Practitioner Visit & Portfolio Feedback 4: Fig Taylor

We had a visit last week from Fig Taylor, a portfolio consultant from the AOI who talked through with us the key do's and don't's of portfolios and promotion, along with other general advice on getting work in the industry. She has experience of working as a designer and an agent so has knowledge of how it is on both sides of the table. 

The main areas she discussed:

• To start she emphasised the point many visiting industry people have, not to include work in my portfolio that I don't like myself and that I don't want to do or can't finish in the time ill be give by a client.
• Try to get a face to face appointment with potential clients. These will be difficult to get but important as the conversation and connections that can arise from meetings will happen more than with a simple email conversation.
• The clients are lazy, they will need to be spoon fed. Show who you are and your style clearly in the small body of work in the portfolio, no red herrings to confuse them.
• Digital portfolios can be presented as a PDF, blog or website. Make sure the way in which these are shown to the client during interviews is smooth and organised. 
• PDF portfolios shouldn't have the same amount of images as the website, a small concise selection only. The website is where multiple finished projects can be seen. A blog will be less formal and show the creative process involved in the work shown in the portfolio.
• With self promotion, writing to a client is important but in a letter rather than an email.
• Research the kind of work I want before making contact with potential clients. See what type of illustration they commission - is this like my work?
• First thing to do after graduation- get my portfolio to a good standard, business cards and website completed and professional before I start contacting clients for interviews.

Next she looked at our portfolios and gave her opinion on the areas within the industry that would be best for us to research. With my work she felt Lifestyle/Home Magazines, Food/Beauty Mags/packaging, Gardening/Wildlife mags Magazines would suit my collage/ink work best as they are rather decorative. This needs to be researched and work made specifically for it, to show clients my work could be used in their publication. Next she pointed out Many of my piece could be linked to children. This is a hard area to get into and I would need to think about the age range I'd be focusing on and the subject matter.