Landstown High School
Ty Swartz, MBA, CPP, USN Ret.
https://phojo.edublogs.org
tyler.swartz@vbschools.com
(757) 648-5500
Project Overview
Portfolios communicate accomplishments, works in progress, or personal history. Individuals use portfolios to showcase their work when applying for a job, pitching to clients, or applying for higher education. Traditionally a portfolio is a book containing design samples. Portfolios can also be electronic, easily and quickly sharing a designer’s work with anyone in the world.
In this project, students create the elements of a portfolio that features work they have completed and work to be completed, concentrating on a particular career area. As students create their portfolios, they plan, implement, and test their designs; students then reflect on and evaluate their work.
Student product: Portfolio
Note: Portions of this project align with the Adobe Certified Associate objectives. Within the instruction steps and technical guides, the specific learning objectives for the exam(s) are referenced with the following format: 1.1
Project Objectives
Project management skills
- Planning and creating a portfolio
- Describing the goals and uses of a portfolio
- Identifying the purpose and audience for a portfolio
- Organizing and managing content
- Creating flowcharts
Design skills
- Selecting appropriate content
- Designing for a specific audience and purpose
- Providing consistency and accessibility
- Providing universal navigation
Research and communication skills
- Investigating and researching career areas
- Communicating information to particular audiences
- Defining the goals and uses of a portfolio
- Soliciting and providing feedback
- Writing and editing content
- Selecting the important information
- Researching relevant job skills and career opportunities
Technical Skills
- General skills
- Building a portfolio
- Formatting and adding portfolio content
- Updating a portfolio
- Testing a portfolio
Project Steps
1. Goals of this project:
- Understand the goals and uses of portfolios.
- Research career areas in design and/or video production.
- Plan and create a flowchart for a portfolio.
- Select and organize content for a portfolio.
- Construct, review, redesign, and finalize a portfolio.
Students will create two portfolios. One during Communications Systems (8415) or First Semester and a final version at the conclusion of Communications Systems (8418) or end of Second Semester.
2. Activity: Planning a portfolio
- ACA Exam Objectives: 1.1, 1.2, 2.5, 1.1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.1, 1.2, 1.1, 1.1
- Suggested time: 100–200 minutes
This activity introduces the concept of a portfolio, its purpose, and its audience. It also explains how to select and organize content using flowcharts and the many different formats for portfolios. Students are ask to provide current portfolio examples or find portfolios to show the class and discuss their purpose and audience.
Note: Students can review the Information architecture activity or Analyzing website activity, focusing on how to design for usability.
3. Activity: Career research
Suggested time: 50-150 minutes
Students research career areas and job titles in their desired career area. Students will create a career research document and select the focus for their portfolios based on their research.
Note: Students can amend any content selections or their flowcharts if their career interests have changed as a result of their research.
4. Activity: Research and writing for design projects
- ACA Exam Objectives: 1.2, 2.1
- Suggested time: 50-100 minutes
Follow these steps to utilize this activity for this project:
- In this activity students will research and write content for theme, purpose, and audience, specifically the following:
- Writing, editing, organizing, and managing content
- Communicating information to particular audiences
- Accessing, evaluating, and, synthesizing content from multiple sources
- Understanding the journalistic code of ethics.
- When students have selected their content, they will write some or all of the following for their portfolios:
- An introduction or mission statement that focuses on the goals of the portfolio.
- A learning plan.
- Narratives for each project, including how it showcases their skills. For example, one way to integrate a client project into a web portfolio is to create a summary web page in the portfolio and link it to the client site, instead of adding a client site link to the main navigation. This summary page should contain a description of the client site, its goals, and its audience.
- Titles for each project to include in the opening of their portfolio.
5. Depending on the type of portfolio a student is building, students will discuss the benefits of the following when creating their portfolios:
- Using design principles, including sustainable design
- Using reusable design
- Designing for usability and accessibility
- Designing for multiple screens
- Creating design comps
- Creating wireframes
- Creating any needed images and graphics
- Conducting technical and usability testing
6. Students have time to create any additional summaries or written elements and build any design elements for their portfolios, with Photoshop and Illustrator, using the various techniques they have learned. Remind them that the look of their graphic elements should coordinate with their portfolio designs.
7. Students will build their portfolios based on their flowcharts. Depending on their portfolio type, they may need to create wireframes and design comps before proceeding with the construction of the portfolio.
Note: Depending on their content and career goals, some students may need to create a portfolio in multiple formats.
8. Below are some specific technical skills to consider, depending on the type of portfolio:
- For print portfolios: Using master pages and consistently applied styles in InDesign.
- Printing options and preparing print-ready page layouts.
- For web portfolios: Using CSS and templates.
- Creating a form – as a contact or feedback form as a way for potential employers or other people to contact them.
9. Activity: Design project review and redesign
- ACA Exam Objectives: 1.1, 2.6, 1.1, 1.4, 1.1, 2.6, 1.1, 2.6, 1.1, 1.4, 1.1, 1.4
- Suggested time: 50 minutes
This activity helps students to engage in a formal review and redesign process to help them improve and expand their design skills. Students have time to implement any changes to their portfolios based on the results of the review.
10. Activity: Presenting design projects
- ACA Exam Objectives: 2.6, 1.4, 2.6, 1.6, 1.4, 1.4
- Suggested time: 50-100 minutes
Follow these steps to utilize this activity for this project:
- Use this activity to teach your students how to present their work to an audience.
- For the mid-point portfolio students include the following in their presentation:
- Their career goals.
- The first iterations of their portfolios to show how they improved or changed their design or content and explain why they chose to make those changes.
- The types of jobs they are seeking, using specific examples from their research.
- The skills, qualifications, training, and so on necessary for a job in their career area.
- For the final portfolio students also include the following in their presentation:
- How they meet or plan to meet the requirements and skill set of the jobs they are seeking.
- What they have learned by making a portfolio and throughout the course.
- What they feel they still need to learn to realize their career goals.
- How they improved or changed their content or design and how their changes grew out of their revised purpose and target audience.
Assessment
Background preparation resources
For more teaching and learning resources on the topics in this project, search for resources from the community on the Adobe Education Exchange: http://edex.adobe.com/
Keywords
audience
flowchart
information architecture
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portfolio
purpose
visualization
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Adobe Certified Associate Exam Objectives
Adobe Certified Associate, Web Authoring objectives
- 1.1 Identify the purpose, audience, and audience needs for a website.
- 1.2 Identify web page content that is relevant to the website purpose and appropriate for the target audience.
- 2.5 Demonstrate knowledge of flowcharts, storyboards, wireframes, and design comps to create web pages and a site map (site index) that maintain the planned website hierarchy
- 2.6 Communicate with others (such as peers and clients) about design plans.
Adobe Certified Associate, Visual Communication objectives
- 1.1 Identify the purpose, audience, and audience needs for preparing image(s).
- 1.4 Communicate with others (such as peers and clients) about design plans.
Adobe Certified Associate, Video Communication objectives
- 1.1 Identify the purpose, audience, and audience needs for preparing the video.
- 1.2 Identify video content that is relevant to the project purpose and appropriate for the target audience.
- 2.6 Communicate with others (such as peers and clients) about design and content plans.
Adobe Certified Associate, Interactive Media objectives
- 1.1 Identify the purpose, audience, and audience needs for rich media content.
- 1.2 Identify interactive media content that is relevant to the purpose of the media in which it will be used (websites, mobile devices, and so on).
- 1.6 Communicate with others (such as peers and clients) about design and content plans.
Adobe Certified Associate, Graphic Design & Illustration objectives
- 1.1 Identify the purpose, audience, and audience needs for preparing graphics.
- 1.4 Communicate with others (such as peers and clients) about design plans.
Adobe Certified Associate, Print & Digital Media Publication objectives
- 1.1 Identify the purpose, audience, and audience needs for preparing page layouts.
- 1.4 Communicate with others (such as peers and clients) about design plans.
- 2.1 Demonstrate knowledge of the appropriate properties of page layouts for print, web and digital publishing.