Lab 02: Tailored and client specific PDF portfolios

Why (and how) I'm still doing Portfolio PDFs in 2022

I’m very particular of the work I show on my website, but regularly I get asked by clients for a full body of work for a pitch, a specific project or for them to keep for future consideration.

And I keep a few, updated ones on Dropbox for myself.

1st to quickly send a much more streamlined portfolio to the agency or directly to the client and 2nd for my agent to have access when I’m on the road and the occasional last minute pitch-time starts before I can reach any kind of wifi-connection.

This way I can keep my website clean while only showing a carefully curated selection of darling work over the years and still being directly able to show the work that didn’t make it to the website in a well designed and logical manner.

I firmly believe that you should only show the work that represents you the best on your website, but from time to time there is this still exciting but less glamorous or well payed job that you still want to take on and you quickly need to show your ability to fully immerse into the needs of the assignment.

Here are a few examples of PDF portfolios I keep and update regularly:

• A general Overview of my work, similar to my website, for meetings.

• Complete Advertising portfolio

• Studio Work (in Progress)

• Corporate & Commercial

• Editorial Portrait & Reportage

• Sports & Outdoor

• Food & Hospitality

You can find my current Outdoor & Sports portfolio as an example here.

If you want to dive deeper into the design process or if you want to see how the layout was done, here’s an InDesign 2022 package for you to download:

https://www.dropbox.com/t/ynScwNe9W4rN9V0Y

Please note: the link will be up there for 3 months and should be used for educational purposes only (write me an email after 3 months!).

I’ve replaced all the licensed fonts (Suisse by Swiss Typefaces and Gravitica Mono by Supply of Fonts) with free fonts to avoid copyright issues. The template is based on a treatment layout i did a while ago, thus the quite unusual aspect ratio. For the next version I’m surely gonna choose a more traditional aspect ration of 3:2 instead of 16:9.

WHY PDF NOT PIXIESET, PICDROP, DROPBOX FOLDER ETC?

I’m coming from a design background, so naturally I’ve got a big kink for well designed layouts, and I believe that a beautiful layout can compress the message you want to send to the agency or client and helps to clearly convey the direction you are heading. A PDF portfolio, especially tailored to a specific inquiry, shows the dedication you are putting into your craft and appreciation to your own work in general.

And it’s easy to carry a set of PDFs on an iPad as a standalone portfolio for physical meetings or as a companion to your print portfolio.