Architecture Portfolio Bootcamp Session – One-On-One Livestream Special

Architecture Portfolio Bootcamp Session - One-On-One Livestream Special
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Stephen Drew: Hello everyone. We're going live. Hello. It's not the School of Rock. It's not the School of Architecture. This definitely is not certified by the E R B or the R A B A, but what this is, it's certified for the School of hard knocks. And we're gonna be talking about portfolios at seven o'clock. That's right.

No gap, no break. No pause for us hustlers. We keep on going. All right. 10 seconds. Here we go.

Hello everyone and welcome to this livestream special. It's what? 7:00 PM we've just had. You just had your free day, week, weekend. So no excuses cuz We're gonna go in the zone, we're gonna talk about. [00:01:00] Portfolios. The portfolios. It's the big word. It's the big one. It's the one that everyone freaks out about.

What's, what am I gonna put in my portfolio? How many sheets should my portfolio be? Is it too big? Is it too small? What project should I put in? And whew, bring it down. We have a little moment as Zen and I promise you together we will get through. Everything you need to know about Architecture portfolios, but just for her before I go into it so that everyone knows if you haven't heard of me or if you need a refresher, not just that Welsh voice that you hear banging on about CVM portfolio sizes.

I worked in the industry as an Architectural Assistant part two for many years and more recently. I've worked with Architecture practices, inside Architecture practices as the hiring manager, and in between that, there was a tenure gap where I did an awful lot of recruitment and as well as that.

Now part of what we do with the Architecture Social is [00:02:00] work with Architecture practices, either in house or we actually. Deanna work with them in terms of recruitment. So the point is I've seen a lot of CV and portfolios over those 15 years, and what I've learned is a lot of what doesn't work, and I've seen a lot of what gets an interview.

So without favor ado, let's go into Architecture, cvs, and portfolios. Now you have a chance in this interactive session to ask me any question that you will. And I'm gonna treat it like a one-on-one bootcamp session. It's the kind of session that people throw money at me. Would you believe that Mum and dad, I do have a job.

People do pay me for a living, but people pay me for these sessions and half the time I think you can do it yourself. Oh, my voice is going already. So this session is gonna be live. It's gonna be out for you all, and you can use this. You can get all the information, borrows, steal, whatever you need. You take [00:03:00] everything you can for you to get an interview, and that's what a CVM portfolio ultimately is for, is getting you an interview.

And getting a job. Now there is, before we begin, we're gonna talk about these portfolios. There's actually two portfolios that you need to think about now. A lot of people think it's just one, but there's actually two. I'm gonna tell you what they are, and one is gonna be the sample portfolio, which is like the best hits.

That's what's you are gonna send in an email, which is gonna be smaller. It's gonna be between five to 10 sheets, and it's gonna be all killer, no filler. It's gonna be that best off album, and you're gonna put all your greatest hits on there and it's gonna attract someone enough. They're gonna think, oh my goodness, this C B M portfolio is amazing.

We need to interview this person. That's portfolio number one. And portfolio number two is actually the longer portfolio, the one that's gonna be in the [00:04:00] interview. And that's an art form in itself. You don't want it too long. My goodness. It's like seeing everything in the discography. Imagine you've got 12 albums listening to every song, woof too much.

But you almost need a little bit of that stuff there as well, because. Into the interview, it's a conversation and you just don't quite know which way that conversation's gonna go and may. And it's always good to have stuff there to talk about if it comes up in the conversation. So today I think we're gonna start off talking about the interview, sorry, the portfolio that you send in an email to get an interview and I can, if we run out of time, talk about a little bit more about what's in the portfolio.

But let's go back to the one you sent in an email. So a sample portfolio. First, quick questions, housekeeping and all that stuff about portfolios. How long should it be? Probably five to 10 to 15 sheets. Depending on how long you've had in your career. If you're a part one, probably five [00:05:00] sheets is enough.

Part two, maybe a bit more part three, a little bit more. And then when you become a senior Architect or associate, your challenges change because actually, Now you've gotta do the opposite. You've gotta edit the good work that you've done down into a concise portfolio, and that is an art form in itself.

You don't want to be putting too much in there. You don't want people zoning off. You want to keep them in the room. You wanna keep them keen and you don't wanna throw everything at them. You wanna do just enough that person thinks I need to invite. Steve or Stephanie whatever your name is, I need to invite them to an interview cause I'm gonna find out more.

So that's the goal of this portfolio. And so on topic, five to 15 sheets maximum is what you're gonna do and you, so we need to talk about what that entails. Now, size on portfolio is very important as well. Because in this scenario, unlike what people joke about and stuff in the bedroom, in Architecture size really does matter.

[00:06:00] And what do I mean by that? Why am I so crude? Actually in portfolios, they can go quite big, right? Because you've got loads of, I don't know, images RAs and vectors of drawings, all this stuff. And that takes up a lot of space. And as a result, The file size can be really big. Now, for unfortunately a lot of Architecture practices will have all these different file systems that their IT person set up and they're gonna use Outlook.

They're gonna use all these different browsers, and they're going to, they're gonna use all these different, I don't know what you call them outlook 365 or Gmail or whatever it is, or Google work. And there's gonna be a file size limit. On how big the files they can get are. Now, you would think that most people can take 40 megabit files, but the reality is it's more 10.

Oh, let me see if I got a Carmen coming in as well. I've got a Hello. Hello Mohammed. Good to see you here. Any questions, Mohammed, fire it up. But as I was saying, so you've gotta be careful of [00:07:00] this fast size limit, so you really gotta aim for 10 meg and that sounds really hard. And it is hard, and to add even more complications to this brief, which I'm giving to you, is actually you need to make your file size small enough, but you don't want to, in the compression settings, ruin it with pixelation.

You need it a little bit crisp enough that people can appreciate it, but equally you need to keep that fire size low. So the E, one of the easiest ways to do that. It's actually by not making it too big, cuz if it goes big, the file size is gonna get bigger and your email's not gonna go in the inbox.

So I want the employer. The person that's gonna invite you to an interview to see that portfolio. And that's why the file size is really important. Okay. We talked about the rough length, the file size. I'm gonna move on. People are probably thinking, Steve, I want you to talk about what's gonna be in the portfolio.

I want you to [00:08:00] showcase what that looks like and it's gonna be Very individual. Okay. And I'm often reluctant to talk about templates. I'm gonna build one on the Architecture Social, so that will come maybe by the time this you are watching this replay, there will be a template there. But one of the things with Architecture portfolio templates, when you type them into Google, a lot of them are rubbish.

The templates are out there, they're not very good. And so what we are gonna do today is I'm gonna try and help you with the first step. So I talked about the rough file size, but you know in, please try to, Do this in InDesign. That's a good, really good skill for you to learn, and I really encourage everyone to go in InDesign, but I appreciate you probably opening up and there's a blank slate and you're like, oh, okay, Steve, talk.

Stop talking about the file sizes you actually want to say about what goes in there. And so what typically most people do is that they load it up and they go, I'll start off with a cover sheet, and they'll put their [00:09:00] name, Stephen, Drew, or your name, and that fills up a sheet. But it's redundant.

And then the next sheet they'll do is a contents page. So let me show you what I think is a bit of a rubbish example. I'll bring it up now. And this is one that I found online, which was terrible, but it was called. Architectural portfolio. So I thought we'd go through it together and I tell you what I don't like about it.

Okay, imagine that. So when you put the title portfolio, that's not good. By Stephen Drew, five stars. My goodness. Not very good at all. And here we have on the about page, which I think is really not very useful at all. It's got a lovely picture of this lady called Granite, but actually I don't think that's useful.

And big blocks of text. Input folios are not very useful. Chances are people aren't gonna read that because they don't want to read all that stuff and look at this contents page. [00:10:00] Oh my goodness, it's so long. I'm getting bored already looking at him. Oh, this is F. You should have gone straight into the content.

And here's another thing that this person's done in the, this templates, we'll imagine it's a person, they've then put another picture of themselves. And they put the curriculum foray in the portfolio. Now, I think if you've got a CV, a curriculum foray, or for our US listeners or watchers, a resume.

Now if you attach in a CV, which is a standalone document, and then you also attach a portfolio and you put this all in an email together, you really don't need to put the portfolio at the CV. A resume in the portfolio again. So I wouldn't have this sheet at all. I think it's redundant and it's just spacing this thing out.

So it's taking a lot of time. So I wouldn't do that at all. And then, and if you look into here, it's a bit of a graphic [00:11:00] designy portfolio. Now it's finally getting into the projects and actually this layout. I can imagine it like, okay, if it's out on the sheet, then. It would, they would connect.

But this is probably another good example. Cause if you can see, this was page number six. This is page number seven. Now I am on a computer. Okay? Most people will look on your C portfolio, on the phone or a computer. Now this probably when printed out, looks beautiful, but actually separating them like that isn't very good.

Now you could say, Steve, if you've got to view settings and you can display things in a different way. Then probably I could get it. So the page displays are two page views. Yeah, of course. But I've actually done that now. Now what you have to remember is when you are applying for jobs, people are busy or they're stressed out or whatever.

They've got all this stuff going on and they don't have time to do that. And then therefore, little [00:12:00] things like that. Might get you overlooked or people lose interest. So try to avoid big images which go over two sheets if possible. Now the other thing about here as well is that I just think there's an awful lot of empty space.

I think you shouldn't crowd a page, but equally it's just a lot of Or space here. So I'm not impressed by this portfolio and this is a good example again, of what a bad template is. So another one, and I'm gonna flick through it now, another one that I looked online, just a ram down your throat.

Why I think that you shouldn't go on these online templates is that this one, which I thought was a bit better, still, just a little bit, I dunno, a bit dull or something. We've got this front page where it's this Architecture portfolio volume and all this rubbish, and it doesn't really work. And then we got the CV here.

And you know why? You should never my opinion. I've done a video last week about cvs. [00:13:00] Remember when you're doing these These cvs people have biases by putting in a picture. It can be risky. They can think, great, this person looks amazing, this invite them in. Or maybe they have certain biases in their life and they think, actually, I don't wanna interview this person because their brain sometimes, it's unconscious biases that are there.

It's not even conscious. Sometimes it's conscious too, and you want to avoid that. I don't want you excluded. Moving on table of content. At least this one has visuals. However, I'm still not amazingly wowed over now this layout is better than the other one. It is definitely an Architecture theme, but we can see here the title is an awful lot of te text.

I would probably half that and again, I know this is template text, but if you can imagine here, I think that you should be talking about the projects. Yes. But maybe you want to talk about what software you used to do this rendered in Vray, modeled in Revit, whatever it is really good to get that in.

Now, another [00:14:00] important thing, just while we're on the topic before I continue to trash this town plate I found online is that actually. One of the key things I think you should do is when you are in your portfolio, you should probably put your best project at the front. Some people put the project that they've done years ago at the front to show the progression, and that's really cool.

If people stick with the story. Have a guess though. How many people do you think to them? I'll tell you, a lot of people turn off. They just closed the document and they're never gonna see your cool, awesome program, PR project. Put the best at the front, keep them calm and keep them interested. And then if they trail off cuz they got busy or bored or they wanna invite you in, then by then you still have got an interview and you put your weakest project at the end.

And that's another point. Do you really need to put all your projects in? Have a think about it. Do you really need that project? If you're a part one on your first year when you are out [00:15:00] getting absolutely trolleyed and it was a bit rubbish, or should you focus on the project in third year when you got your stuff together, you got your attitude together and it was a better project.

So always focus on the best and focus on the most recent project. If you're a senior Architect or you're a project Architect, chances are in your most recent role, that project's gonna be a little bit more finessed. You had a bigger role in it, and you can showcase that bit more in your portfolio.

So I'm gonna move on again. Look at this problem that we've got from before I, my browser is showing these split. So it's not very good that happens now, there's a few ooh, nice star showcase casing images and those work to an extent, but you also want to, you want to show the project, but when you're doing your portfolio, when are the themes that I would recommend that people do?

And yourself? What you should do is when you're doing it, you should think in your head, how [00:16:00] can I show the. Reader as much skill as possible, as much variation as possible. And what do I mean by that? Okay, so what I mean is maybe actually showing a xon metric exploded. Axonometric, an elevation, a plan, a section.

Different projects, different software, technical drawing, very important, maybe a bit of hand sketching if you are good at that or a model that you've done in person. By showing all that stuff, it shows that you've done a lot of different things. You've drawn the section, you've done an elevation. Okay. And I think that actually shows how versatile you are and equally it's good to show different softwares that you've done.

Okay. This was done in BIM. This was done in this was done in that. It's really good cause it shows that you can do those skills and you can touch upon them all the way through your portfolio. So then that people actually go, wow, he's done Revit. Wow, he's done Grasshopper. Wow. She's done rhino.[00:17:00]

Advanced geometric, woo, whatever it is, and all that stuff is gonna really start bleeding into that person's subconscious that actually I should invite this person for an interview. So always put the software in and yeah, and always try to show a bit of variation on what you've done. So I'm just gonna click through this a bit more.

Again, I think the biggest problem is the fact that it's split on the two pages and look at all this text. No one's gonna read that. We're not reading the book. You people look at CVS for 20, 30 seconds, up to three minutes. It's about one minute on average. Realistically portfolios up to five minutes.

So you know, all this is. Wow, my goodness. It's a lot of information. So I'm gonna show you now, and I'm just gonna bring the screen back for a quick one-on-one about how you should do it. Now, if I found these online for Architecture [00:18:00] portfolio template and stuff, yes, we will have one on the Architecture Social very soon.

However, I don't want everyone whacking them out. The same ones I want you to think about. How you design those portfolios, or more importantly, what language does an Architectural practice speak? Now, I'm not on about if it's English or French or whatever I'm on about like a graphic language, a written language, a design language.

Now that's really important and so one of the things that I always teach people in my one-to-one sessions, what to do is actually not to focus on those. Very poor templates that we were just going through now, which I do enjoy trashing a little bit. But the reason I do it is because I want you to think about the brief and you are architects, your Architectural designers, you're professionals.

This is what you do, how you've been concentrating on buildings. Whereas what I'm gonna, what I, my brief is to you. It's talking [00:19:00] about how you can get the information that you've done succinctly over to an Architectural practice in a graphical language design language that they understand. You can bring your own twist, you can bring your own Juna se quo, but how do you get noticed?

Now, before I show you, Exactly what I'm talking about. I want you to think about one other thing. In an Architectural practice, what do you imagine in there? There's architects, of course, there's probably hr, there's probably office managers one would hope, right? Unless they're a small practice and then there's a bit less of that.

Cause the business owner, the Architect is, tends to be everything else. However, what is actually in the A bigger Architecture practice? Let me tell you. So you might have even interior designers. You definitely have creative support like office managers, document controllers, and you have usually a visualization team or a graphic design [00:20:00] team.

And the graphic design team will usually do what's called BID submissions. Bid proposals. And what these documents are is an Architecture practices CV and portfolio. On how they win projects. Yes, that's right. Unfortunately, or fortunately, you will not be escaping doing Architecture, cvs and portfolios for many years, even when you are in practice.

Because what do you think an interview is? It's a bit like a crit. Are you right for this job? Can you do what we ask? Yes. That's what an interview is. It's very similar to a cri. So in one way, you've got really good practice that not ever industries have, cuz we get smashed in Architecture University and tested and pulled and all that stuff to make us stronger.

So remember that when you got into an interview. But this portfolio document is similar to what an Architectural practice does. Now, all the documents I'm about to show you [00:21:00] online are in the public domain, and I haven't designed any of them. And you can search for them quite easy. So I'm gonna bring up the first one here.

Let me see one I really like. I did one last week, but okay. All right. I've got one. Okay, so bear with me. Blue Peter style. Here are some PDFs which other companies have done earlier. Not me, but we will look at them cuz they were in the public domain. So hopefully now you can all see this document. Ooh, okay.

Let me bring it up. This is a design. Oh, and I'll be good. Because I appreciate that you are all watching this. So I've got the two of you up. This is a design document made by BDP Architects, okay? This is what they send out to their clients. So this is the fancy book. So when you go into it, now, you've gotta remember, this could be your portfolio, little essences of it.

We've got to bring it down though, and we've gotta translate it a [00:22:00] little bit. But when you look for Architectural practices, documentation, this is the stuff. Which they're trying to win work with. This is how they speak. This is how they think graphic design looks good. I think it does look good, right?

But you can emulate certain things in here, which would be really useful for your search. So have a look at what they've done in these documents. What's the graphic design like? What's the layout like? How, when have they gone big like this, a showstopper, a penny dropper, and when have they gone lower as well, and how have they talked about things?

And you can start emulating and borrow. Certain elements of the graphic design language, which I think works really well. Now, this is one of the ones that I really liked, which is by Grimshaw, and they talk about the Elizabethan line, which if anyone has been on, oh, the Elizabeth line, the Elizabethan line.

What am I talking about? The Elizabeth line, right? If you've ever been on [00:23:00] it, it's really cool. Okay, now I like this document because it actually looks a bit like a portfolio. And you can see here they've set the scene. Oh, looks good. And you've got a big image. But we can start winding it down. I think that these layouts here in this documentation, which if you search Grimshaw Elizabeth Line PDF or whatever you can find, starts to look like a real portfolio, which I see where, and imagine you laid this out and you took this to an Architecture practice.

Yeah know. I think he would come across Okay. Obviously you haven't designed the Elizabeth line, and we're not gonna pretend that you have, but it's just the way they produce things, and when you're furthering your career as an Architect, you can start borrowing stuff in this graphical language to showcase your projects.

What I like is they go between, this is a really good example of an image here, of this is the drawing. This is how it was in built. This is then how it looks, and they talk a little bit about it here. And then we [00:24:00] go in. Okay, we got another D. You're not gonna put all these sheets, but you can see here as well look at the graphic design.

I'm just gonna zoom in. Clean font, white background, a little bit off, little color and beautiful font. Amazing. Okay? And this has all been done in InDesign, and they thought about it. To the nth degree. This is probably bashed around the departments for a long time and I like here that we start to see little drawings with the graphic design.

It's all laid out here. Now imagine how this could be with your portfolio. This could be you doing a section explaining a little bit, okay? Maybe you ease up on the text slightly cuz you're doing a portfolio. If you apply into the Grimshaw transport team and you sent them a similar document, It's probably gonna bode really well and this I really like because here an exploded accident metric, technical detail, and it really goes through Grimshaw.

I've just [00:25:00] decided to go into this bit and explain exactly how it is, and I think stuff like this in your portfolio. Could be amazing, right? That's the kind of thing you're like, Ooh, this person's gonna be really good working on Simon's team doing the technical stuff. Let's get them in for an interview.

So all this stuff is in the public realm, and you can borrow and look at this. This is very portfolio ask. Okay. Now I see a lot of Architecture channels out there, which do a lot of good stuff, talking about portfolios, okay? How to get into Zo de Muon, how to get into o a, and there is a place for those channels.

But what I'm talking about here is using techniques. Which I think will speak in the language of Architecture practices and get you a job. And I have been there and seen it work a hundred times and I've seen it also fall apart a thousand times. So trust me, this is probably a really good way for you to start designing your portfolio and you can find them very easy.

This was [00:26:00] Grimshaw Elizabeth Line PDF EPR Architects, and I work with EPR architects a lot. One of the, I work on the talent team there cause I was a part one there, so they, they get me involved in all this stuff and you can see the graphic design language of EPR architects as well and have a little look how they've done the layouts of sheets.

And again, if you notice in the graphic design, it's a very elegant font, a little bit of color, and they're going, they've gone for a show stopper, penny dropper image. But look at this balance, and I think this is a really good example again, of a portfolio sheet, maybe a bit further in your career or depending on the way you lay things out.

I think that actually, this is a really nice sheet and you can imagine it. You've got your visualization here. If you're a student and you've got your plan, great or further in your career that you might say that you actually worked on this project. I don't know, hypothetically or a similar one. And you would talk about the size your responsibilities.

You would talk about maybe if you favor in your career, it'd be [00:27:00] less about the software you use, but how many teams people on the team did you manage? What RIBA stages did you do? And you would just talk about it a little bit. Now, you don't have to write an essay because in the interview you are gonna be the one talking to the Architectural practices about actually what's on there, what's on there.

That would be your role. But if you think about a few images, like a few sheets like this in the c in the CVM portfolio that you send to an Architecture practice, if you think about the email that you send initially, then, five sheets like this and the bit of the Grimshaw one. So imagine I'm gonna cherry pick, you got this sheet.

Oh, so we've got this sheet here. That's one of the end sheets. Then you've got this, you've got one or two more. It's looking like a really nice portfolio. I've got a sense of the size of the project. Maybe. Look, you've done a physical model. It's a beautiful way of doing it. You know that next to the visuals.

E p r, they've been around a long time, like a hundred years or [00:28:00] whatever oh, you can borrow a lot of the stuff, the ideas that they do in their portfolios, and that's what I really like looking at what the Architecture practices do, because you can also follow trends as well. So last week I brought up one, which I thought was really good, and this is an old one, but may are really cool and look at the graphic design language of May.

Okay, that's a blank sheet, but if we keep going, I'm gonna scroll down live. Look at Maze Graphic Design. They've mixed it up with the yellow and the gray. You could do something really clever. Now, I'm not saying you do a big book like this. Remember, this is a design brochure for an Architectural practice.

Again, I'm just reiterating it, hammering it home. If you took a bit of the graphic design, From these elements and then you apply to May. I'm sure they would appreciate it because it's so along the lines off what they were doing. Really cool stuff. Just, like that subtle detail. Woo. Really [00:29:00] interesting.

So I'm just gonna take a quick break there cause I've seen that Hamed has a question and I'm gonna go through it. But remember this is a livestream, so you have my undivided attention while I am doing the livestream to answer, ask any questions that you may have and I will do my best. To attempt to answer it.

So Hamed says hello, Stephen. I am in the process of making my portfolio actually, so this is just on point. I have a question. I have two years Mo Most of them are interior design, but I really wanna shift to our Architecture design. So I don't have much projects. How can I create my portfolio now? I am a big believer in always working with you, whatever you've got.

Even if you've done a bit of interior design, Mohammed, and then you want to go into Architecture design, that's still very important. But you could probably tailor your [00:30:00] CV to show the most Architectural element of that interior design work that you've done, or vice versa. If you know someone out there's got an Architecture portfolio.

They want to do an interior design. Maybe they focus on stuff like ff and e Maybe you focus on, collages, mood boards and, but you still use what you've done because those years of experience show that you are really good in the office. Cause you've done two years. It shows that you understand the industry and you should be proud of what you've done.

But equally, it's the job of the CV as well to tailor it that way. But Mohammed, it might be that you as an interior designer, look at interior Architect roles first before going to Architecture, because sometimes real life likes to slap you in the face with its crew will. Crew will back of the hand, and that can be very hard to do that.

So don't be disheartened because you can get them at the same time though. What I like to say is if you can't get ahead to the role you want, it's sometimes good to go [00:31:00] lateral and then forward one, one step to the side, one step forward. Okay? It's two steps, but actually the time period if you move into the right and then ahead is the same as you get frustrated in your current job trying to apply to that role and it never happening.

So I would the portfolio look to bring as much. Architectural aspects as you possibly can off your existing work. Hopefully that's useful, Mohammed. Thank you very much. And I will answer any other questions that people have. Okay, great. Otherwise, what I will do is I will move swiftly on and talk a little bit further about portfolios.

So again, I'm gonna just do one more just to really. Labor. The point this was, again, this was a bit more magazine like, I'm gonna be really honest, but it was mixing up the formula. Look at how they've laid it [00:32:00] out. Magazines, it's a bit like a brochure. What is a portfolio? It's like a bit of like a brochure.

So it was quite interesting seeing the kind of the layouts here and how Gensler have approached their design forecast. I particularly enjoy them. Some portfolios I see are not too far from this kind of thing. So again, here was like another way of looking at things and I'm just blasting through it.

Just to give you an idea that there are definitely things to do. Now, this was a really quirky one. This is Hawkins Brown. Oh, I see another question coming in, but I will just quickly flick through this one, and then Leanna, I will answer any questions that you have, but this one's also a good one. Hawkins Brown.

Really cool practice. And they're quite experimentational, very good design. And if you look at this sheet, this layout, they're talking about buildings for younger children. Now I can imagine this sheet in a portfolio of work [00:33:00] that you've done. This one, again, a beautiful layout. Probably one of the most.

This document translates probably so far. Close to a portfolio. Do you know what I mean? If you look at it, you've got the images here. For context, you've got a little bit of tax. I'd probably trim that text back in a portfolio, but then I've got the knife drawing at the bottom. I've got some fancy quotes, and you can just really imagine that with that sheet.

This is looking like a good portfolio. And then this little layout as well, one big image, three short ones. This is looking really good. This is the kind of level, the kind of thing that I would see a portfolio if this landed on my desk as a recruitment consultant, I'd be like, oh my goodness. This person is gonna go far.

They're gonna go quick, they're gonna get good options. And if I was the hiring manager like I have been at EPR Architects, I would be bookmarking this straight away and sending it over to the directors saying, amazing portfolio. Let me [00:34:00] know if you want to invite them in for an interview. Look a little bit of sketching.

Hawkins Brown. You know what you're doing. It's really good. One more quick one. There we go. Different things. Different things. Remember what I was saying earlier, everyone plans sections, elevations, photos, accident metrics, 3D renderance, whew. It's just a wonderful eclectic mix.

Leanna, you've got the question saying. I was wondering how you would advise creating the condensed version for when you're applying for a job and they ask for samples of work is usually, it is usually no larger than five 10 megabytes. Thanks again. I did touch upon that earlier in the honor, and we'll expand upon it further.

You're right. I think you're gonna have to be very careful the amount of sheets that you do. And I do think that actually learning, there's like some optimum settings that you need to get down, which I think really make a difference. So it's a bit boring, but say now in Illustrator, if you install a Dough PDF reader, or there's some other ones which are free [00:35:00] PDF printers, you've really gotta go into the nitty gritty and work out like when you render things, how many like.

Pixels per image that you can do and flatten in the files. So like some vectors will be live in the document that can make them really big. But flatten, the flatten in them can really help. But equally, you don't want to flatten the text because that's really frustrating. Especially if you're trying to copy the phone or anything.

Never. Never, ever flatten the text. That's why I always advise people never to do a CV or portfolio in Photoshop. It's just a nightmare. Go and InDesign install a PDF printer and finite down the settings and be really brutal and look and say, can I read this portfolio? Do the images look naf?

Do they look rubbish? Okay, then you need to put the settings up. But then also if they like, they are a maximum quality and you've got a 20 megabyte file, you [00:36:00] need to get it down. So Leanna, there's unfortunately no right way, but trying to get the actual reducing the amount of the pages can help.

And then you've gotta just go into the nitty gritty and working it out how you can export that pdf, whether it is through the file as an export PDF or. If it is actually printing it out for a pdf. So good luck with that because that's what I would advise for the samples. And remember, a sample of work is, should be five to 10 megabytes and between five to 15 sheets, no bigger cuz you, your big portfolio you can do you can show in person.

But thank you for the great question. Okay, I'm gonna read this one. He Negan says, I'm a PhD student in the UK and I've tried teaching research shops at university, but I haven't anything practical UK based projects in the background. Although I have about 18 years of practicing [00:37:00] Architectural and urban design projects in Iran.

I do not think that having an R A B A or AOB membership and not having the UK based project experience makes me. Invisible in the drop opportunities. What do you suggest for me to do now? This is true and this can happen. I've done a really good video on this before on a podcast where we talked about how do you get a job in the uk.

Let me bring that back here. How do you get a job in the UK without UK experience? It's like chicken and egg, right? Because the further you are in your career, actually these companies will be looking for you, ideally with UK experience. Now obviously if you have that, it. It's advantageous and you put that in your portfolio.

However, if you do not have UK based projects, then unfortunately you are in for a tough ride. It's not gonna be easy. And you're right, you can feel like invisible almost. So it's very normal what you're feeling. There is a way around it. And the [00:38:00] scary answer is that it's gonna be really hard.

And the one of the shortcuts that I think really works well is you have to really lay it on. Thick with the employer that you understand. The the RIBA. Regulat, sorry. Yeah. The RIBA stages of a building one to seven. I used to say it's one to six, but I got called out the other day for not saying the final stage, which is number seven.

But you need to understand those like a T. And then when you are in your portfolio, you could do some of the projects that you've done, like for Iran or wherever. Other different companies, like we talked about earlier, that you had all these different projects. Yep. In Iran you need to do that, but you need to translate them.

To the R A B A stages in the uk. This was, during design stages, which is equivalent to R A B stages two and three. And then you also need to labor on the software. So [00:39:00] for instance, in the UK it's less of a big deal now, but you have to have Revit. If you've got, if you've got AutoCAD, then unfortunately you're gonna be going around for a long time knocking on doors.

So you need to have the software, which is most in demand, and you need to tell the Architectural practice that you really understand all the equivalent stages that give them that confidence. But it's gonna be very hard because a lot of. People who have existing UK experience are also gonna be competing as well.

But it's not impossible. And the other thing is that means that you will have to send your CV portfolio to lots of places and you will just need to get those basics right. So I will cover technique. In an upcoming bootcamp session about how to get a jobs, and I can even cover one on this topic in more detail, which is very tricky.

And there's no right way, but I'm happy to illustrate it as much as possible. To summarize with that, Yes, of course. If you've got UK based [00:40:00] projects, put them in at the front. If you haven't, then you need to tell the employer that you understand the difference. Or let me rephrase.

You understand the similarities between the stages and that you'd know which ones you were working on. Cool. Any other questions in this one through one bootcamp. Let me know. I'm around for another 20 minutes and I will ask, answer any other things you have, but okay. I'm gonna keep flicking down now and have a little look at one or two more examples.

Let's have a quick look. Let's see which ones I haven't done so far. Let's bring up, I will bring my screen now. A m A h M M. Come on down. Whoop. Oh, thank. No problem. I'm glad that was useful. My pleasure. Okay. M let's see what you've got. So we have, of course, one of the [00:41:00] ah and m MSS at the front, you probably won't be needing this, when we get down to the actual sheet layout as well, I'm just gonna really emphasize the way they've done it.

The beautiful projects, this like elegant font. And also not being afraid sometimes to use white space. You won't go too crazy, but I think it's okay. And the way they've laid out, it's almost like a magazine now. If you imagine you have a section, a plan, an elevation, you start going through these, then actually the pages get really populated and it looks really good, and it's okay. I quite like stuff like this as well. And you could use this, couldn't you? These like little woohoo with all the details you could use those next two projects. And you could basically illustrate what you've done. So a little bit of information. Maybe on this one it says, you know what, R A B A stage, what the name of the project.

Then, was it, how big was it? What was the size? Was it a commercial practice [00:42:00] commercial? Was it a commercial project? Was it a hospital, was a hotel? And you put all that information down and you might say what your role and responsibility was next to. Project. So I like stuff like that. It keeps the information flowing and here we go.

I think this is another good example of how a sheet in the portfolio might be, the initial design. And there's, here we've got the beautiful images as well, and I like the way that these have been numbered, so that could be a really good way that you do this stuff again. Borrow the ideas that the professionals have been doing for years.

It works out really well. And look at the graphic design layout. Everything's elegant. Everything's nice, everything's beautifully laid out. Now it's okay to do a big image like this, but you don't want to do it all the time, now this is a brochure for the building, so it's gonna be a little bit different, but you get the chest ooh.

I have another question coming [00:43:00] in. Will I be doing a will I be doing a workshop on covering letters? Potentially, I can do, I'm not, I think covering letters though, at the most in danger of being extinct document that there is between chat G P T. How can you say that? I just did. Covering letter is the perfect thing to do.

Chart G p T for, isn't it? It's gonna get taken away for saying that it's true. Covering letters as well. I think that emails a replaced. Cover letters. What was a covering letter back in the day? I cover letter. Was what you would put on top of a letter, which gets sent to the post. And what's in the email is what you got on top before people click attachments.

Liana, yes, I can talk about it. However, what we will do today on this mission is we will summarize now portfolios in a bit more detail. So I'm gonna bring this back. Let's have a one-on-one. [00:44:00] Oh, I've got a big question that's come in. Let's see. My goodness. Let me bring it up, Mr. Anonymous. Hello, Mr.

Anonymous. Hi Stephen. I have an MSC in Urban Design in the uk. However, I have an background in Architecture from Uganda. Most of my portfolio used to consist of Ugandan work and experienced projects, but I've started to put in my academic work of urban Design first. Okay. Interesting.

However, there is no link between the two different experiences. Should I eliminate the Architectural design work as I am mainly look into work and opportunities been designed? Mr. Or Mrs. Anonymous I get your predicament. This builds upon what we talked about here, and it's a very interesting question.

Now, I don't know the right way to go. There is no right way to go until you find out what sticks. Having said that though, What I would think about aloud based upon my [00:45:00] experience, is that you probably want a combination of both. Now, I normally say that professional work in a portfolio should go at the front.

You'd put it at the front because it's your professional work in industry, and if you think about it, an Architectural practice. They're gonna hire someone typically, which has experience in the job they're looking for. Now, when you're a graduate, you don't have that work. So what do you do? You put on your academic work to show your potential on design.

Now, the quandary that you are in is that you've got the academic work based. In the UK cuz you've studied in the UK so you, it's familiar with the academic systems in the UK and you have overseas work now. I would actually experiment with two different versions and version one, I would [00:46:00] probably put the academic work that you've done at the front.

Followed by two to three sheets of the best Architecture that you've done in Uganda. And I would make sure, because different cultures have different ideas of graphic design. And when we were talking here about Architecture practices in the uk, what was the theme of all of these ones? So let me scroll down.

Okay. Like this page this page. This page, what is the common thing that we're seeing? And I will tell you the common thing that I see is that the graphic language in the uk. What a lot of the Architecture practices are doing in the UK is that they're speaking in this minimalistic white background, beautiful images and elegant font.

So I would try to get your Architecture from Uganda, and I would try [00:47:00] to wrap it in the graphic design, which is fashionable in the UK because that's how do I wanna say, it's like palatable. It's for the UK palate, it's when you go to a restaurant and you got a restaurant in London, there's an Asian twist.

Whatever. Because you want that beautiful, like I imagine the Architecture in Uganda's amazing and you've done really cool projects, but what we want to do is just tiptoe people into it. And I think that if you have that beautiful graphic design like we talked about here, and you dressed your amazing stuff that you've done internationally, then the Architecture practices are more likely to eat it up.

In this analogy like a restaurant. So that's what I would do. So I would do a graphic overhaul if it doesn't look like the projects and the stuff we've done in the UK to make that those sheets in of the Ugandan based work look a bit more like this kind of sexy portfolio, which the UK practices are all doing.

And then I would probably put in the front of you [00:48:00] portfolio, the academic work that you've done. Yeah. So you've got academic work. Professional. Now, I normally say put the professional at the front. Sorry. I'm just aware that the cameras are the wrong way around. I normally say you put the professional work at the front.

However, you might want to have an exception because you've done a UK based course. That you're interested in, so hopefully that is useful. Mr. Or Mrs. Suna, let me know if you think my suggestions be useful and try it. Don't be afraid to experiment with it because whatever way works you get the job is the way Leanna says Hahaha.

Thanks. You're welcome. Thank you for so much for adding comments. It really does make these live streams much more fun for me and interactive, and I really do appreciate everyone reaching out and sharing their experiences with me because actually looking for a job is [00:49:00] really hard in Architecture and we were all, everyone that, as far as I'm concerned, who qualifies as an Architect is very smart.

I'm not qualified as an Architect. I'm a part two. So you've gone further than me, and a lot of this stuff is subjective, but what I've learned over the years is just trying to get you in the room and that's what's the most important part is, and that's what a CVM portfolio is. So we've mainly focused now probably on the c, on the portfolio that people will receive in an email that you send them initially.

I am very happy. To continue to expand upon portfolios in an interview, but it bleeds into the topic of actually going to an interview. So what I was thinking about next week, and we can do this at the same time, if that works for everyone here, seven o'clock, it's a little bit late, but I promise I will be sober, Joe, and we will go through it together and we can talk about interviews.

[00:50:00] And I'm gonna talk about two separate topics, building on interviews, one in person. And one online, and they're both similar. But different beasts and actually learning how to speak to a camera really works the way I'm looking at you now. I've got the eye level and the lighting that really makes a difference and I've had to learn that skill for years.

I believe it or not, I used to be shy, but I promise you we will do all of that. We'll do all that together. There we go. I've got a little quick note from Mr. And Mrs. Anonymous. Thanks. It's very clear. I will do two versions and see which ones yields more results. Thank you. My pleasure. Any of the staff that you want to follow up on, if you're too shy or anything, then please do drop me a message.

I will be honest though. I am not the best at replying to all the messages. But the good news is because of this problem, I have now got one or two people working on my team. I've recently got an amazing [00:51:00] experience recruitment consultant who has also worked in the Architecture industry called Hannah, and she's working with me as well.

And you can get into contact with me and Hannah, and we would love to hear from you and how about if we possibly can, but before. That. Now we've got another seven minutes. So maybe what we can do is a quick roundup of everything we talked about today, and I want you to think about this stuff as well. So we initially talked about one or two bad portfolios, woo.

And what you shouldn't do. Okay? But equally we also talked about how things that you should do, and if you think about a digital portfolio, it's got sizes. And we need to make sure that people can pick it up in the inbox. It also needs to be titled appropriately, which should be your name and a dash, and then a portfolio.

That should be the name of the file, but you want that file to be ideally under 10 megabytes, and it needs to be crystal clear [00:52:00] so that when people look into a look at it on the screen or a phone or they print it, it's not pixelated. And that graphic design needs to be cool. And what I did is I trashed at these layouts.

So I said, why you shouldn't do content pages. They're awful. I trashed this for stuff at the front. I said, you probably shouldn't put pictures of yourself because the bias says, and then I talked about why I don't think these work and then, We flipped the script and we looked at, instead of templates, which I've seen done by people, we looked at talking about how you can do a curated portfolio based upon the audience that you're going for.

And actually, if you just search online for stuff like. A H M Architecture practice design brochure dot pdf. You will find all these PDF brochures in the public domain and you can soak up all the juicy stuff that is coming out that these places have done. And you can involve that in your [00:53:00] design.

My goodness. Sorry. I w I started mumbling then cause I read something that came in. Says, can you please plan a video about a R B and RIBA stages and the portfolio needing for 'em. You can find the A R B RIBA stages online. If you Google RIBA stages, you will find that they're one to six, one to seven.

Oh my goodness, I did it again. And one's design sevens construction. So Negan dropped me a message later and I will link you to that, but if anyone's wondering what the heck I was on about with R O B A stages, you can Google R A B A stages and you will see a beautiful graph. I'll actually bring them up now.

So let me find the RIBA stages. Let me see if I can get them up. And you can have a quick look at that as well. But yes, so to summarize, Let me just bring these up really quickly for our guest year. The last thing I want you all to think about is, let me [00:54:00] see, not just the RIBA stages, but it that is an important part of what's included.

So here we go. Here we go. Here are the RIBA stages. So have a little look at them. And while we're on the topic to r b stages, yes, the content is just as important as the graphic design. Of course. I want you to look at what Architectural practices are doing in terms of graphic design. But I also want you then to put in your projects what RIBA stages they would be.

The equivalent in the uk if you have worked in the UK projects, what r i b stages, you did them. If they're academic projects, maybe focused more about the software and the procedure. If you did it in Rhino, they brought it to Revit. Whatever it is, go through those, illustrate those. And the other thing that I mentioned in the portfolios as well as these R A B A stages here, I want you to actually have a look at them, what you're doing.

Put one section, one soft. One section. One one accident metric, one elevation. One technical drawing. I [00:55:00] want you to look at all those and actually layer them in so that they're really beautiful and then you can you get a flavor of both. And remember, if something's been repeating too much, it's probably been repeating too much, and that maybe is better if you actually do not include it, especially in their first portfolio that you've done.

It's all killer. No fill out. I hope this has been useful. I'm gonna end the livestream now. But last thing before I do last, last thing. I'm gonna bring up my website. If you thought this was useful, this is the first time you feared me. Then you can check out the website, which has all lots of free content, which is the www dot Architecture Social dot com.

If you then go up to the resources section, which is in the top right, you will see, you'll see an awful lot of me. I apologize for that in advance. But you will also see a lot of tips, content guides that we have written here at the Architecture [00:56:00] Social, which is curated for you, based upon my experience, based upon our experience on the team of working in the industry, whether it's tips like this on how to get a great CV, whether it's a salary guide.

That's there too. But also if you are looking for a job, then we do have an active directory where you can look for some jobs and you can look at some Architectural practices and you can. Apply If you want, you can do whatever you want. But I think that the most important one for everyone here is to look at the resources.

And last shameless plug. If you do wanna see more content like this, you can subscribe to the Architecture Social YouTube channel. Or follow me here on LinkedIn and I will do a lot more content around this subjects and occasionally I get some really cool guests on from the industry as well. So thank you so much for joining me on this live stream.

I will end the live stream [00:57:00] now in one minute. Let me know your thoughts, whether this was useful, and next week probably gonna talk about the interview, the dreaded interview. But don't worry, we'll go through it together. And remember, my number one secret that people forget about is that the interview is just as much for you as it is for the company.

You're judging them just as much as they're judging you. So hopefully this was useful. Hopefully this CV and portfolio exercises that we talked about will get you into an Architectural practice. And next week we will talk all about the interviews. Have a fantastic night. Thank you for joining me and see you soon.

I will end the livestream now. Take care everyone. Have a good evening. Bye-bye everyone. Take care.