Refreshed portfolio

Killing darlings. That's what refreshing your portfolio means. I've made a new portfolio hundreds of times. In the beginning of my career I always needed to shift papers from the plastic sleeves. Nowdays I have to make a new Powerpoint and upload it in Slideshare.

Another difference with now is that I'm more conscious about which work to leave in and which work to leave out. And which following order I have to use. Years of showing books at agencies and the portfolio quarter in Miami Ad School taught me that. But it's not easy. Your book is your creative identity. It should reflect who you are as a creative and what kind of work you stand for.

First of all, I hacked and slashed away all the one-offs that were less than excellent. A very sympathetic print ad for De Lijn and a funny TV-commercial for lollipop brand Vertigo were out. Then I looked at all the campaigns. As there are still non executed ideas in there, one of them had to go, because I've got more actual published work now. As a rule of thumb it's good to reconsider the non-profit clients, so I took out Greenpeace. The work was kind of outdated anyway. Then I put in an award winning online campaign and the IKEA case study. I changed the following order a bit and uploaded it.

Later on, I was still doubting about Shelter, a poster campaign that got a in-book nomination for the student D&AD. It's a good, simple idea, but it's non-profit and compared to the other ideas I felt that it didn't really stood out anymore. So I decided to take it out. And I swapped the order of the obituary print ad with Patrick the Extra, so the presentation starts and end with work for television.

Because I've had trouble embedding the new presentation, you can see the result here.