Book description
The design marketplace has never been more competitive, or demanded more from emerging talent. To succeed, you must navigate the transition from learner to professional with purpose and precision. In Stand Out: Building Your Design Portfolio, Denise Anderson offers a hands-on, three-step, full-color action plan for establishing your unique brand, crafting a killer portfolio, tailoring and delivering your message, getting your perfect design job, and excelling once you're hired.
In this superbly organized and beautifully designed book, Anderson distills 20+ years of experience as a graphic designer, entrepreneur, instructor, and mentor, offering you powerful insights and easy-to-use tools for successfully launching your career. Whether you're in graphic design, advertising design, interactive or web design, fashion, or any other design field, Anderson will help you identify what makes you unique, and use it powerfully differentiate yourself from everyone else. Stand Out's step-by-step approach, hands-on work exercises, and short, easy-to-absorb chapters guide you through:
Clarifying your brand purpose and unique attributes
Designing your brand identity, encompassing all brand touchpoints
Creating an online presence that showcases you at your best
Self-promoting your brand, from social media to print "leave-behinds"
Optimizing your portfolio for the industry and company where you want to work
Discovering what's hot in portfolio design and strategy - and what's not
Understanding what employers want from you
Producing your digital and/or print portfolio
Choosing your mentor(s) and creating your personal advisory board
Developing a personal job plan you can start executing right now
Protecting your work against theft
Identifying your dream job
Writing and designing outstanding resumes and job-specific cover letters
Interviewing and presenting your work effectively
Accepting a position and negotiating salary
Succeeding in your first job, and preparing for the next
Stand Out brings together all the easy-to-use forms, checklists, and tools you'll need… multiple examples of great student and young professional portfolio work to show you how it's done… dozens of great tips and tricks… "in the trenches" insights from recent graduates… all you need to get where you want to go!
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Table of Contents
- Section One: Design a Personal Brand
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Section Two: Build a Killer Portfolio
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6. Prepare to Build Your Portfolio
- 1. Organize yourself—right now.
- 2. Save up some money.
- 3. Assess your work’s strengths—and weaknesses.
- 4. Include five integrated campaigns. Eliminate two.
- 5. Showcase some personal projects.
- 6. Let your work speak for itself.
- 7. Focus on the work, not on how it’s presented.
- 8. Focus on how your work is presented.
- 9. Ask for advice. Take the advice.
- 10. Let a professional photograph your work.
- 11. Design every touchpoint.
- 7. Select Killer Work for Your Book
- 8. Create New Projects
- 9. Develop Your Presentation Layout
- 10. Make Images that Show Off Your Work
- 11. Produce Your Pieces
- 12. Case Studies: Student Portfolios
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6. Prepare to Build Your Portfolio
- Section Three: Find a Great Design Job
- Resources
- Credits
- Index
Product information
- Title: Stand Out: Design a personal brand. Build a killer portfolio. Find a great design job.
- Author(s):
- Release date: January 2016
- Publisher(s): Peachpit Press
- ISBN: 9780134134147
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