Applying for Graphic Design: How to Impress Us
This article is essentially a cheat code for applying to work with us. It won’t guarantee you success of course, but it will make your application as strong as it possibly could be.
- Prepare a great portfolio
- Prepare a great CV
- Avoid common blunders
Prepare a Great Portfolio
The best Portfolios:
- Show your work clearly with large images (1–3 images per page). (Don’t make us zoom in!)
- Focus on projects that demonstrate not just creative inspiration but also the mastery of core design principles (like balance, legibility, alignment, space, etc.). “Boring” projects (e.g. laying out a page of dense text) can often be the most interesting to us in revealing your abilities.
- Include headings that say what you did. (Otherwise, this is often quite ambiguous. E.g. if you show a logo, did you invent the logo, update it, or are you just showing the company logo for context?)
- Keep additional text minimal and to the point. It isn’t really important to tell us about the client, for instance. Any additional text should be there only to give a bit more detail about exactly what you did.
- Have a minimalist overall design that allows your work to take centre-stage. The layout should be thoughtful and clear, demonstrating an understanding that less is more. No need to make everything visually exciting.
- No need for intro text, about you, etc. I’ve rarely read any text like this that added anything useful. But if you think it will, keep it brief and put it last.
We prefer Portfolios that are in A4 portrait format as these are much easier to review. (But it is of course unfair to disadvantage an applicant for a different format, so we don’t.)
Aside: Why a PDF Document?
We require applicants to provide their Portfolios as documents in PDF form (rather than a website). This is for several reasons:
- It provides an immediate demonstration of your document layout ability.
- How you present your Portfolio is a design decision like any other. Like any design task, you’ve got to consider your audience. Applicants who understand this will present their Portfolio in a way that helps the recruiting company to easily consume it. A document is ideal for this (see why, below). Websites, by contrast, are ideal only for the applicant, because they take less effort to maintain.
- Applicants seriously persuing a graphic design career ought to have a document version of their Portfolio. If not, investing some time in producing one should be obviously worthwhile, as other jobs may require a similar format. Producing such a document isn’t that hard to do, so its existence demonstrates both that the applicant is able to do so and that they care enough to have done so.
Documents are the ideal format for the recruiting company because:
- They’re usually far more curated than websites. Even though they’re often only digital, there’s something limited about a document. It isn’t useful for the recruiting company to have to wade through dozens and dozens of projects. Just show us your best work.
- They’re usually better designed than websites, because applicants are graphic designers, not web designers. Good web design is really, really hard. Portfolio websites nearly always suffer from major design issues. Usually, they favour designs that look cool, not designs that are easy to use and make information clear to a recruiter.
- Documents are amazingly easy to use. You just look and scroll. Zero cognitive load. By contrast, every applicant’s website is different. The reviewer has to think about how to navigate each unique menu design and site structure. The result is that websites take 10 times as long to review, and (because of poor design) are often still less enlightening.
- Documents just work. Websites often don’t. There could be compatibility issues, websites can become unavailable, or some widget breaks. Even when websites work perfectly, they still have to load; documents are instant.
- You can store a document more easily than a website. This crucial information about the applicant can be saved or printed if necessary. You won’t come back later and find that it’s completely different.
I could go on. The point is that a document Portfolio makes it easier for us to appreciate your work.
And we need it to be easy, because we receive literally hundreds of Portfolios. This deluge means that we have to be pretty ruthless, or the application process will be physically impossible to manage. We physically can’t spend all that long reviewing each Portfolio — not in the first stage. So, please, make it easy for us to see that you should make the cut.
What do we like to see?
We love to see examples of:
- Editorial design/text layout, whether it’s a brochure, catalogue, report, or something else with a decent amount of text. Text looks really bad unless designers know what they’re doing.
- Logo design, where the logo is unique, creative, inspired, recognisable, legible, and in some way cleverly meaningful (and not generic). If it’s a logo for a bakery, it’s not just the name inside an outline of a loaf. If it’s a tech company, it’s not just the name in a squarish font.
- Infographics, where the design demonstrates an ability to present complex information or data in a way that’s easy for the viewer to grasp.
- Anything that demonstrates you solved a complex design problem.
While illustration skills, motion graphics, 3D graphics, web design and video/photography, are impressive, they’re nice-to-haves only. The above is crucial for us to see.
We really don’t like to see:
- Cluttered designs with too many elements competing for attention.
- Excessive designs where everything is over-the-top and explosive (unless it’s done in a highly artistic way).
- Generic designs overly-reliant on stock graphics.
- Text within the design that, through negligence, is illegible.
Prepare a Great CV
Although we state that a CV isn’t required, we didn’t say that a well-presented CV won’t give you an advantage:
- CV layout is a complex design task, so an amazing opportunity to show us how you approach a design problem. This is a double-edged sword of course, as if your CV is presented badly it will harm your application.
- A lack of a CV can seem a little unprofessional, like the applicant isn’t serious about their career. We try not to be too swayed by this, especially if the applicant has provided a well-designed Portfolio.
A great CV:
- Sets out the important information really clearly. It lists past experience in date-descending order (i.e. most recent first) and gives details about the applicant’s education, prioritising the display of this information so the reviewer doesn’t have to hunt for it.
- Uses a legible, professional font at a reasonable size, with text and background colours appropriately paired for readability.
- Might have a very simple design, but crucially, demonstrates that the applicant cares about balance, alignment and typography.
Avoid common blunders
Far too many applicants still present applications with the following basic issues:
- When the Portfolio is provided as a link, either: (a) the link isn’t clickable; (b) the website doesn’t work; (c) the link is only provided as a QR code (we’re not going to review any portfolios on a mobile phone); (d) the link is password protected (what’s so sensitive?) — this is tedious; (e) the link hasn’t been set to public mode so anyone can view it.
- Basic spelling and grammar mistakes.
Please avoid these!
We look forward to receiving your application
We hope this has been useful for you, and we wish you good luck with all the opportunities you are pursuing.
