Art & Design, Portfolio Preparation
Sonia Nicolson · Mum | Architect | Entrepreneur
A brisk, practical checklist for assembling a portfolio you already have the work for, not for building one from scratch.
Portfolio Preparation does exactly what its title promises and nothing more. Across thirteen short lessons and roughly half an hour, it moves from defining what a portfolio is, through selecting and arranging content, to the mechanics of physical and digital submission. The pace is fast and the scope is narrow by design: this is a checklist course, not a skill-building one.
The strongest stretch is the middle section on selecting and editing content. The advice to aim for 15 to 20 pages, no more and no less, gives a concrete target where most portfolio guidance stays vague. The reasoning behind it is sound too: an interviewer might see ten or twenty candidates in a day, so a portfolio that overstays its welcome works against the applicant. The related tip to summarize each project in a title, medium, and a single explanatory sentence is a genuinely useful constraint, forcing clarity rather than padding pages with text that competes with the work itself.
The style and editing lesson is where the course earns its keep. Keeping to two or three fonts, a single accent color, and plain paper so nothing distracts from the artwork is basic but correctly prioritized advice. The instruction to open and close the portfolio on its two strongest pieces, because the object will likely sit open on a table during conversation, is the kind of detail that separates someone who has actually sat on the other side of the interview table from someone repeating generic design-school platitudes.
Where the course thins out is in execution support. The five optional projects, a mood board, a photography assignment, a handmade sketchbook, a model-making exercise, and a branding brief, are offered as one-line prompts to fill gaps in an existing body of work rather than as taught exercises with guidance or critique. Students with little material to start from will find these briefs too sparse to build a portfolio around. The course also stays almost entirely at the level of verbal principle. It describes what a strong page layout should achieve without walking through an assembled example, so students still have to translate the advice into their own pages without seeing it demonstrated.
The submission lesson is practical if unglamorous, covering physical case sizes for travel, protective folders against weather and transit, and the standard digital routes of PDF email, file transfer services, and portfolio platforms like Behance or Coroflot. None of it is surprising, but it is accurate and worth having in one place, particularly the reminder to read an institution's own submission guidelines rather than assume a universal format exists.
Overall, this plays as a pre-interview refresher rather than a course to learn design presentation from scratch. It suits someone who already has finished work, knows their subject, and needs help organizing and packaging it under time pressure. Anyone earlier in the process, still developing a body of work or unsure what belongs in a portfolio at all, will find the pace too quick and the support too thin to fill in the gaps.
The standout
The instruction to bookend the portfolio with its two strongest pieces, since interviewers often leave it open on the table while talking and the first and last impression is what sticks.
What you will learn
- How to sequence 15 to 20 portfolio pages so the strongest pieces open and close the presentation
- How to write short project captions with a title, medium, and one explanatory sentence
- How to restrain style choices to two or three fonts, one accent color, and plain paper backgrounds
- How to choose a practical physical format, such as an A3 case, for carrying work to an interview
- How to prepare and send a digital portfolio through PDF, file transfer services, or sites like Behance
- How to generate extra material using five structured project prompts when existing work falls short
Best for: Applicants who already have finished work and an interview or application deadline approaching and need help selecting, sequencing, and packaging it.
Skip it if: Beginners with little existing work to draw from, since the five optional project briefs are one-line prompts rather than taught exercises, and anyone hoping for software or layout-tool demonstrations.