How to Organize a Portfolio

(Created by Nelson Education)

What you will find in this Section

The Career Center: Creating a Portfolio How to Organize a Portfolio section offers some suggestions about how to organize your portfolio to provide for a cohesive conceptual framework.

How to Organize a Portfolio

You have collected the pieces you would like to include in your portfolio. You have sorted through your collection and selected your best work. You have made entry cards for each piece to provide a good introduction for each sample. And you are ready to place your work, introduction page, entry cards, section dividers, and give-aways into your new leather portfolio.

Where do you start?

Well, first start by conceptualizing how you want to present your work. This means that while you may want to include a marked up piece of editing in your portfolio to show that you do posses strong editing skills, you don't want to market yourself as an editor - since you have set your sights on working as a Web designer. So, do you put that piece of marked up editing in the front of your portfolio? Probably not.

Organize your portfolio to illustrate what your interests are. If you DO want to be an editor, fill the first part of your portfolio with marked up editing pages, recommendations letters of past employers where you worked as an editor, your STC chapter editing award, and anything else that screams, "I am the best editor in the universe! You must hire me, and you can see that by looking at all of my editing work!"

That doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't include that document design project that you completed for a course, since it shows your skill with print design. And that Website you created shows your keen sense of color and layout. Print out a few pages of that and put it in there, too. But put it in the back, if that is where you think it should be.

So, it all depends on how you want to sell yourself.

Plus, the key to portfolios is neat and tidy sections. Clearly label and introduce each section and each piece. Make use of page dividers and tabs. Just think about how you can best get through the portfolio quickly. If the interviewer can see clearly marked sections, he or she might say, "Oh, there is a sample of graphic design, so it says on this tab. Let's take a look at that." If you didn't have those tabs, you would be thumbing through pages and pages of work that may or may not be desirable to the interviewer.

Think neat. Think clearly labeled. Think adequately introduced. Think about how you want to market yourself. Then organize your portfolio accordingly.

Also, have several people you trust look at your portfolio. Get as much feedback as possible. That will help you decide if you need to adjust the organizational structure of your portfolio.