Blog
Online Portfolio Design Resources We Like
Last time, we talked about content that can be added to your portfolio regardless of employment status. While I try to keep my posts specific to Landscape Architecture, comparisons can be made with Architecture, Photography, and Graphic Art among other creative fields. If you think about what these folks are saying and apply that critical thinking path to your own work and your target audience, you’ll be in good shape when it comes time to make critical decisions about your portfolio. I have accumulated an embarrassingly long list of online articles, and below are my current favorites: Landscape Architecture: Writing Project Descriptions, Landscape Architecture Dept. University of Illinois Preparing Portfolios for Landscape Architects, Landscape Architecture Dept. University of Illin...Read More
11 Things to Include in Your Portfolio
Last time I posted suggestions of what you might consider putting in your Landscape Architecture portfolio. Today, however, I ask you to consider each project and take a look at how well your materials represent the work and you. Did someone else do a rendering? Did one of your favorite projects take a detour from the way you hoped the design would go? Well don’t just sit there, do something about it! Consider the work you intend to show and decide if there is anything that you can do to add depth to individual projects or to better represent your own skill set. Hand-drawings. Of landscapes. Go out and practice, it is free. New renderings: If you have the ability to do a better job on the rendering than you did before, or maybe the rendering that was done was not your handiwork, think abou...Read More
Portfolio Content for Landscape Architecture
In the last post, we compared hard copy portfolios with digital versions. Today, we need to find something to put in it, whatever platform you are working with. Below are a few ideas, some are obvious, but perhaps not all of them. While you read through these, consider who you are making this portfolio for. Technical Drawings: Site Plans, sections, elevations, details, and GIS maps. The bread and butter of getting work built! Graphics: Beautiful renderings, sketches, perspectives, and models are important and speak to an ability to communicate your ideas. Process Graphics: Conceptual plans and other doodles that went into conceptualizing your work are especially important to prospective employers. These may not seem so important, but they do illustrate your thought processes. Photography: ...Read More
Reading Recommendations in Print
Last time, I posted about portfolio formats. The ways we each approach and use our portfolios are sometimes as unique as we are. There are countless examples out there on the subject, and I wanted to share my top ten favorite (in print) resources. Portfolio Design by Harold Linton. Geared towards architecture, it shows many examples of portfolios. Designing a Digital Portfolio by Cynthia Baron. Good general information on the thought process of developing a digital portfolio, but this book is a little older (so technical information is out of date). The Graphic Designer’s Guide to Portfolio Design by Debbie Rose Myers. Another well-rounded book. Written for graphic design, much of the the information is still applicable to Landscape Architecture. Designing Creative Resumes by Gregg Berryma...Read More
Portfolio Formats: Practical Considerations
Last time, I wrote about the elements of a marketing system. Most of those elements can be in either digital or print format. The format is less important than the decisions you make around content, design, and presentation, but a poorly designed portfolio will drag down the impression it leaves no matter how good your work is. Just about every article, discussion thread, and book I read in my research agreed that both a digital presence and printed material were important to have, the online component being in support of a printed portfolio. For the sake of argument, let’s consider some of the practical considerations of both digital and print portfolios: Digital media: website, blog, pdf, files on a USB, CD, DVD, iPad, or laptop are the most common. Online “books” (like Issuu.com), video...Read More
Your Portfolio: One Element of a Marketing System
In the previous post, I wrote about what a portfolio is and listed some audiences you may be trying to impress with it. The portfolio itself is not the whole picture, though. Regardless of whether you favor an online format or hard-copy portfolio, you will need additional items. Every one of the things mentioned here needs to contain your name and contact information. When viewed together, they are cohesive, and seen individually, they must be able to hold their own. Consider the following list as elements of a marketing system that includes your fabulous new portfolio. Cover letter: A cover letter accompanies all marketing material that is sent out, period. In an email, what you say in the body of the email may stand in for the cover letter, or you can attach a separate file for this. I w...Read More
Portfolio Design: Square One
Your design portfolio is one of the most unique, important design projects you will undertake. During the span of your career, you will need to put together several, changing the design and the content each time. In the simplest terms, your portfolio is a communication tool – marketing YOU. If you google “Landscape Architecture” with “design portfolio”, you’ll get others’ online portfolios, and little to zero information about designing your own. Do the same search for graphic art, photography, or pretty much anything else and there are tons of resources. Land8 wanted to change that….. ….SO, in the coming weeks, I will be posting thoughts on portfolios for Landscape Architects. Whether you are working on your first or your twelfth, I sincerely hope that you find these posts a helpful resou...Read More
Plant Profiles: Ginkgo Biloba
Rumored to be Frank Lloyd Wright’s favorite tree, we give you the bare facts on the Ginkgo biloba tree. Name: Ginkgo biloba Native to: South East China Height and Spread: The Ginkgo tree can grow well over 12 meters with very old trees reaching excess of 40 meters. The canopy can spread over 8 meters. Soil Type: Tolerates almost all soil types. The Best Location: The Ginkgo biloba likes to be planted in full sun, and in both sheltered or open conditions. Planting and care: The Ginkgo tree is a very hardy deciduous tree, also known as the fossil tree; it is believed to have originated from the Jurassic period with similar leaves discovered inside fossils from the British Isles. It originates from South East China, and can be found growing across Japan and Korea. Many Ginkgos exists a...Read More
Interview: Good F*cking Design Advice
Good Fucking Design Advice – their name says it loud and clear, but just in case you were unsure, a couple of clicks through their website will leave you with just that – some good fucking design advice! Like many before them, Jason Bacher and Brian Buirge were two grad school graphic design students with a funny idea – one they never thought could be taken this far. They only wanted to share the laughter they experienced with their “design advice.” Two years after their original “just for kicks” launch, GFDA is not only a 24/7 online advice generator, it is a business that sells advice on a mug, on a poster and even on a sketchbook; it is not your typical blue sky, big fields of grass meme type of advice though; it is straight to the point, practical punch lines full o...Read More
Not an Ordinary Business Card!
Meet Ryan Skolny (the horizontal dude above) from Reading, PA. He’s one of the many emerging professionals I met at ASLA’s annual meeting in Phoenix last month. I met so many enthusiastic people – it was awesome! I heard from many that they’d taken advantage of the portfolio review service and found the advice very helpful. I was really glad to hear that and would encourage job seekers considering attending in Boston 2013 to sign up for this service as soon as sign-ups are open as it sounds like the slots fill up fast. It has taken me nearly a month to get ready to post about the event(s), and I see from my inbox that some other people took the same amount of time to get it together, too. I was excited to see something this year that I assume is the revival of a ver...Read More
RevenantFX Interview
Halloween is coming up and we here at LAN have some awesome holiday features in store for you guys, that we hope will both freak you out as well as make you laugh and expand your knowledge and imagination; and what better way to do that than to talk to the experts? We’re talking about experts in horror here. RevenantFX are a small, budding business in Newmarket, Ontario that specialize in Halloween decorations, mainly un-dead garden gnomes, zombie make-up and masks. The dedicated group of self-described starving artists make their works in their home and garage with their own hands and with the utmost attention to details. This passion of theirs came from an obsession with films and television series that deal with zombies, ghosts and horror in general. That was the spark that led to these...Read More
The Village of Yorkville Park | Toronto, ON
Decorated with numerous awards including a recent 2012 ASLA Landmark Award of Excellence, Yorkville Village Park is a popular and celebrated series of gardens tucked into Toronto’s high-end shopping district. Originally a parking lot built over a subway, a design team composed of Martha Schwartz, Ken Smith, David Meyer Landscape Architects, and local firm Oleson Worland Architects sculpted a linear park that would represent a selection of Ontario’s major bioregions and ecosystems, with each landscape bounded by the lot lines of former Victorian row houses situated in the space. The Village of Yorkville Park Conceptual Plan. Credit: asla.org The desire for a public park to be built over the underground Bloor subway line was voiced since the 1950s, however, it wasn’t unti...Read More