Oh, look! a FREE portfolio template! Roundfolio is a free download from Webgraphics.net and I thought it was pretty cool, especially for a one-page (samples of work) portfolio. Last week, I posted about typography, and mentioned that I am looking for your wonderful page layouts to use in a future post (I still am, hint hint) but this week, take a gander at the layout and typographic decisions in Roundfolio’s live demo.
So one of the reasons I like Roundfolio goes back to an “interview with an employer” post. You may recall a couple of weeks ago when Scott Lewis said:
“With initial samples of work, I prefer to see only three projects.
I will know as soon as I open it what the level is.
Ideally, this is (3) images or at the most, 2 – 3 images for (3) projects.”
It seems to me that for initial contact, a single page web-based interface like Roundfolio meets this criteria beautifully. It requires far less effort from the recipient than some of the online portfolios I’ve navigated lately, and your audience can get an instant impression of your work without doing anything at all. Contact information is right there, easy to find, and you can customize pretty much everything.
So here’s what you do: Download the file (did I mention it is FREE?!) and this is inside the zip file:
Roundfolio is a straight HTML/CSS template. All of the files located in the HTML directory would be what you would edit and upload to the web. The template requires a bit of HTML knowledge, but only basic stuff (and since I don’t personally know html, I am afraid I can’t help with that). After editing the Photoshop file you would then need to export the graphics individually to replace the ones in the HTML/images directory.
When you open the Photoshop file, it looks something like this (those are some of the layers to the right):
So seeing the layout and appearance of this, with its use of circles as a strong graphic statement, what would you do to make the rest of your marketing materials go with it? I see oodles of opportunities here. I imagine everything from round return address labels on thank you notes to a resume designed with text wrapped around or inside circles (like these tutorials for doing stuff like this in in photoshop or indesign ). Maybe you’d take the circle-in-a-grid geometry and apply it in another way… you tell me!
Ordinarily, I would suggest doing your own design using a project as a source of inspiration (or something else), but if you choose to use a free template like this, with such a distinct graphic statement, then your materials should take some cue from it so that it doesn’t seem like an afterthought.
Next time, we’ll talk about what NOT to do.
Published in Blog
