Finding a Theme

This topic contains 4 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by  cdvick 3 years ago.

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  • October 29, 2012 at 2:15 am #371

    Tburch
    Subscriber

    Hi class. We just spoke about portfolio identities, which gives us a smooth transition into this week’s readings on planning and designing web portfolios. I am excited about this for two reasons. First, I really like portfolios, and I wish every class had portfolios. Second, I really like designing things and planning out what needs to go where. I have done a great deal of this in my internship, and have had to deal with a lot of information architecture, which I believe will be a main part of planning and designing out portfolios. I think that this will really utilize skills that we have learned in all of our classes, especially regarding organization and audience.

    So, we want our web portfolios to be as easy to understand and navigate as possible, all while being attractive and representative of our “portfolio identities.”   We will assume by the point where we are designing the portfolio that we have already selected our “artifacts” and have pretty well established our portfolio identities. How to we present it? In Portfolios for Technical and Professional Communication, chapter 3 discusses selecting your artifacts and then finding a metaphor.  This book describes it as “a way of creating consistency and a sense of individuality”(pg 35).  Have you guys thought about a possible  metaphor to represent your portfolio? Have you considered an overall theme? I feel that a theme should be  clean and professional, while still unique. What is appropriate for our web portfolios? Perhaps a web portfolio that has a car theme, where you spin the steering wheel to access the table of contents maybe isn’t appropriate for a capstone course web portfolio.

    The book separates themes/metaphors into different categories: Professional Personality, Personal Interest, Conceptual, and Symbol. When considering your audience, which would seem the most appropriate for your web portfolio? I have had a great emphasis in advertising and marketing in my internship, should I set up a cute billboard as a table of contents? I also really enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer, does that mean I should have a blonde girl vanquishing vampires as a theme for conquering my internship? It all depends on how I want my audience to understand my portfolio and my identity. How has your internship affected your writing identity, and how to you want it to be presented?

    To answer that for myself, I have really gained a greater understand of rhetoric, and have a better understanding of design and advertising. Fortunately, I have had a decent amount of training in some adobe programs, and design and information architecture have actually been very big staples of my internship. I feel that as these are my strengths, perhaps I can find a subtle way to make that into a theme. Can you guys find a subtle way to make a theme out of your portfolio identities?

    Lastly, I think that the structure is very important to discuss. This thing needs to be easy to navigate and have some sort of organization. Have you thought about how it will be organized? The book goes over categorizing your artifacts. My artifacts will probably be organized similarly to my poster, because I want consistency in my overall appearance and identity for the course. This was way longer than expected. I hope you guys are progressing well with your work, and if you want any assistance with Adobe Indesign, I would have no problem meeting up and helping you out. Happy Discussion!

    October 31, 2012 at 10:47 pm #372

    ncarpini
    Author

    I’ve really been struggling with trying to figure out a theme for my portfolio, and what I want my portfolio to say about me as a professional. I’ve done the strangest mix of stuff for my internship; they don’t really fit together. I was somewhat intrigued by the puzzle theme, though. I can most relate to the puzzle because although the pieces don’t really look like they’d go together, they still fit together to make one picture. If I had to pick an interest to theme my portfolio after, it would have to be writing, but I need to put more thought into that to make it work. I really love hockey, but somehow I don’t think I can pull off a professional portfolio with a hockey theme. All of this makes my head hurt. I plan on putting a lot of thought into this this coming weekend.

    After reading through the WordPress book, I started looking at different themes for my blog site to make it more portfolio-esque. That’s another thing I plan on doing this weekend.

    Looking forward to our poster workshop tomorrow! I’ll be that girl with the sketch on a napkin. (Harry Potter started on a napkin, though. Encouragement!)

    November 1, 2012 at 8:48 pm #374

    MikeSecret
    Author

    The Portfolio has definitely given me more trouble than the poster thus far, so I was glad that we are doing more reading on it. However, I’m glad to say that I do have a theme, or at least something that can be considered close to a theme: diversity. I looked at the Artifact Genre chart in the PTPC reading and realized that my articles stretch across several genres. After seeing that, I thought about how I could use that to my advantage and help me state, not just what my portfolio is about, but how I grew and what I learned about being a professional writer at Bowles Rice.

    What I wanted to show with my portfolio was how much a professional and technical writer can contribute to a law firm. In order to do this, I want to show a wide range of projects that required many different types of writing. I agree that structure is important and one of the hardest things I think I’ll encounter in my portfolio is how to show so many different things and still make it easily navigable. I’ve played around with a few ideas on how to set up my portfolio and I’ll let the class know when we have our portfolio peer review class.

    November 2, 2012 at 1:15 pm #375

    astrittm
    Author

    I’m gonna have to agree with you guys, I’ve definitely been struggling more with the portfolio than I have with the poster. With the poster I feel like I have pretty much everything I wanna do planned out, while with the portfolio, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I have an idea about what I want to do, but I don’t know what I want it to say about me. I’m glad that these readings focused on the portfolio this time around.

    I have started to put things together with my portfolio. There are a number of documents I want to include in the portfolio, some of the being the interviews I have done for the Alumni Spotlight. The section titled “Artifacts and contents of your portfolio” (PTPC 32) really helped me go through my documents and narrow it down to the ones I could deem worthy for use in my portfolio. Since social media was such an enormous aspect of my internship I was wondering if I should focus on that. The drawbacks from this are that I’m already focusing on social media for the poster and it would leave out a tremendous amount of the other work I’ve done for the Association.

    I need help with a theme. Any ideas you guys might have would be fantastic. Right now I’m thinking I want my portfolio to show how much I’ve had to adjust and adapt my writing to meet the needs my internship is asking of me.

    • This reply was modified 3 years ago by  astrittm.
    November 2, 2012 at 1:32 pm #377

    cdvick
    Author

    The portfolio has given me some trouble as well, mostly with how to organize it. The work I’ve done so far has been a mixed bag of stuff, and the projects have felt completely different from each other. I’ll have to sit down and take a closer look at the projects to try and find some similarities – just to figure out how to tie them all together.

    Since I’m working with an international audience, I’m thinking that’s what I need to focus on. Maybe focus on the audience and not so much on each individual project. I guess this is where my theme would come in as well. After finishing the reading it’s still hard for me to say what I want my theme to be, but I think focusing on who my audience is will be a decent start. Writing for an international audience has been interesting because I can’t say things that I normally would in my writing – people from other countries may not understand certain references that are being made because they aren’t familiar with our culture.

    But anyway, I feel like I still have a lot to think about with the portfolio. I think it’s going to be more difficult than the poster, but I’m looking forward to it more for some reason.

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