Portfolio, Placements and Projects...

As many of you know, I'm currently in my second year at University studying product design, however, as part of my course, I am going to take a placement year starting this summer to build on my skills in the industry. As you can imagine, this comes with a lot of stress and hard work but I wanted to keep a log of how that is going as a process and where my placement year will lead me.

Before I can even apply to any placement opportunities, I need a CV, portfolio and designer profile to apply with. This is where I am at currently. As part of my summative assessment for this module at University, we are working on our portfolios and designer profiles over the next few weeks. Therefore, I am currently working on this. I already have a CV completed and focused on design and I have a draft of a portfolio, however, I am aware that it will need a lot of work before I can send it off to any companies.

In terms of where I am looking for placement, I won't disclose that on here, but I do have a direction I am looking to apply in. I know that not everyone gets a placement in their ideal industry and so I am still looking elsewhere and aiming to apply to a range of places in order to get a range of experience. Through University, we have access to several different placements that have been pre-selected or we can self source our placements if there is a particular company we want to work for. Personally, I plan to apply to a mix of both and hopefully get some replies back.

With my portfolio currently, as a said I have a draft but it doesn't reflect who I am as a designer or the story from the start of the product all the way to outcome which I am aware is important when companies are only seeing a snapshot of the entire project. Sometimes, projects can be over 150 pages and we can only reasonably put around 5 pages in the portfolio, so it can be difficult to find the right pages to portray the story of the project without loosing too much detail or understanding.

Overall though, I am really looking forward to starting this process properly and applying to some exciting companies! I'll try to keep this space updated with this process, more so for myself so I can look back and remember where this academic year has taken me. I know this is going to be a stressful experience but I am looking forward to it all!