Fine-Tuning Your Portfolio Part 2 – Consistency
(Illustration by Melanie Matthews)
What follows is Part 2 of the Fine-Tuning Your Portfolio series, which offers suggestions on ways to maximize the effectiveness of your Illustration portfolio.
Part 1 of this series focused on the act of regularly revisiting your portfolio to remove anything that doesn’t help to make a powerful first impression, and that same approach can be applied to today’s concept as well.
Consistency
Ideally, your portfolio should present a clear picture of the type of work you create, your approach to communicating a message, and your overall aesthetic sensibilities.
This means that nothing should look out of place.
Here are some examples of things that might confuse an Art Director who is checking out the work in your portfolio:
- Your portfolio is a mixed bag of line art, digital paintings, and graphic design.
- Your style varies from cartoon to fine art to paper craft.
- Some of your work features bold bright colors and humorous scenes, while other pieces show a limited, muted color palette with dark, depressing themes.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t feel free to express and explore different avenues with your work, but it’s important to give an Art Director a clear sense of what they can expect if they hire you for their next project.
After all, your portfolio should be doing the work of selling the services that you provide, and in most cases it only has a few minutes, or even seconds, to accomplish that.
How To Show Consistency in Your Portfolio
Limit your work to a particular style, medium, or approach to color. Better yet, try to accomplish all three, and even try to find other unifying factors in your work. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of browsing the work in a portfolio to be thrown off by something that stuck out like a sore thumb. In addition to breaking the flow of the portfolio, it can also detract from the perceived professionalism of the artist.
It’s very similar to the way that a reader can be distracted by a spelling error or bad grammar (apologies to those who may have experienced that here at EFII).
As I mentioned before, less is more. If any part of your portfolio feels like it doesn’t belong, get rid of it and see if your body of work feels more like a cohesive unit rather than a random selection of work by different artists.
Consistency Doesn’t Have to Be Boring
The good news is that you can still show off your ability to tackle a variety of subjects or themes while still presenting some sense of cohesion in your portfolio. Let your creativity shine through while striving to find and highlight some unifying aspects of your work so that you will be more likely to communicate a clear message to those who view your portfolio.
Some Exceptions
Many of you may be asking questions like “What if I prefer to create in multiple styles?” or “What if I work as both an Illustrator and a Graphic Designer?”
In response to that, I would say that there are ways to present that type of portfolio without hurting the overall experience that a potential client has when viewing your work.
One of the best ways to do that is to segment your portfolio into multiple sections that clearly divide your work into categories that are individually consistent, but I’ll be exploring that concept in greater detail in Part 3.
How do you achieve consistency in your portfolio? Please share your thoughts in the comments section of this post. You can even customize your comment with a Gravatar.
You can now read Part 3 of the Fine-Tuning Your Portfolio series: Segmenting.
Special thanks to Melanie Matthews for providing the artwork for this post.
Related Posts:
- Fine-Tuning Your Portfolio Part 1 – “Skimming the Fat”
- Fine-Tuning Your Portfolio Part 3 – Segmenting
- 7 Elements of an Effective Portfolio Website
- An Effective Portfolio Website Part 2 – The Image Gallery
- Selecting Images for Your Portfolio
- 9 Free Online Portfolio Sites
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I love this post because this is the biggest problem for me, as I love to try everything and I want to be proud of everything that I make. The end result is a mixed bag full of nice work that doesn’t flow together at all.
Here’s some stuff that works for me.
The thing you have to really focus on is separating the work you like from the work that you want to do and be known for. That may sound kind of dumb, because obviously anything can (and should!) inspire you.
But for those who are struggling with identity, it’s important to visually declutter your mind and inspiration. By all means keep looking at awesome stuff. But don’t add it to your mental list of “things I have to learn how to do in order to be successful”. It doesn’t mean to stop experimenting; it just means stop adding the stigma to all the artwork you see.
I love all kinds of artwork; delicate watercolors, choppy acrylic collages, volatile ink scratches. I’d love to be able to do everything, but there’s not nearly enough years in a lifetime to be able to do EVERYTHING. So I realize that I have to buckle down and really decide; “Is this going to be a nice piece for my portfolio, or a fun experiment with a new technique?”
Can it be both? Sure. But your post hits the nail on the head: Art Directors want consistency, not a portfolio full of experiments. I know I work backwards: create work and put ALL of it in my portfolio. Instead, I’m pushing myself to work forwards: create TONS of work and filter out the best stuff to be my portfolio.
Don’t let the “Artist” in you interfere with the “Business-Oriented Illustrator” in you. Let them coexist and keep each other in check.
Sorry for the crazy rambling! Awesome posts, Thomas! I’m looking forward to next week’s installment!
Thanks Stephanie! I think the points you’re making are all great reasons to have a blog. Most artists are experimental by nature, so a blog can be a great place to post tons of work, show your dabblings in other media, and let loose. This can allow you the freedom to post everything you want, while not hurting your more formal portfolio. Even if your blog is integrated with your portfolio website, it’s nice to have an image gallery that features the best of the best.
Also, I LOVE your avatar. I’ve got a thing for animal-head hats.
This a great series of discussions as I’m presently working toward this goal myself.
In the 12 week challenge at zero2illo, I planned a color, b&w (ink), monochromatic (graphite) and three others. I think I will ponder this a bit more based on your articles and either tie it together with style or stick to one medium. Stphanie’s point is well taken too.
Hi Donna. There’s no reason you can’t maintain more than one image gallery in your portfolio, as long as each one is consistent within its own boundaries.
Thank you for this great post. I have been thinking about this question and still don’t know what to do yet.
My clients came to me all for different styles. Some likes my colored pencil work, some likes vector graphics; some likes something colorful, some prefers simple line drawings. I ended up doing all these commissioned work in different styles. Should I include them in my portfolio or just to pick one? The problem is that each client has his/her own taste. What if they prefer the style I’ve done that wasn’t included in my portfolio? How would they know I have the ability to do the style they like? Any suggestions?
Hello Anais. It sounds like you’re taking a more multifaceted approach. If you’re intent on working in more than one style, I recommend setting up a few separate image galleries on your website. Or, some artists do have success showing off multiple styles, but it will probably limit the types of clients who will hire you.
For example, I used to have a completely mixed bag in my portfolio, and it brought in a lot of independent clients, but it turns away Art Directors who are looking for a distinct style or want to have an idea of what they’re going to get from an Illustrator.
Hello Thomas. Thank you so much for the advice. It seems that my problem is I will take whatever jobs come to me and do whatever style clients ask me to do. Like you said it’s probably good for getting independent clients, but it doesn’t get me to the place I want to be. I really need to think about what type of illustration I like to do as my career. I am rebuilding my portfolio now and really look forward to your next post in this series. :)
I recently faced the same decision, where I decided it was time to take a leap and limit my portfolio to the type of work I’d ideally like to be hired for. It really helps to have an alternate income stream so that you have a little backup support to allow you the freedom to take this step.
I loved this article and the comment by Stephanie. They have really given me food for thought. I am not an illustrator, but I am a visual artist and I often wonder how to present my pieces. (I refuse to call them “work” as I enjoy creating them too much for it to be work.)
Thank you.
Nancy at Studio N
Definitely a timely post for me. I’ve been creating a lot of work lately, and I think I’m starting to see a new style emerging. I want to keep going with the previous work, as there seems to be enough demand for it, but the newer stuff I actually enjoy a lot more. Looks like I’ll be doing a couple of categories as I build a new portfolio site.
Awesome, Mike. It’s always exciting discovering a new direction that feeds your spirit. Good luck with the new direction.
Up to fairly recently, this was a problem that I had to which I was somewhat oblivious. Oblivious, because I do have a fairly recognizable and consistent style, so I did not see a problem- but I did not realize that it might matter that I was not focused on a particular audience or market. So, it was more a ‘thematic’ mishmash in my case. Now I’m working on deliberately refining my website, and on new pieces, for my target market….Sometimes it takes me a little while to figure these things out!
The incentive to have a particular style portfolio can be restricting as well. Although perhaps not so much in editorial world (or children’s book), one of particular field that might be the case is animation.
I have a few art directors/ production designers friends who stated the fear of hiring one style artists as in house illustrators. They are afraid that the artist would be limited to the style and will not be useful for other projects that require him/ her to produce artworks in different style.
The demand to be versatile is much more relevant as in studio artists. After all, I think a real good art director/ production designer can spot a good portfolio. A good portfolio is a good portfolio no matter if it is a mixed bag of style.
But, obviously, you don’t want to have a Frank Frazetta’s theme in portfolio geared toward Hallmark. or a Graphic Design portfolio for getting a job as character designer in Blizzard.
This, of course, would not be as relevant if you prefer to work as freelance artist for the studio.
They will go for you perhaps because you exhibit one particular style they think will fit for the particular project they are working on.
Thanks for your comment, Frans. I do think that you can pull of multiple styles as long as you are marketing that particular skill to be versatile, but it can be challenging.
I would just like to thank everyone on their comments. I have always had problems with keeping my work portfolio cohesive and even after cleaning it up recently there still seems to be so much more I could do with it.
Editing out your work is painful although necessary and it’s nice to hear other people’s problems and advice. Personally I like to having a blog and flickr account where can I shove all my mismash images or projects. At the end of the day they are still out there floating on the web, and I can choose to link to them on my main website/portfolio/blog etc, but as they don’t represent me all that well in what I do, what I’m interested in or what I’m capable of I keep them off the main site.
However since I started my portfolio early in my University degree I have several separate sections for quite a few different styles and work that I am continuing to do. And trust me they are all very different. Frankly push comes to shove I would love to continue doing all my styles in the future. I have a fine art portfolio that I’m thinking of continuing, as well as an illustration portfolio. I’m now considering just splitting them into different websites but having links from one to another.
Any advice or comments for this would be greatly appreciated.
This is how I see it.. the relationship between website and blog is equivalent to the one portfolio and sketchbook has.
I think you are going in the right direction. Being versatile should not be a curse, but a blessing.
The secret is knowing how to organize them. If you prefer splitting them into different websites, you can always do so. But, If I were you, I would just create a separate sections in your website based on the subject matter (Fine Art, Design, Illustrations, etc) to save money. :)
And again, the important part here is to make sure the art director sees the appropriate sections.
Having a blog is a wonderful way to informally show people out there that you are a jack of all trade.
If I am an art director, and I saw a talented artist who can paint, sculpt, animate, and good at many styles, I would be interested in hiring him/ her.
The secret is to show them that you are a good artist… not a confused artist.
And, in my humble opinion, this is just a matter of organization skill.
Hi Frans,
Thanks so much for the advice!
At the moment I have them all in separate sections
but I think I can push those individual bodies of work further
so I do have a strong and recognizable style in each of my mediums/commitments.
I will keep the ‘confused artist’ idea in my head when going through my portfolio!
Cheers
Jess
Yes, that is a very common problem. We work with many artists, designers and illustrators and we normally discuss with them that their web site should be clean and consistent. It is always possible to have multiple web sites or presentations.
We also hire or work with other creative people, and we ask always for very specific presentations. The designer can then pull the appropriate portfolio.
Great blog, Thomas! And very much needed.