So a pretty cool thing happened the other day. Bonnie Christine from Going Home To Roost, invited me to share some images of the portfolio I made for the pattern design challenge mentioned in this post. Bonnie was doing a course on CreativeLive, called “Design, Print & Build your Portfolio” and wanted to show my portfolio result. I think that was pretty nice of her. So thank you Bonnie 🙂
So if you are stopping by, because you watched her course on Creative Live, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. I thought I wanted to post the images here to explain how it all got put together.
The portfolio consist of the following: Back and front covers(binding), printout of your patterns and some string to hold it all together. I’ll walk you through each of them:
BINDING:
The back and front cover for this portfolio was bought from a store in Denmark called CREAS.COM. I have tried to find the English word for these covers, but with no luck. Basically, they are sturdy carton-boards, covered with black paper, you can punch holes in. The front cover has a fold, so when you open it, it pretty much lays flat. Kind of like photo albums. I found this link to a DIY, that more or less will give you this type of binding. If you would like to see more images of these carton-boards, this is the link to the product in the store. There are also images of how you can use screws to hold them together.
PRINTOUT OF PORTFOLIO PAGES:
All pages are set up in Illustrator on different artboards (see below image). The artboards are set to a pixel dimension of my choice, that will fit the final portfolio size. Like in this case, my covers are A4 sizes, so I chose artboards that were 2000 x 1400 pixels, which will match my A4 printout.
I add all the graphics I want to the boards, including text and frames. Have in mind, that when you use a carton-board like the one I used and it has a folding, then keep some room at the top of your artboards, so your design is not covered by the fold, when you eventually put it all together.
When I was ready to print, I exported everything as Jpeg’s and I choose RGB as colormodel and 72 ppi. This way they are ready to use for web as well. When you export as artboards, it allows you to export all artboards at once, which is a pretty cool feature. This also allows for your portfolio pages to be in one file and that gives you a much better overview of what you are doing, when you are designing the artboards.
If you need more in-depth info on how to use Illustrator, I highly recommend Bonnie Christine classes on both Skillshare and Creative Live.
Next I drag the exported Jpeg’s into Photoshop and print from there. This is because I control this program best in regards to printing.
I used watercolor paper for these printouts. It gives it a pretty nice texture. Just know that the printing settings has to be adjusted to this kind of paper, to get great colors (mine are a little dull, so i didn’t do that right ;-)), but you could use any paper, really. I would just make sure they have a thickness and are a bit stiff
Now is only left to stack everything and punch holes into your printouts and the carton boards. I did it separately, because the carton is rather thick and you want nice and clean holes. I used string, and just went through the holes a couple of times and tied it all together. So there you have it….your portfolio 🙂
I’m glad you stopped by. Let me know if you have any questions.
