Portfolio Surgery - Andy Lodge

Today I had a portfolio surgery with Andy Lodge from Brahm. I got some really useful advice from him regarding specific briefs and the portfolio over all. Some of the things he said had been mentioned yesterday as well and so they are definite considerations to make.

For the scuba brief Andy suggested that it would transfer really well across to digital media, so that people could share their experiences over forums and it could become interactive. I think this is definitely something that I need to show, since it was something I really wanted to do. Especially developing it into an iphone format so that it could be linked with gps and suggest dive sites near the location.

In regards to the EE website he liked the deep green used and he said it was a good layout however he suggested using an accent colour to make it feel more contemporary. He explained that often they will have a neutral colour palette and then an accent colour palette that might be use for roll overs etc. This just gives it a bit more life and plays into the sort of accents that horse jumps often have.

He also suggested that I go back to the icons for NHM and tweak details so that they are more consistent. So that line weights are all the same and the icons for the red zone are like silhouettes like the others. For future reference he said that I should begin with the most complicated and the easiest and design for those and from that set rules, by testing the maximum size and the minimum size they need to work at.

For the newsletter brief he thought it would have been better to challenge how to include the college logo since it is a problem that no-one really likes it, and to think of a way that the design nods towards the identity of the college. This could perhaps be that the masthead uses the mosaic/pixelated design direction and that the tiles then filter through into the main copy.

If I am to keep it as just one page then I need to make it more of a story.

He also suggested that I juggle the order round a bit so that the same skills aren't displayed immediately after each other, and to break up the nature of the work a bit more.

When I asked about any suggestions for studios to look at he suggested that I look at design studios who deal with quite tight type and mentioned a few which I will look at.

As a general piece of advice he suggested I thought about another way of presenting the portfolio whether it was in a box or I bound it, just to make it more considered and more professional.