All language subtitles for 05 Plan the Layout.en-US

After you know why and for who you are creating your portfolio,

you can decide what will go in it.

In my case, I am designing a portfolio to license my designs.

More specifically, five wallpaper designs in two colorways,

so 10 images in total.

It is always a good idea to plan your layout in paper first.

I'm a very geometric designer.

I love grids and guides to make things look as polished as possible.

This adds value to the design.

Your portfolio is an editorial design.

One of the principles that is very characteristic of this kind of design is repetition.

This means that you repeat the layout,

not necessarily on every page as in the catalog,

but on every other page or even create

two or three layouts that you repeat in a loop throughout the portfolio pages.

This allows to create a cohesive portfolio as if it is part of the same person around.

I have a grid book that I constantly use for this.

I have this book called Layout Essentials,

100 Design Principle for Using Grids is by Beth Tondreau,

the publisher is Rockport.

I know there is a new edition of this book.

I have had this for around 10 years, honestly.

As the title says,

each spread is a grid design.

You can see here the design, the layout,

a brief explanation and then how you can apply that layout in real life.

Honestly, this book is just beautiful to have

around because you can get ideas, design ideas.

You can get inspired by the layouts.

It's just a very beautiful book to look,

and it can expose yourself to

a variety of options that you may not have considered before.

After looking at this book,

I'm going to work on my layout now.

I'm going to do it on this notebook over here,

and I'm going to start by deciding that I don't want

my portfolio to be for trad orientation.

The traditional letter size,

I don't want to do that.

I want to do a landscape orientation because this is

a digital portfolio and I want to use

the most space available in the monitor where people see it.

I know I have five images,

so I think that a three-column grid will work because I can arrange them,

the patterns individually like this,

and they are five.

I'm going to have a blank space here, white space,

to put my logo, my website,

and the name of the collection.

This is a good idea or recommendation that in your portfolio you have,

at least your website or your basic information in each page that you

have designs because if someone just prints that page,

do a screenshot to show it to someone,

and it gets mixed with other designs of other designers,

your information is still there,

and they can always contact you,

and they won't get lost.

I think that I'm going to use this layout for my patterns,

but I want to each colorway,

have like a cover picture and.

These are going to be simple patterns,

but I want to do a cover picture with a markup showing my wallpaper applied to a room,

so it gives a more stylish design and look and feel to the portfolio.

Over here I can write the name of the collection,

my website or anything similar,

and maybe an icon that describes the wallpaper that is a treat for that wallpaper.

I think that this is a good layout to work with in my portfolio.

It doesn't have to be perfect,

but you just try to figure out how to

fit the number of images in the space that you have available.

It may end up different in portfolio, but that's okay.

Now, before you continue this class,

take some time and plan your layout.

You can look at books,

magazines, or on the web for inspiration.

Then continue to the next lesson to learn how to prepare your images for your portfolio.