Architecture Portfolios - Top Tips To Grab An Employers Attention & Mistakes You Need to Avoid

0050 - Architecture Portfolios - Top Tips To Grab An Employers Attention & Mistakes You Need to Avoid
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Introduction to The Architectural Social
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Stephen Drew: Hello everyone, I am Stephen Drew, founder of The Architectural Social, a community of over 3, 300 architectural professionals. As part of The Architectural Social, one of the things that we did was a safe place for people to have a conversation. Their CV and portfolios commented on and reviewed and I saw the same mistakes on portfolios pop up over and over again.

Common Portfolio Mistakes
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Stephen Drew: So this video is all about the top mistakes that I've seen when people are doing sample portfolios. Portfolio, these are the portfolios that are sent to employers in an email to get a job. So let's go through the biggest mistakes that I see and how you can avoid them when making your architectural portfolio.

Stephen Drew: Let's go. Okay.

Optimal Portfolio Length
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Stephen Drew: So the biggest mistake that frequently pops up with portfolios is the length of the portfolios. So if we're emailing your portfolio to a client, to an architectural practice, to get a job, You don't want to send them your full [00:01:00] portfolio. The full portfolio that you go through in an interview, that could be like 50 to 60 sheets.

Stephen Drew: You could have timed it for 10 minutes so that when you're going for the, with the person in the interview, they can see the length and breadth of your work. But in an email, when you're sending over a sample of your work to apply for a job, if you send 50 sheets, People are going to fall asleep. You want to hit them hard.

Stephen Drew: Think of it like the best hits. So when you are constructing a portfolio to apply for a job, try not to send more than 15 sheets. Aim for 15 in between 10 and 20. Aim for 15. That's about the right kind of length. And you want to cover all the points and all your skillsets there. As an architect presenting work and projects in the future, it's going to be so important to Your presentation and editing skills.

Grabbing Attention with Your Portfolio
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Stephen Drew: So let's talk about how we can grab the person's attention in 15 pages. So the first thing you want to do is remove those kinds of cover pages and the end note pages. [00:02:00] So I'm sure you've seen a lot of portfolios where the first page will say Stephen Drew architectural portfolio. And we might have. A big image in the background.

Stephen Drew: That's completely wasted space. My advice is jump straight into the good stuff in the portfolio. No one wants to look at the covering there, they want to go straight to the good. So, it's much better, in my opinion, rather than starting with this covering sheet, which has one big image. Jump straight into your most recent, most exciting project with all the information attached to it.

Stephen Drew: That's going to attract the employer's attention much more than a big A4 landscape sheet which says Stephen Drew Portfolio with one image. Jump straight into the good stuff.

Showcasing Your Work and Skills
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Stephen Drew: So, if you're an architect in the industry, you always want to talk about in your portfolio your most recent project first, and you want to outline the responsibilities you've had on the project, and be literal explaining the scheme.

Stephen Drew: So, for instance, in a portfolio, always [00:03:00] talk about the typology of the building, always talk about the RIBA stages you worked on it. And your responsibilities on the project. So if you did the design coordination, you went to meetings, or you issued drawings as part of a tender package, outline it all. And when you're talking about these projects, make sure you use, you say what software you use.

Stephen Drew: So if you use Revit, say that. If you, for instance, on the 3D visualizations, you used to use SketchUp. Then say that as well. And it's also fine to put in CGI's of the buildings, um, even if you haven't done them, as long as you say that they were the external renders. Because it is still very good to paint a picture, and this illustrates to the potential reader, the potential employer, the size of the building that you worked on.

Stephen Drew: If you haven't worked in industry yet, so for instance, you're an architectural student, you always want to put your most recent academic work at the front, any work experience or anything you've done close to industry, [00:04:00] always put that at the front, because what you want to do To catch an employer's attention is you want to illustrate to them.

Stephen Drew: You want to show to them that you've worked on maybe technical details. You're keen to work in an architectural professional environment. So anything that has technical drawings, construction drawings, anything such as details is going to help convey to the client that you're someone that can handle.

Stephen Drew: The day to day tasks within the architectural practice. Okay, so we've now established the best order to do the portfolio. Always put your professional work at the front with the most recent project. And then underneath the professional portfolio, you want to put the academic portfolio, but throughout the port, the professional portfolio and the academic portfolio, what I want you to think about is this kind of tick box.

Stephen Drew: Okay. I want you to think about in this portfolio, you need to convey to the client. You want to show them the technical detailing. You want to show them some plans and sections. [00:05:00] You want to show them any model making that you've done. You want to give them a range of experience. And the best portfolios are the ones that through 10 to 15 sheets, the person looks at this portfolio and they see everything.

Stephen Drew: Maybe they see an axonometric, they see a plan, they see some visualization that you've done. And as well as that, the actual responsibilities on the project. So if you've worked in industry, The fact, if you can show you've done different REBA stages, that's amazing. And if, in terms of academic work, if you can illustrate that you're good at model making and you're good at visualization, or you've used Revit for the project by saying, this is a Revit modeled detail.

Stephen Drew: This is an axonometric generated in a Revit, or this is a Rhino Grasshopper model. Here's an example of parametric design. Illustrating these skills throughout the portfolio is amazing. So do that, go through it, think of it like a checklist, try not to repeat the same [00:06:00] thing at once. You want to, you want the person to look for the whole portfolio and think, Wow, this person has such a breadth of skills.

Stephen Drew: We have to invite them in for an interview. So make sure when you're doing your portfolio, it's concise. But you hit all the points.

Graphic Design Tips for Portfolios
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Stephen Drew: On a lot of the portfolios that were submitted to the Architectural Social, the graphic design was very different and that's absolutely fine. The key thing though, when you building up your own graphic design or you're picking a font to use in your portfolio, and you're thinking of the layout is.

Stephen Drew: Keep it clean. Keep it easy to read and allow the sheets to breathe. Don't put too much on them. Don't have such a small font. Don't have a big font, which is all capital letters and impact or something like that. You want something tasteful. You know, if in doubt, always start with Helvetica and go from there, but build up your own graphic design and allow a little bit of personality there, but make sure it's legible.

Stephen Drew: Make sure it's easy for the person to focus on the good stuff in the [00:07:00] portfolio. They should be paying attention to the work there, and the graphic design should support it. What you don't want is people to be distracted by the graphic design, uh, because that's going to take the emphasis away. From the person thinking that they want to invite you for an interview.

Stephen Drew: So always go with, uh, easy to read, clean graphic design, which supports your work.

Importance of Spell Checking
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Stephen Drew: Another bit that I'm sure a lot of you already thinking I was going to mention at one point and you would be right is spell checking your work. The, one of the most common things that I saw on the portfolios that was submitted for review, but the fact that they were spelling mistakes everywhere.

Stephen Drew: I get it when you're in an InDesign document or you're writing something. It's so easy. To forget things or overlook things while you're making a document, but it is so, so, so important that you drag them paragraphs back into Word or you use a program like Grammarly to pick up on all the mistakes, to pick up on the things that when you were designing and laying out your portfolio, [00:08:00] Um, that you missed.

Stephen Drew: I do it all the time. When I, when I've made documents, you forget these things. It's completely normal, but make sure if someone else reads it, uh, or you use, and ideally both, get someone to read it and use something like Grammarly or use something like Word so that you pick up the spelling, uh, mistakes because they will distract someone.

Stephen Drew: Again, it's like the graphic design. If there are spelling mistakes everywhere, even if the word is strong, it kind of distracts people. Ruins the experience. As one of the directors that I used to work with at a large architectural practice said, the portfolio and the CV are the most important documents that an architect will make because they're his or her career.

Stephen Drew: You're presenting your career, you're presenting yourself, and you want to get the best job possible, so make sure that the spelling and graphic design are correct. Does you justice so that you get that job. Okay.

Optimizing PDF Size
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Stephen Drew: And last but not least, and quite important is the actual exported PDF size itself. So you want to keep the file between [00:09:00] five to 10 megabytes and aiming for as low as possible while retaining the quality of your work.

Stephen Drew: You don't want the images too pixelated, but you don't want the file too big because what I've seen so, so many times. is that sometimes if you put a link, like a Dropbox, people don't look at it. So when you're applying online for a job, make sure you attach a PDF and try to keep it around five megabytes, get the balance, play with the settings, try to get the compression perfect that it doesn't detract from your images and your drawings so that people can read it.

Stephen Drew: Cause no one likes pixelated stuff. But at the same time, you don't want the file to be too big. And I think again, if you're aiming between 10 to 15 pages within an architectural portfolio, it's going to keep the size down and that's going to be so important. And the other thing you want to do as well with the, uh, optimized exported PDF is load it.

Stephen Drew: Make sure that the. The each pages are the same size. No one likes zooming in, seeing [00:10:00] an A4 zoomed in and then going back out to a big file. It's so distracting going in and out. So make sure that all the portfolio sheets are the same size, and then make sure that the length 10 to 15 sheets and that the export is clean to read and between five to eight megabytes.

Stephen Drew: Aim for that. And see how you get on. Okay.

Conclusion and Community Invitation
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Stephen Drew: We did it. The theory behind sending a sample portfolio when applying for a job. I hope that's helpful. If you want to be part of the architectural social community, you can join us. Check out www. architecturalsocial. com. We will be doing more CV and portfolio reviews, probably around the time that part ones and part twos are graduating.

Stephen Drew: So make sure you're there for that. And if you like this video, uh, please like it and subscribe because that really helps so that, um, I can keep making this content if you find it useful. We'd love your comments. We'd love your thoughts. Thank you so much for watching. And next week, I'll probably do a few examples of portfolios and we can bring [00:11:00] them up on the screen like we did before and talk about, uh, what works and what doesn't on Templates Online.

Stephen Drew: Have a good week, everyone, and enjoy the snow.