Portfolio misinterpretation

Why isn’t a portfolio good enough, anymore?

A portfolio is a tool for anyone to show their abilities. It sometimes overcomes it’s “support” function and becomes itself as mind blowing (or even more) as its content.
As freelance, spare-time illustrator, I made my own portfolio. I made different portfolios, actually, according to the adds I was applying to. Therefore there’s the digital illustration portfolio, the graphic design portfolio, children’s illustration portfolio and so on.

Lately I’ve come to experience this mix of frustration and rage towards the adds I find regarding illustration and graphic/web design.
The thing is, these are difficult areas to succeed nowadays – we are so many – but does this mean that we can be treated with disrespect?

My point is:
If I’m showing you my portfolio, and you liked it, why are you asking me to give you advanced work with no guarantees? Why don’t you trust it?

What is it with companies, that don’t get satisfied with someone’s portfolio that they have to make a “contest” to choose from I-don’t-know-how-many-other-illustrators/designers/whatever?

This is dangerous in so many ways.
For example, no one knows if they’re actually hiring someone for a specific project or if they’re just “fishing” because they took a job and don’t have time to think about it. These “contests” are a brilliant way of getting their work started and mostly finished with no cost at all, in case they decide to tell everyone “they were not accepted”. In the end maybe there never was such a project and they’re using your work for something else.

Also, even if they accept you, you already did a part of the job and never knew how much would they pay for it. So you go ahead and spend two days working on something and then they’ll pay you peanuts. At a higher level, the market will be fucked up, because there’s always a jackass willing to work for peanuts.

Basically, from the few return calls I get, I never got anywhere. I usually get stuck at the “send us an illustration for the project so we can decide”. And this makes me feel really sad and frustrated.
I’m want to value my work. I showed what I can do – it’s on my portfolio (because that is its function), so don’t ask me to despise it.

On a related matter, I suggest everyone to read idsgn’s article “Crowdsourcing: Sabotaging our value“.

London, april 2011

This year I took a few days off and headed to London. I’d been there before but it’s a big city and there’s never enough time to see everything you want to. And this time, despite there was a plan with the stuff we wanted to see, it never happened, so we just let ourselves go with the flow.

And the flow took us to street art starting at Brick Lane (I’ll try to identify as many pieces as I can).

James Cochran aka Jimmy C.

Escif

Toby

Roa

At this point a group appeared out of nowhere and this guy started talking about the pieces on the wall. We thought it was some kind of class but it was actually a tour led by a very nice guy called Gary. I must say it was a brilliant coincidence to find this group with whom we spent the next 2 hours – just wandering around London chasing street art.

Malarky

Alexandre Farto aka VHILS

Cityzen Kane

Eska

Gianluca Fallone

I thought it would be nice to show other people’s art, because growing as an illustrator/webdesigner is not just about drawing everyday but also about visual culture. I like to see what other people are doing, I like to be inspired and somehow challenged.

So, on the first of this kind of posts, I’ll show you Gianluca Fallone – a young designer and illustrator from Argentina who’s worked for MTV, NIKE and Cartoon Network (1). I first read about him at The Cool Hunter website and quickly added his personal website/portfolio to my favorites.

I love his vector illustrations, specially the ones with neon-light-bright effects.

So check him out because he’s really awesome.

Joana

(1) via The Cool Hunter

Exp: Colectiva no 7º Open Day da LXFactory

A LX Factory convidou a Cato Design e seus ilustradores a participarem com as suas obras no 7º Open Day.
É uma exposição colectiva que, para além dos ilustradores da Cato conta com outros artistas.

A exposição decorrerá de 11 de Novembro a 11 de Dezembro de 2011 e todos estão convidados.