Portfolio Inspiration – A portfolio is simply a document that talks about your story as an Architect and designer. It reflects your personality, let alone be a personal statement of your style of work. It acts as evidence of the skills and abilities that you possess as an architect and tells the recruiter why he should recruit you or the client why they should choose you.
While making a portfolio can surely be a tedious job, it is during this process that one truly starts to understand their expression styles.
Before going ahead with making the portfolio, it is important to understand and decide on the following.
Type Of portfolio
Do you want the portfolio to be available digitally or physically? Although digital portfolios are more common these days, you can make a hand-held portfolio if necessary and post it. Even in digital means, you have to decide if you want to create a pdf or if you want to create a website available online. While a pdf can be accessed anywhere without the need for an internet connection, a website helps create a user interactive portfolio.
Size of portfolio
The portfolio size should not be too large as it should be easily accessible to the user or client. It is recommended to keep file sizes below 15 Mb
Layout and style
Sometimes, the style of your work can influence the layout of your portfolio. The usage of white spaces completely depends from person to person, but it is advisable to avoid clutter in the fear of exposing these white spaces. The portfolio should not be too hard on the eyes as well as not too plain and empty looking. A colour palette can prove to be quite helpful if you are not ready for a black and white portfolio. One must follow a specific layout and style throughout the entire portfolio so that it does not look like multiple different portfolios put together.
Selection of information
This process can be the most difficult one for some as it is difficult to omit those eye-catchy visuals or those details that you had spent hours on. But too much unnecessary information can be tiring, so include only what you feel is relevant and very important to explain the project. It is also important to create a fine balance between the visuals, drawings and text.
So, here are 15 portfolios you must see:
1. Benjamin Wichman | Portfolio Inspiration
For people who believe that their projects are more about the process than just the final output, this portfolio by Benjamin Wichman is the best inspiration there can be. With a perfect composition of diagramming on butter sheets, handmade models and sketches, Benjamin Wichman walks us through his thinking process.
2. Compromises / Promises – Ali Karimi
Along with the bold use of white spaces, Ali Karimi also showcases her poetic side of architectural writing in this portfolio. She describes each project with the help of a poem. No fancy renders are seen in the entire portfolio and colour is used only where diagrammatic explanations are required.
3. Greg Whitney | Portfolio Inspiration
Unlike the portfolio of Ali Karimi, Greg Whitney uses strong pop colours throughout his portfolio. He uses colour to create contrasts. The portfolio showcases a fine balance between colours and line details.
4. Sebastian Comanescu
Consisting of lively playful projects, the portfolio is a culmination of playful imagination and reality showcasing Sebastian’s strong software skills. Grasshopper software has been used for most of the 3D visualisation in the portfolio.
5. Sascha Elzinga | Portfolio Inspiration
This portfolio is an expression of Sascha’s abstract design thinking and form making. By using the mediums of architectural and design photography and graphic design, she walks us through her projects and also showcases her skills in the same.
6. Regy Septian
This portfolio is simple and well organized, each project following a sequence starting with a short description, site plan and analysis, issue statement, design strategies and concepts followed by plans, sections, images and details. It showcases a simple layout with text and drawings that is not too hard on the eyes.
7. Wilmer Coronado Castillo
For those who believe their projects have to be felt to experience and understand the beauty of it, this brave portfolio can come as a great inspiration. We call this a ‘brave’ portfolio because in today’s digital age, he decided to create a portfolio that can only be sent via parcel. The bravery pays off as no architect will be able to forget receiving this intriguing looking box that contains some of his scribbles that ended up becoming the best part of his ideas.
8. Farhang Alipour | Portfolio Inspiration
This magazine-like portfolio engages the users’ attention with its typography, font, placement of pictures, background and foreground colours, shapes and colours. The portfolio showcases Farhang’s interest in visual graphics.
9. Aleksandra Soboleva
This portfolio showcases an excellent use of colours and graphics. Each project starts as a story with an exciting graphical collage. Human activities have been highlighted and given a lot of importance in every project, by zooming into each space and showing how humans use that particular space.
10. Mar’ya Filatova | Portfolio Inspiration
This portfolio can come as an inspiration to those who practice an organic and parametric style of architecture. The use of black background to highlight parametric projects and ways to represent parametric projects can be understood with this portfolio.
