DIY Portfolio Site

This is great, Kevin. Additionally, students may want to check out designrelated.com. Its a free design community (myspace-ish) with a decent portfolio section. Its rapidly gaining popularity and lots of employers are starting to post jobs through it.

For print designers do you think 'Powered by Word Press' is still a big problem? I was pretty proud of myself to have gotten something off the ground at all?? Maybe I can just switch my stuff over to this new template and get out of the Word Press circle? The site isn't up in case you are wondering, I'm still finishing up the build, and I'm a new student, so there isn't much to show off anyway.

To Jeremy: Wonderful, thank you! Yes I highly encourage everyone to post their portfolio (or at least samples) in all the various appropriate social networking tools available. The benefit (exposure) greatly outweighs the cost (time). To Adam: Yes I do read minds, the first consultation is free. I hope the experience was enjoyed by all! How are you planning on distributing the CMS? I'm very curious about this, I've noticed lately that one of the main draws to various web hosts are "one click installations" of things like WordPress or MovableType, or various shopping carts. My way of doing this is going to have everything housed in a single file for download that can be re-uploaded as-is and should work. Then the tinkering begins! Since there is apparent interest here, as I progress I'll post reports and shots of it here as progress is made. To Beth: My good madam, you've opened a can of fire. I'm going to answer your question first, then give some general advice because you hit on a few hot points. To answer your question directly: If you customize Wordpress so it becomes YOUR system and not a "Wordpress based template", then that is great. What I am trying to do is create a system that you can take and easily adapt into something you own -- something that has the look and feel of you and your portfolio. Wordpress is extremely powerful (which is great), but because it is so powerful it is extremely complicated (which is not great). My yet-to-be named system will be a starting point, you make it as powerful as you want -- BUT it will be VERY simple to use for people not very "code literate". Continued on various subjects: To be honest the days of a "print designer" are going away. Please **do not** think I am saying "print is going away", because this simply isn't true (look at magazine sales, look at book sales, look on the street at the proliferation of billboards, fliers, signs, posters, look in the offices, look at packaging and in-store point of purchase displays... the list goes on, and on, and on). What *is* going away, largely, is the value of being dedicated to one specific medium (be it web, print, guerrilla, motion, or whathaveyou). Do not be scared of knowing or not knowing the buttons that make things do what you want. I can barely spell PHP, but when a client comes to me and said "Kevin, here's a sack of cash, build my web site in the best way possible," I figure out what I want the web site to do, look, grow, and managed. Then I hire someone to do the button-pushing. How did I learn this? The same piece of advice Dennis will tattoo backwards onto your forehead so you see it every day in the mirror: Find someone who can produce what you want and ask them questions about what you can do, what you can't do, what has been done, what has never been done. The very first time I hired a programmer, I paid him a carton of cigarettes because the client had a miniscule budget and honestly couldn't afford his services (do not feel bad for the programmer, he was very well compensated by future jobs I brought him). To this day I still refer to him while I'm designing a web site, asking him those same four questions, and he still surprises the hell out of me with new suggestions and better ways to do things. In terms of print design (given that might be more relevant), think of it this way: is Valencia teaching you how to operate a Heidelberg? Of course not. You need to know how to think of the concept, how to design for it, and the fundamentals of the production to ensure it can and will be produced in the manner you envisioned (as opposed to the school, not Valencia, that will not be named, who's brochure caught fire on the press repeatedly because of the overlapping special effects they were using. Ask Dennis). You design, you pay someone else to print. Other mediums work EXACTLY the same with every production medium. You (should) not be seeking to learn how to design for print, but how to think, research, and feel. If you can do this, you can design anything. If your thinking is limited to the medium you are comfortable with executing, then your work will also be limited. As a new student, you are poised to take the greatest piece of advice I have to offer: Work harder and smarter than everyone else. Push everyone you are in class with to do the same, so it becomes a friendly arm's race (note: keep it friendly). When I was at Valencia, I competed constantly with several people and we all got better because of it. Constantly seek to add new skills in every facet you can possibly think of, on and offline. I started practicing calligraphy about 4 months ago, and in a week I'll be launching a web site that uses calligraphy for the display type and logo. Client nearly lost his mind, absolutely loved it. The harder you push yourself to learn new skills, the better your design will get, the better your portfolio will become, which leads to a better job. Variety shows your ability to think and influence in any situation -- no two clients are alike, no two jobs for even the same client are alike. If you are designing a poster for beer, push it further. Redesign the label, redo their logo, redo the box it comes in. Instantly you've just quadrupled the level of work in your portfolio and (more importantly) you now have a better idea on how to handle this situation in the real world.

Here is an example of duplicate themes. Plus this is a pretty good article. http://tush.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/actionscript-3-creating-custom-event-handlers-using-eventdispatcher/ . Do you see anything that looks familiar?

ps- what's written there was from past summer when I was thinking of leaving my current job, since starting school havent' had time to even think about getting a new job or working on this site.

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