Are you a budding artist, designer or illustrator?
Want to improve your portfolio?
A great portfolio helps you stand out from the crowd, gets others interested in your work, and ultimately wins you more clients.
Basically, the better your portfolio is, the more successful you will be. This doesn’t just apply to those in the illustration industry either, but also in graphic design,to fine art.
Regardless of the industry or creative discipline you find yourself, we are going to reveal our tops tips to help you create a portfolio to help you gain more clients.
Here at Graphic Tide, we are passionate about helping the artistic community with great content on a regular basis, from our previous Illustration Inspiration blog post, showcasing art on t-shirts, to blog posts like today, we are here to help all creatives!
So what’s our first piece of advice for you to improve your portfolio?
Concentrate On Your Own Style
It’s very easy to be influenced by other artists.
You surround yourself with great art, and you can become inspired to create your own.
Which is great!
Even though this is highly beneficial to see what you like and dislike, you need to remain yourself, produce the work that you like, and avoid coping other styles.
You may love a particular illustrator’s work or may encounter a popular style, but that doesn’t mean it’s you.
Essentially, it’ll just back fire on you, here’s why;
– A ‘popular’ style is like fashion, it goes in and out of fashion, and the next trend of fashion is quickly picked up.
The other major downside is that others will notice you have copied another style, and you’ll always be compared to your other counterpart, so avoid this at all costs.
Tip 1 – work on your own work, experiment, and achieve your own creative voice.
Draw Everyday, Create Everyday, Practice Everyday
Practice makes perfect, right?
It sure does!
Malcolm Gladwell’s famous quote says that you need to put in 10,000 hours of work to become an expert (and even Oprah Winfrey loves it.
How many hours have you clocked up?
To improve your style, way of working, and develop your visual voice, you need to start working, creating and producing on a daily basis.
Draw from life, copy some typography, study a previous master, do anything which you think will help you practice your craft and help you improve.
In order for you to gain confidence in your work, and for you to see real improvement of your work, practicing everyday is essential.
‘Styles’ don’t just appear out of nowhere, and have been developed and worked by artists for countless hours, days and weeks. Almost everyone goes through uncertain periods within their art, but a natural style develops with hard work and practice.
Tip 2 – Practice your craft everyday, and put the hours in to experiment, find your voice, and develop.
Found Your Way Of Working? Keep It & Develop It!
In order for you to be hired by others, you need to remain as consistent as possible.
This is to ensure confidence in your work – so clients know exactly what they are going to expect when they hire you. If you have 3-4 different styles within your website portfolio, then clients are going to be uncertain about the style they will receive when they hire you.
Keep it consistent, be true to yourself, and don’t hide away from it.
If you have a particular style within your online and offline portfolio, celebrate it. Remove any work that goes against this style, and only include your best pieces of work.
Tip 3 – Keep developing your own creative style, and remove any pieces from your portfolio which go against it.
How Have You Improved Your Portfolio?
All creatives need a portfolio of work to be hired. Having an average or good portfolio isn’t enough anymore, you need a world class portfolio to set you apart from the rest.
It’s really that important, which you need to be tinkering constantly to make it work for you.
From our 3 tips above, make sure you’re practicing your craft everyday, concentrating on your own work and style, and focusing on one style to set you apart from the crowd.
We would love to find out more about how you have improved your own portfolio! Leave us a comment below or hit us on our social media links below to let us know how you have improved your portfolio.
If you liked this blog post, be sure to head over to our previous blog post, Typography Inspiration, see our new t-shirt designs on our shop, or submit to Graphic Tide today!
Many thanks guys, and we hope you enjoyed the post!
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