Whenever I’ve moved on from a job, it’s been very difficult to let go. I periodically (and sometimes more often then periodically), monitor the web sites I worked on or created, just to see how things are progressing. Recently, I’ve found some things not necessarily progressing poorly, but definitely not progressing in the direction I would have moved them. And moreso, not in the direction I had imagined I started them down.

The most common advice (particularly from people not in the industry), is that it’s not my problem anymore. Or that there’s nothing I can do about it. And in a way, this is very true advice. However, it doesn’t relieve the disappointment I feel by seeing something I’ve worked hard at, and put a lot of time (years, in some cases) and effort into creating. I know I can’t be bitter, especially since I moved on from these jobs by my own choice. Some of these were full-time jobs that it was just time for me to move on. Others were freelance projects that I had circumstances that were out of my control. But in any case, it’s still difficult to let go from old work.

I suppose every former client has their own good reasoning for taking the project in the direction they are, and again, I can’t say that they are doing anything “wrong” (well, except in one or two cases), but still, not easy. Today, I came across an interesting read on webworkerdaily.com: “When Clients Mess Things Up“. It offered a few tips (particularly for freelance or consultancy jobs) on what do to when clients want to push things on their own.

The full list is interesting, but I would have to say #1 seems like the best, yet also the hardest to follow pice of advice: “Take out the emotion”. This doesn’t mean to take out the emotion when you are working on the project, this means that once the project is done, and your piece of the puzzle is complete, move on and don’t let yourself fret over what happens next. Some of the other advice is to be proactive at being involved on the project in the future (which is also good advice), but sometimes that just isn’t a possibility, so you need to just let it go.

While it’s hard to let go, it can’t stop me from creating new projects, and from putting in the same time and passion into them. It just means that I have to deliver the best that I can deliver, and what happens after that is what will happen. Hard as it may be, sometimes it’s just the best thing for the designer to do.

I struggled with this question about 8 months ago when I did the last update of my portfolio, and I’m struggling with it once again. Taking a look at both old and new projects, and projects that are currently on my portfolio and projects I want to add. It was a tough decision then, but now I think I have a lot of new projects that I think are worthy of being up as well.

So now, I am forced with so many questions – Do I remove projects that are currently up? Do I add projects done before my last update? Do I limit the number of examples? Having moved almost exclusively to web, do I remove print and logo categories? All these questions, with mixed feelings of what the answer might be.

I’ve often heard that a small portfolio of just a handful of your absolute BEST work is really what matters. However, having experience both searching and hiring for jobs, I tend to disagree. I think a diverse portfolio showing different projects (whether it be different clients, brands, or channels) is extremely important. The more clients or projects you worked on, the more pieces you should ideally have for your portfolio. If you are serious about your craft, every project you do should be portfolio worthy (although I’m not suggesting you add EVERYTHING to your portfolio), so a numerical limit should not be imposed. If it’s a good representation of your design sense, then add it.

When I am hiring a new designer, I also like to see older works. I’m a big believer in constantly learning and improving, so projects across a long time span can show me the progression of the designer. I can overlook some less than inspiring pieces, if you have been able to improve in the long run. Even though I tend to be my own worst critic when designing, I still have trouble deciding what to pull from my portfolio (yes, I have a large portfolio). But, what I try to do is have a diverse collection, a good representation of old and new, and even some student projects, which I personally think are great to have.

Another issue is, I often work from a “templated” layout on the web (particularly with email). While I wouldn’t want to put each and every campaign in my portfolio, I did try to select some visually different emails, within the same layout, to show my ability to make the layout flexible, so that each campaign can be unique in its own way.

To me, it’s not simply a matter of how many pieces you have. I’ve seen great portfolios with a handful of pieces, and great portfolios with dozens of pieces, and I’ve seen very poor portfolios with those numbers as well. The true purpose of a portfolio is to showcase your strengths. If that can be done with just a few pieces, great. If it takes more, that’s fine too. If a Creative Director (or hiring manager) is serious about what they are looking for, they will pay close attention to the work as a whole, no matter what the number.

The one cautionary tip I will give to those with a large portfolio is to be clear about your role in the project (and be honest!). Don’t try and misrepresent yourself, as it will catch up to you in the end. If you were only the production artist, following the lead of an Art Director, be sure you’re clear about that. If you were only the Front-end Developer on a beautifully designed Web site, make sure you state that. And be prepared to speak about your roles in the interview process.

Now… back to the daunting task of updating my own portfolio….

Anyway, on to the list:

Google Analytics

Ok, to be honest, Google Analytics is not new really new to me. I’ve used for years when I launched this site. It’s a great FREE tool for basic Web site analytics. However, I’ve only used it just for the basics… there is so much GA can do! In my current position, I’ve dived deeper into the GA toolset, and encourage any Web designer to do the same. While it may not be as robust as some of the high priced analytics tools out there, it’s still pretty powerful, and a great place to learn the basics to prepare you if you need tomake the jump to the it’s higher priced counterparts.

Google Website Optimizer

A “sister product” to Google Analytics (along you can run one with out the other) Google Website Optimizer is another FREE tool from Google that allows for A/B and multivariate testing on your Web site. As someone who has worked extensively in online marketing and landing page optimization, I’m very excited to dig deeper into this tool and really see what it’s capabilities are. In fact, I’ve just recently set up my first A/B test, and hope to share that process here in the near future.

Coda

While not free, Coda is a great (low priced) text editor with some nice features, and some pretty useful plugins. Like many designer/developers, I was a regular DreamWeaver user, but as my developer knowledge grew I found myself using the WYSIWYG features of DW less and less, and for the past year and a half, used them rarely, if ever, and using just the code view of DW. Even thought I knew pure text editors were out ther, I never made the switch. Then I was introduced to Coda, and watched by DW software collect dust… I don’t know enough about text editors to say Coda is the best, but I found it a good fit for my needs.

J-Query

If you’ve read my blog before, you obviously know I’m a big fan of Flash (and like to think I know a thing or two about it…) Well, jQuery is a javascript library that allows developers to create a lot of animated effects where you’ll think it was done in Flash. The most common use of jQuery seems to be image galleries and animated navigation, but, as I’m slowly learning, there are lots of cool things you can do with it. Amont the many great things about jQurey is it’s free, easy to learn (and implement), and there are literally thousands of resources and tutorials. Flash still has it’s uses, but you might find jQuery is more suitable for a lot of things you previously thought you could only do in Flash.

Bronto

While it may not be the most robust and well-known email marketing software program out there, if you’re in need of an email marketing package, I strongly suggest checking out Bronto. Very easy to set up and use, and with some great tracking and reporting tools, I look forward to every email marketing campaign I send.

FogBugz

While it may have a funny name (that actually a struggle for some people to get used to saying…) FogBugz is a great multi-user project tracking tool with some great features to allow different users to easily communicate with each other on projects. I will say, I’m not sure if it’s the best fit for larger companies, but for smaller businesses with a lot of smaller projects that still need multiple user involvement, FogBugz is a great tool. Simple search functions to see where jobs are and who they are with, and nice email integration for updates and notifications, if you’re in the market for a tool to improve communication with your production team, definitely check out FogBugz.

That’s it. Six new (to me) tools for online design that I have found very helpful the last 6 months or so. As mentioned, I hope to put some more information about all of these tools (and others) on the blog soon, so if you’re interested in any of them, please check back.

Thanks for reading!

Some of the ones that I’ve used include:

kuler Create is a nice tool to from Adobe that helps create color themes. You can select your own colors and see what are complimentary colors, or you can create custom themes (and browse user submitted custom themes) to see how colors look when used together. Neat little tool.

FontStruct is a neat little tool by font retailer FontShop for creating, editing and sharing fonts. While the tool is very user intuitive and pretty powerful for a free access application, creating a full font family is still a long, tedious job. But, if you have a nice font style in mind that you want to create, a great tool to allow you to do it.

Dummy Text Generator is an extremely useful tool (especially when doing print mockups or proof of concepts) that creates dummy text (i.e. “lorem ipsum plorem”) for placement in mockups. It allows you to select a number of words or characters as well as the number of paragraphs to create a simple block of copy. Great for comping jobs when you don’t have final writing. It also allows you to go back to a writer with information about how much copy is needed for a job.

I’ll have to explore some of the other listed resources when I have more time, but I’ve found some great stuff from on SixRevisions.com, so I trust that this is another great list.

Some of them on the list I use as my first stop when trying to get logo ideas (LogoPond, LogoSauce, LogoLounge) and others I’ve come across before, but not overly familiar with (LogoLog, SpoonFed, SpeckyBoy) but most are new to me, so definitely a lot of stuff here to check out.

A really great thing about these logo galleries is that they contain user submitted logos that are sometimes still in the design process, which other designers comment give feedback on. It’s a great way to get objective opinions from other professionals on logos you are working on to know if you are heading in the right direction. Even if you don’t submit your own logos, reading the comments on others can really teach you how to look at ALL logos.

So what do I mean by “sort of”? Well, I say “sort of” because I just put up a handful of design projects, definitely not the full scope of my graphic design portfolio, or all of my Web design and Flash development projects.

I still have quite a few items that I’d like to get up there, and I fully intend to, very soon in fact. Which is why I left the launch date of March 2008 (notice, I wasn’t specific as to what day in March…). But at least there’s enough up there to start to get my work seen by others.

I’ve really been enjoying looking at some of my older projects, even the student work that I’ve done, and see the good (and unfortunately not-so-good) work that I’ve done. I’ve seen some real progression in my work. I have even posted some graphic design projects from college, so check out the portfolio and see if you can see any improvement. I plan to post some more of my “older” work soon, as well as some new stuff I haven’t even finished yet, so check back soon for updates. And of course there are the design tutorials that I’ve been planning on doing, so hopefully I can get those up soon too.

I also say “sort of”, because this being a one-man show (in my spare time to boot), there are definitely some kinks to be worked out. But at least with things live, I can get things checked out, and hopefully have some others take a look and catch things I might have missed by staring at it too long. So check things out, and feel free to comment (constructive criticism is always welcome) and let me know what you think.