives, and why they were junked? What was the reaction to the logo from the client’s customers? You answer these questions, and you have me as your next customer. 

All of these are extremely important points from top professionals. As I mentioned, the thought process, and even, as Bhaskar points out, the process with a client can show not only your own thoughts, but also how you interpret the client’s thoughts. 

Digital vs. printed portfolio 

Years ago, I was one of the first people to have a digital portfolio. A simple application that showed a slide show of work and all one had to do was double-click an icon. Many clients were confused by the action of “double-clicking”.

As Gary pointed out, “make sure it all works”. I once received a bug-laden, digital portfolio, which would not shut down. I had to call the company IT department to rip it from my computer.  

I’ve made the mistake of showing up empty-handed at a client, expecting them to have wifi for my laptop or a computer at which they could view my online portfolio. Sometimes their internet is down and then what do you do? I have always heard, from many professionals, to have a back up printed portfolio, just in case. 

My friend Joshua, a Director of Creative Development, shows a portfolio of stages of web site design so the client can see the thought process through the different stages of development. Although the web is digital, it’s interesting his portfolio is basically printed. URLs can be input by the client to see the live sites, but Josh relies on the thought process to sell his company’s work. 

When it comes to having a portfolio on a web site, Cheryl, a recruiter I know, imparts: 

As a design recruiter for over 22 years, I know what I’m looking for in a good portfolio, and in today’s electronic world, the best presentation is to have your own URL, or website that loads quickly, and easily without too much crap that wastes time. You want your work to be seen clearly, be organized, be easy to navigate, each piece of work can be enlarged, and have some description of what the work, and your role was in producing it. You should have a downloadable PDF resume. 

If you choose to do it on a blog make sure it’s a professional blog geared to your portfolio only. Get rid of all personal stuff, for that is detrimental to your cause in finding a job. Do have a back up physical portfolio that includes the real work. You never know when you might be asked to show it. 

Show your best work only, and arrange it into categories if you have categories, and are not a specialist in something. I hope some of this helps. 

If you are unable to make your own website, there are some excellent professional portfolio sites around that you can use for a nominal fee. This is also acceptable. 

Once again… have a back up portfolio! 

Eric, an Online Media Manager, speaks of the importance of both: 

The preference for print, digital, or mixed portfolio is likely to depend on the need, or expected need of the position. Unless we are hiring solely a web graphic designer, or print graphic designer, it would be nice to see both types of work represented in their final format. That way you can see a true example of the work. I don’t want to see a printout of a webpage (which can’t simulate drop-downs, animations, rollovers, load speed or click events), and I would rather see the result of the actual stock, and ink you chose for your business card than an image on a laptop. 

In most cases that means bringing in a portfolio of several print pieces, and a laptop with the local copy of a website portfolio examples in case of Internet connection issues. 

Having concise stories behind the original goals, and ongoing client communications would be nice as well, to see how the designer handled the objective, deadlines, and feedback.

Are you confused enough yet? 

You shouldn’t be. All of these opinions point to the same conclusion — it’s the thought process you have as a designer that will make you shine in the eyes of a client. Every decision that YOU make shows your abilities.

Recently, my friend Jen, a designer from Hallmark Cards, who moved from Hungary to Sweden contacted me to ask how she could create a new portfolio of designs, as all of her work was sitting in an attic in Hungary. Although she is an American, she wanted to appeal to the local businesses. I suggested she take ten printed ads from local businesses, and redesign them, then show both in her portfolio on facing pages.

“It will show your thought process, and might impress the client.” The key, of course, is not to show the client THEIR ad, as they might take offense you think they made the wrong choice, or THEIR decisions were not correct. I had done the same thing with illustration students in a class I taught where I instructed them to take a printed page, and insert their own illustration to show how they would handle the assignment, and show them side-by-side.

As a young illustrator/designer, I would buy the Sunday New York Times, redo the editorial page illustration, make a copy on the original page, and fax it to the art director of the editorial section Sunday night. I wanted to show her I was fast, and could have the thought process to create a great solution. After four or five weeks, I was hired to do an illustration for the editorial page. She turned out to be a raving lunatic who preferred to hire her husband to do the illustrations, and I ended up running from her office in fear for my life, but you get my point about showing the process.

When I started in web design, I created sites based on my hobbies, and interests, and put them on free hosting servers like Angelfire, and Geocities. It gave me clickable portfolio samples, and, at that time, there were only 136 sites on the web, and 37 of them were mine!

Will cheap or free work provide great samples? 

My friend Josh, who I previously mentioned is a smart guy, once said, “if you get a $200 job, make it look like a $2,000 job, and by showing that to clients, you will get a $2,000 assignment!” 

Very true, and not to downplay Josh’s words of wisdom, but when you do a job for free, or little money, chances are the client does not respect you, and will step all over your designs, and the final product will not be YOUR thought process, or talent.  

My only suggestion, to get the best work out of these cheap jobs, is to preface it with the next time, you’re offered a project for which you cannot charge, demand full creative control. That will chase away the troublesome megalomaniacs.

I did this in the beginning of my career, and had to walk away from clients who had, “just a few” changes. I didn’t get the $25, or $50 (or free “exposure,” or “work later on”) but I did have the final piece to show to other clients. It was mine — my thoughts, my talent, and that is one of the reasons for my successful career. I wouldn’t do it any differently if I could… except for staying away from the crazy lady at the Times, but that’s another article completely!

What kind of portfolio do you have? Did the advice of the experts surprise you? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, interview image via Shutterstock.

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