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Hey,

What is the best way to layout a portfolio in terms of wireframe, shaded and render? Is it best to have the wireframe model on one page then the shaded model on one page? etc or combine them? Any professional advice regarding portfolios would be great!

Thanks in Advance

It depends what kind of job you are going for. You should target your portfolio to the field you're trying to enter. A portfolio for someone who is trying to get into the gaming industry is going to look completely different from someone wanting to get into product design. If you tell us a little about what you want to do, it will help with the replies.

Hey dilbert.

Sorry I'm Looking in the direction of product design - showcasing my designs drawings and renders

Well, I'm in the product design field, so here's what I look for in guys I freelance to:

I would showcase an original case study of your own design from conception to finished render. Pick a product in the marketplace that you are interested in (electronics, furniture, gadgets, gizmos etc.) and come up with an original concept design. Start with a dozen or so sketched concepts, and show how you transistion to the final design selection. Then you want to show how you take that initial concept and develop it into a model, and final product render. With that final product model, I would show three or four render versions with different materials, colors, etc. This whole process could be presented nicely on a two or three page PDF document.

Basically what you are doing is showing how you can take a design brief from the customer (which is usually very vague), develop concepts, finalize designs, build accurate models, and most importantly, show the customer how you can produce bang-for-the-buck with your design process. Showing things like wireframes of your models is absolutely irrelevant to product design. The only place where your modeling technique comes in is with the type of software that is required for the job, which will usually be posted in the job offering itself. If you're in product design, I would get familiar with some of the major manufacturing type softwares (Solidworks, Rhino, etc.) as this is often a prerequisite for being hired. It's a pain to learn 3 or 4 different softwares (especially when your fingers get used to doing certain actions for a certain software), but you've just got to do it. Luckily, most manufacturing software is based around the same principles, so it's not too hard to learn a few. It's great to be able to list familiarity in multiple softwares on your portfolio, as it shows versatility, and gives the employer the impression that you'll be able to handle data transfer easily.

Bottom line, short and to the point is always best. Nobody wants to see a gazillion "gallery" pictures of your work, so target the employer with something they can glance at, and instantly see your design process.

Thanks dilbert for the good in depth advice! Really appreciate it!