Criticise my portfolio

[shifty_uk]

As of yet I don't particularly know what I'm aiming for but I need a job, a junior role perhaps and I'm sick and tired of studying science at uni, I need something creative to get me started, it's what I find astonishingly easy and consider myself born to do!

Ideally I'd love to end up in advertising or conceptual illustration but I've got a lot of training to do and until I'm skilled enough in my mind, I don't see a clear way.

So, since i have two years experience in front end web design and development I've included that stuff on the site and I might apply to a broad range of agencies, anything from graphic to web design. A foot in the door somewhere is better than a foot in the door nowhere!

http://cargocollective.com/ryanfindlay

Have a look and tell me what you think, be blunt and honest

Cheers!

 

[shifty_uk]

i love your alba logos! and your art is beautiful though the images take quite awhile to arrive on my screen which normally if this happened i'd just click off the page.

Thanks, I'll try and shrink the file sizes

Probably the two most negative sounding sentences in the history of portfolios. Don't immediately put yourself down, it's not appealing for employers/agencies. To get by in this industry you need a lot of confidence, especially at you're age and in the current climate.

I'd recommend thinking very carefully about leaving the current security you have at university. The design industry is not an easy place to be right now. Marketing is a rather hard hit industry in recessions, because it's the first thing people have to skim a bit off the top of what they're paying. People who have been working in the industry for ten years, are being laid off and are now competing with juniors for entry levels positions.

Your portfolio is great. If i'm totally honest, your front end web stuff is fairly standard - corporate sites that I've seen before (no offence). However, your conceptual art and more traditional art is absolutely astounding. Really impressed. What did you use? Oils, charcoals?

Thanks for the advice.

May I ask why those sentences are negative? I thought they sounded rather positive in the sense that I can teach myself off my own back, have a natural ability and so on.

I agree with the sites, unfortunately the company I worked for previously had a portfolio largely made up of corporate clients so that's what I designed most of the time.

What do you mean at my age? Being young or old? I'm only 22 It's really just a junior position I'm after. Even finishing Uni I'd still have the same portfolio and I'd still be striving for the same entry level positions in design.

I'd love to take the art further, as I mentioned briefly earlier I'm pretty obsessed with concept art and things like that but it seems like an almost impossibly industry to enter and I'd almost certainly have to relocate but I will be doing that in future, I just need to build myself and my portfolio up to the level of the big players.

 

[shifty_uk]

Just wrote this on my lunch break but does it sound slightly better? I'll have a go at writing something more ambitious later

I have a background in interaction design working largely with front-end design and development for corporate clients. Whilst at university I've been involved in sales and team co-ordination at senior levels.

Being self taught I'm obsessed with learning and developing as an artist and designer. I believe having an aesthetic eye, knowing the basic rules of image making and design can ultimately make the possibilities of transcending into various areas of creativity limitless. Thus believing creativity should be absolutely non-linear.

Cheers again.

 

[shifty_uk]

Hadn't thought of it. I've removed the slideshow from a section or two to give an example of how it would look without it.