It’s the end of the year and many freelancers and studios will be winding back their work over the holiday period. Rather than seeing this time as a lull in your schedule, take the opportunity to fine tune your folio and get a kick start into the new year! The following article has a few suggestions on how to make the most of your "down time" while still enjoying the holiday season.
Refresh Your Portfolio
Printed or digital, this is a good time to refresh your folio. Start by looking at your work objectively, which pieces stand out as the best? Which ones can be taken out? When it comes to portfolios, it’s not about quantity, but quality. Try to have between 10 and 15 pieces that represent your best work. Remember to view your portfolio as a potential client would and also to include pieces that reflect the kind of work you would like to work on in the future.
Puppe.folio by Belen Fourcade
Update your Resume
You should always have a current resume on hand. A good way to do this is to save a copy online with a service such as Google docs and to have the printed version in a format such as an InDesign file so that the text can be replaced or added to quickly and easily. Don’t limit yourself to a word file, you’re a creative professional. If you don’t have a creative resume already, this is a good time to make one!
Resume designs by Hayden Miller
Work on Personal Projects
Personal projects are great. They’re all the fun of a dream project without the drawbacks of direction. Unfortunately personal projects don’t pay you any money, but they do look nice and can lead you to work on similar projects in real life.
Inspiration Pad by Marc Thomasset
Consolidate your Online Identity
If you’re like me you will probably have various profiles on all sorts of networking and portfolio sites, but how much social networking is too much? Once a year you should check out all of your profiles and update the ones you don’t use. These sites are good to filter traffic to your portfolio, but can be a waste of time to keep a frequent presence on.
Emoticon by Jessica Lyew-Ayee
Relax!
The tasks above are just suggestions and shouldn’t take too much time or effort. Take advantage of the holiday season and relax! If you’re working too hard, find something fun to do. Clear your head and recharge your creative batteries, you’ll need as much creative momentum as possible when work picks up in the new year.
WallpaperArt by Bram Vanhaeren &
Tim Vanhaeren
Comments or Questions?
Do you have any creative plans for the Holidays? If so, we would love to know about them. Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.
Community Project Update – All Good Things Must Come to an End
Vectortuts+ loves Illustration and discovering new talent, so we’re running a new community project that combines both, the Vectortuts+ Totem Project. The best thing is, you can be a part of it!
This is a reminder that it’s not too late to be part of the fourth and final totem. For more information on how to participate in the Totem Project, and to see the artwork from past collections, simply visit the Community: Totem Project.
The fourth and final totem will be posted soon so you don’t have much time to upload your artwork before it’s published.
If you have any questions about how to submit artwork, would like to comment on the Flickr Submissions or want to suggest ideas for future projects, you can do so via our Twitter @Vectortuts our Facebook Group, or leave a comment at the end of this post.
We’re currently planning some fun new community projects for 2011, so let’s make the last community post for the year the best one ever!