Portfolio Retrospective

An ode to portfolios of the past. Over the span of my career, the nature of portfolios, or "books," has changed so much. As a newly minted design school graduate back in the early 2000s, the name of the game was still the printed, physical portfolio. I remember classmates discussing where they went to purchase their precious books that housed the content that defined their lives.

Good quality printing was extremely expensive and hard to come by at the time. Not to mention the issues with the huge file sizes of the images needed, which barely fit on our Zip Disks and Syquest Drives. Ah so many late nights and technical problems at Kinko's! Alas, we got the job done, no matter how long it took or how much debt was acquired.

Then the online portfolio soon became a must-have tool. Digital prowess overtook the printed page. I loved this new medium, and took to it quickly. I loved its flexibility and ever-changing technology. My first online portfolio was a site I created myself, using Dreamweaver. The next was all Flash. Finally, I settled on Wordpress, though I cycled through many themes.

Every iteration is a labor love.

Print

They get progressively smaller as the years go on. The first one was so heavy I'd have to stop every few blocks to take breaks.

Web

The web portfolios, by contrast, become larger as screen resolutions tick ever upward. These date back to the early 2000s, way before "responsive" was a household term. I've thought twice about posting these here, so if you'd like to see them, shoot me over a quick note!