Review all of the options below and choose one for building your professional portfolio website.
You will write the name of your chosen builder at the top of the document for the next assignment called: Content list.
Who Is It For? Art Directors, Graphic Designers, Interactive Designers, Motion Designers, Illustrators, Sound Designers.
Cost: Free with your Adobe CC subscription. When you create an Adobe Portfolio a Behance page is automatically created for you (Adobe owns Behance).
Portfolio Overview: Adobe Portfolio has multiple templates for the and lots of customization capabilities after you choose a basic template. Building a portfolio site is very quick. KCAD Alum. Examples:
Behance Overview : contains job postings that can be searched by creative fields. Art Directors and other collaborators are browsing the portfolios. Custom thumbs can be uploaded. The layout cannot be customized.
Student Examples:
Who is it for? Entertainment artists, include 2D concept and production artists, and Digital 3D Artists
Cost: Free
Overview: Contains job postings that Can be sorted into Permanent, Contract and Freelance categories as well as Work Remotely or Relocation Assistance. Many job postings ask you to link to your ArtStation page. It includes; social networking and art director searching . Custom thumbs can also be uploaded and this is the only way to customize it.
Student Examples:
Who Is It For: For animators and videographers that have no other types of media in their portfolio. It is often used as a place to house videos that are then embedded into websites like those listed on this page.
Cost: Free
Overview: It has the largest video audience on-line with no close second. Media creators can create their own channel and achieve independent financial success. It's the only way to ensure your videos will play on all devices with high quality and speedy delivery.
Examples
Who Is It For: Everyone. It is simply, very powerful, and a very popular website builder that can be used for any purpose. Especially well suited for graphic designers and others that would like a blank canvas from which to express their design talents. Many professional design agencies provide WIC website building services for their clients.
Cost: Free runs small WIX ads on your site. Pro site costs $4.00 - $19.00/month and removes ads. You can build your site, then launch and upgrade if you wish..
Overview: The only builder of its type where we can start with a blank page and create a completely custom site. No coding is knowledge required. Light box widgets do not allow control of thumbs. Scrolling-style pages do. The mobile versions require a little extra configuration work.
Student Examples:
Who Is It For: Everyone. It is simply a super-easy website builder that can be used for any purpose.
Cost: Free with no ads
Overview: No coding knowledge required and extra-easy to use, it integrates seamlessly with Google apps. Fast indexing for search results. Very limited number of design possibilities.
Student Examples:
This Professional Practices Website
Who Is It For: Everyone. It is a website builder that can be used for any purpose.
Cost: Free for basic - runs very small Weebly ads on your site - $4 - $8 / month for a pro site
Overview: You must use one of their templates, which can be a drwback when attempting to customize your site. No coding knowledge required.
Examples
Who Is It For: Designers that want to show off Wordpress skills. 40% of the internet is built on Wordpress and designers wishing to procure work in the web design field will do well to have a Wordpress site. Visual builders like DIVI offer a WIX-like experience, albeit more powerful. To use in this class, a student must already be familiar with Wordpress/Divi
Costs: requires $2-$12/ month hosting (3-12 months paid in advance). must have custom domain (about $12)
Overview: No coding knowledge is required. requires some testing to work on most browsers and tablets. Requires a little more time investment than others
Student Examples
Who Is It For: Designers that want to show off coding skills.
Costs: requires $2-$12/ month hosting (3-12 months paid in advance). must have custom domain (about $12)
Overview: coding knowledge is required. requires extensive testing to work on most browsers and tablets. Requires significant time investment
Student Examples
www.mynamehere.com is better than wix.sites.myname.com (for example).
Best (by far) to do this through your web hosting service.
You will have to purchase a domain name if you are hosting your own Wordpress or custom built site.
Do not count on showing up high in the results of general searches like 'animator' or 'interactive designer'.
If you create your own HTML site, the web host company you use will register your site with Google and other search engines. It may take several weeks to show up in the results.
If you use one of the template sites (like Behance) Google will not index you. However, if you purchase a domain name from a name brand hosting company, they will register your url with Google for you.
Create a Google Sub Folder in your course folder and name it like this example: Portfolio Website Site Plan
In that folder, create a Google Doc called 'Content List'. At the top of the content list page,
Write the name of the builder that you will be using to create your professional website. Place an *asterik next to the projects that will require some rework to bring up to professional grade.
Your file directory should look like this:
Portfolio Website Site Plan (Folder)
Your Name- Content List (google doc)
A content list simply lists the content for each section you are planning to have in your website. In the example below the button names are at the top of each column and the lists below them reference the content that will be included in each section.
Include Process PDFs, Google Docs or slideshows from your thesis and group projects.
Limit the number of projects in each section from 4-10 pieces. After image #7 most users start to lose interest.
I will be asking the other faculty to review your map and make recommendations for other projects that you may have forgotten about.
Site Builder = Adobe Portfolio
*denotes projects requiring some reworkReel (Landing Page)
tagline, reel
About
portrait, bio, contact info, link to social media, link to pdf resume
Interactive
Smith's Gear website (includes case study)
*Grand Coney hml5 site (includes case study)
Espionage mobile game mock-up (includes case study)
Poster for Aerosmith concert (1 image)
*Signage for KCAD Student Exhibition (4 images)
Newspaper ads for West Side Express (6 images)
Motion
Diatribe Video interview, (YouTube embed)
Intro and outro for simuli, (YouTube embed)
Animated info graphic - electoral college, (YouTube embed)
Just use these to help you with ideas for section/button names for your own content list.
Visual Development
concept, production art, retail, editorial, figure, sketch, project name
Design
interactive/interaction, print, graphic, motion
multimedia, video, photography , project name
Animation
reel, storyboard, Character animation, 3d animation, 3d simulation, 3d modeling, motion design, figure, sketch, project name
Projects
Full development process for thesis and other projects
Call the button by the project name
Connecting
about, bio, resume
Create a projects folder containing sub-folders, for each category in your content map. Then upload the projects (or links to them) that you listed on your content map into those folders.
Example Folder directory structure:
Portfolio Website Site Plan (Folder)
Your Name-Content List (Google Doc)
Your Name-Projects (Folder)
Interactive (folder)
Smith's Gear website (project file)
*Grand Coney hml5 site (project file)
Espionage mobile game mock-up (project file)
Etc.