Brand yourself, design your future: Portfolio-building in the social media age

What I read

In this article, Scolere describes a study with graphic designers, focused on their online portfolios. These designers now face a different context of presenting their work, including the need for constant updating, the relationship between producing things and receiving instant feedback to what they made, and the need to conform their work to the constraints of the platform upon which it is posted.

As an introduction, Scolere describes “portfolio careers” as “project-based, contract, and entrepreneurial forms of employment.” Designers depend highly on examples of their previous work, and those examples become a form of self-promotion. Scolere indicates that the graphic design industry has grown, as has the prevalence of freelance designers, and these portfolios become a form of credentialing. She cites Neff, who indicates that portfolios “conflate job skills and clients’ prestige.”

Next, Scolere positions freelance creative work in a context of capitalistic economies. These have shaped design as a form of “doing what you love,” which—while attractive—is often a way of justifying low wages and inconsistent work (and a precarious financial existence.) She cites McRobbie’s view of a “Creativity dispotif” which positions creativity as a tradeoff between a creative career and insecurity.

Scolere then describes the role of social media and self-branding in portfolio development. Designers leverage online tools to show their work, and this means designers need to invest time in developing a reputation on these platforms (which only show work to those who either seek it out, or who are popular.) Behance and Dribbble are used as examples of these platforms, and Scolere briefly describes how the platforms work, and how designers use them in unique ways. She also emphasizes that these platforms are extremely large and often somewhat monopolistic (and therefore centers of gravity for designers.)

She then describes the research method of her study: she conducted 56 interviews with designers who use Behance, and other online tools. These interviews focused on how designers use the various portfolio platforms, how they promote their work, their process, and the types of work they conduct. A grounded theory approach to data collection and analysis was used to make sense of the data, into themes that are then presented.

Participants consider how work will show up in their portfolios, and may select projects with their portfolio presentation in mind (potentially rejecting content if it isn’t going to be useful in furthering their presentation of self.) Self-branding occurred across platforms, which “suggests a new temporal pace, constancy, intensification, and subjectivity” for designers. Since the portfolio shows up on many platforms, designers have begun to include not just their work, but the performative nature of being a designer, through things like sharing their “personal moments, sources of inspiration, and a consistent point of view” about design. Designers have identified a key role of each platform they use, and have then engaged in “platform-specific branding.” Sometimes, this impacts the presentation of the work (the format of it), and this consideration may impact the creation of the work itself—designers may do the primary graphic design job with an awareness of where it will ultimately show up in their portfolio.

Designers also considered connectivity as a continual set of pressure to constantly make things, and to quantify the work (through likes or views.) This might be optimized by being a “graphic designer influencer” which then perpetuates itself through a large population. But the ability to show work is limited by contractual requirements, and this may limit the ability for the designer to act in this influential role, as they may have gaps in public posting that negatively impact their reach. This adds pressure to the designer to not only produce good design work, but to produce it with regularity, and this may then impact the type of work the designer selects—choosing projects that permit posting, rather than projects they enjoy or are skilled in.

Scolere then concludes the text by describing how a portfolio has evolved, and how this has then changed the nature of the job itself. This may lead to the idea of “selling out,” which has always been a present concern of designers and artists, but this form of abdicating a personal value in exchange for popular acceptance has evolved and is “extremely nuanced” now, as the desire for popularity itself isn’t enough of a criteria. Scolere revisits the idea that freelance design has been positioned as a way of exchanging “doing what you love” for safety and security, and that this relationship has changed, and may require some sort of mandated oversite (such as a union) to enforce the idea that graphic designers provide meaningful value in the work itself, not just in the presentation of the work through a portfolio.

What I learned and what I think

I have not thought of the shift in portfolio presentation as an end-game for the actual design work, rather than as a sense of accomplishment extra to the work itself. This view is interesting: that by necessity, intrinsic motivation may have disappeared through the weird cycle of post-get the work to post-post-get the work to post… It doesn’t fit with the approach we had at Narrative, but it’s definitely what I’ve observed in other creative fields like tattooing. It’s actually exactly what some of my artists have been animatedly pissed off about: having to constantly self-promote, to the point that they are taking on projects with a view of how it will show up. Dylan stopped his work on my head continually to take process shots, even reshooting some of the stenciling so that he could get the “peeling back” as a unique set of content.

I also hadn’t really considered the idea that freelancing had been considered, in academic circles, as a construct of a “post-Fordist” (that’s new to me) and neoliberal (and, basically, bad) trade of freedom for paycheck. The phenomenon itself isn’t news to me, but the way it’s viewed as political (I guess everything is, or at least is considered that way in academia) is new. “Creative dispotif” is also new to me, and “dispotif” doesn’t appear to be a real word, although the closest definition I can find is “assemblage.”

I appreciate the challenge of evergreen content, which, hard enough for social media presence, is even harder when it needs to be the work itself and not content about the work. It really does mean constant production, and that would inevitably lead to shitty quality (or template-based content), which is exactly what we’ve seen. We struggled with this at Narrative, both because we didn’t have time to make it, and because of the NDA issues mentioned in the article (and also because of project durations; in a 12 week project, there’s nothing to show for… 12 weeks.) I don’t think it had a material impact on our ability to get work, because of the high price point we targeted, but I do know that since “thought leadership” was basically our only advertising channel, it had impact there. Since I became the thoughts-around-the-work, I ran out of words. That sucked.

Chad was always jealous of the ability to post graphic design work to graphic design platforms, and I think we all struggled with how you show strategy or interaction design work in a way that gets likes or views or followers. I’m not sure it’s possible in a compelling way in a static medium, and the video creation is just tedious (since I am old and don’t know how to use my phone.)

Also interesting to me: that "selling out" has changed, because you have to post all the time, and it's considered a good practice now.

I wonder what the takeaways are here for interaction designers and design researchers. These are behaviors and dynamics about portfolios that impact the content of the work, and I’m not sure if all of these behaviors and dynamics transfer. One that does transfer is self-promotion and thought leadership, but it’s gross enough and even more ridiculous when it’s a junior designer who clearly has nothing to say and nothing to contribute yet. Another might be the use of little animations, because people like things that move, which pushes towards Using Figma To Make Interfaces That Look Cool.

If this work broadly transfers, it means that the idea of a portfolio as a fixed item is just a dumb idea, which tracks with (but is different than) the template-GA-garbage case studies. (Does it?)

It would suck to be a graphic designer right now. The profession is pretty much toast for 99% of them. It’s the “UX is dead” phenomenon, but at scale.

This is one of a very few papers I could find on portfolios, but she cites others, so I’ll pull those to read next.