Portfolio advice

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A portfolio is a collection of personal work that you have done over the previous year or previous years. It's a representation of who you are as a practitioner, the way that you think, and the way that you put ideas together.

With your portfolio when you show us what you can do it's an opportunity for us to understand what potential have, and it shows us your interests, and that's why we need those. We need to see who you are as a maker or creator.

A portfolio is a window into your own unique world through which we can see your skills, your potential, and your lived experience.

Portfolios are not just fine art and fashion. Portfolios are for multimedia, they are for digital, they are showing us how you communicate visually.

Previously, at Yale, we used to ask students to bring a physical portfolio and they will be asked to show the portfolio and talk through it. We've since shifted to PebblePad, our online portfolio tool, and this is a replacement for that technique.

Even though we've moved from physical portfolios to digital portfolios, the important thing is you. It's about your work, your creative expression, your aspirations, and that's what we want to capture, and that has not changed.

Before you prepare your digital portfolio, please check the course page. One of the reasons is it will have guidance for you, advice, things that you might want to include to give us an understanding of your desire and appetite for the discipline you're applying for.

It is super important to show a range of work in your portfolio because when you come to university, you will be given projects that are diverse.

So my portfolio is very mixed. I had a lot of art and design photography, graphics, digital design, but then also physical making.

We don't mind if you video a physical portfolio, we also don't mind if you share an incredible digital drawing. Equally maybe you've done this incredible shoot or you've done something creative in a space and you've managed to take great photos.

It was making sure that the process was very clear and it was not centred around finished works, it was all about the ideas and how they bounced off each other. And I remember being really passionate about including things that didn't go right.

If you as a performer of performing students you've done any performance in your current course or in your work experience show us, tell us.

When we look at a portfolio, we are obviously looking at a certain amount of technical ability, but we are looking about how people think, we're also looking about how people experiment, how people will take risks or try things. You often learn more from things that don't succeed than the things that do.

Storytelling in a portfolio is very important, like any aspect of design there's a narrative. So if you can to the best of your ability, each project you can have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It's a little bit like a DJ set. You don't want to play all your best stuff at the beginning and you don't want to play all the best stuff at the end. The idea is that you tend to start with something strong, finish with something strong, and then try to even the rest of the work out so there is an undulating pattern of up and down.

You don't want your portfolio to be the exact same as the person next to you. You want it to talk about you, your methods, why you took up a personal project if you have any in your portfolio.

We're looking for the possibilities of growth for someone to come to us and leave us being more than they were when they arrived.

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Hi. I'm Jessamy. I study fashion design here at the University of the Arts, London. And now I work in the student recruitment team. I'm here to guide you through the process of preparing a digital portfolio as part of your application to a pre-degree, undergraduate, or post-graduate course at UAL. The first thing you need to do is check the Apply section of your course web page to find out what kind of digital portfolio you'll need to create.

Depending on the course you've applied to, your portfolio may include images, sound, video, or written work. And it's likely there's course-specific work you'll need to include. Once you've done that, let's go through things step by step.

Step 1, decide what work to include. Just like when you create a physical portfolio, you'll need to start by selecting the work you want to include in each page. We recommend you include work from around three to five projects. This will help you demonstrate a range of ideas and skills. Support these projects with different types of work, such as pages from your sketchbooks, drawings, inspiration, and research work, or video reels, social media content, sound clips, or 3D objects.

For pre-degree and undergraduate courses in particular, don't forget that we aren't just looking for polished finished work, it's about your potential and the journey that you've been on. So remember to show how you've got to your idea, from the original concepts all the way through to the completed pieces. Tell us the story of each project by thinking, research, process, outcome as you build your portfolio. And let your own personal style shine through.

Step 2, prepare your work. Once you've made your selection, you'll need to start getting your work ready to add to your digital portfolio pages. This could include taking good quality photos, videos, or scans of any physical work, such as sketchbooks or 3D objects, such as sculpture, 3D models, and jewellery.

It might also include getting any video or sound work ready by editing them into shorter clips or showreels. The portfolio information on the course web page will give you more guidance around this if this is relevant to your course.

To photograph physical work, place it against a white or neutral background, use natural light rather than a flash, and try to illustrate the context and the scale of your work. For example, take shots of your work in its natural environment to demonstrate its use. Try photographing jewellery and fashion on a body or architectural ideas within a landscape. Make sure to take clear, close up shots so that nobody misses those small but very important details that make your work so unique.

Short videos of your physical work, such as sketchbooks, can also work really well.

Step 3, create your portfolio pages. Now you've selected your work, and have it ready in a digital format. You'll need to create the individual pages that will eventually form your portfolio. You can use any software you like, such as InDesign, PowerPoint, or free softwares such as Paint, Google Slides, or Canva.

The number of pages you'll need to include depends on the course you're applying to. You'll find all of this information on your course web page. For videos, sound clips, and animation work, you can just add the original file directly when you upload your pages. Just make sure any video or sound clips are edited so they can be reviewed easily.

Remember, we review your digital portfolio on a laptop screen, so it's important that your pages are clean and simple. When arranging your work, consider the following points. Think of each digital portfolio page as a sheet of A4 landscape paper. You can include more than one piece of work on a page, but it's important to avoid overcrowding. If a page is too small or cramped, we won't be able to see it properly. The use of white space can be a powerful presentation tool.

Use a grid as an invisible guide. This can help you create a clear and consistent structure. Avoid busy coloured backgrounds or decorative frames around your work. It's helpful to add project titles, themes, and captions to the pages to explain your work. Just make sure that you use a clear and simple font, and keep text short and concise. You'll have a chance to add longer, more detailed captions to your portfolio later in the process when you upload your pages.

Once you're happy with your individual portfolio pages, save each page as a separate file ready for the next step in the process. Our online portfolio tool, PebblePad, accepts many file types. PDFs aren't usually accepted, except by a very small number of courses. This will be clearly mentioned on the course web page.

Make sure each file is no more than 512 megabytes in size, and a maximum of 4,000 pixels in height or width.

Step 4, upload to PebblePad. So you've created your individual pages, but what's next? All you need to do now is upload your pages to PebblePad, our online portfolio tool. This is how your digital portfolio is created.

At this point, you'll have the opportunity to add captions to each page to explain more about your work. And you'll be able to add any video or sound files.

Your next step is to watch our guide to uploading your UAL portfolio to PebblePad video, which talks you through the process of logging in and uploading your digital portfolio pages.

Good luck with your application. And we hope to see you at UAL soon.

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Making it something that is about you is probably one of the most important things because nobody else can do what you can.

I whittled it down from six properties. I did in school to four because those were the ones that I could talk most about and talk about my process and how I got from the beginning to the end and the outcomes.

My advice for students who are applying for a mostly digital course is to not be afraid to include sketches you've done on paper, or things you've done in your sketchbook, or even acrylic or oil paintings that you've done because it shows that you're willing to explore different mediums.

Try and include the things that you think are the most honest to you or that you think let you tell stories about yourself.

I would say don't make your portfolio too crowded. Make sure it's very concise.

I asked a lot of my friends and family as well to look over it before I submitted it just getting people that are not really in the creative industry to see if they can tell the story that I'm trying to put through in the work. And yeah, I think that was the main part about making sure it was all captured digitally, the narrative had to be there.

So I think it's probably good to put in things that are mistakes or things that you think aren't as well-polished because you're going to be revealing the more interesting parts of your world or the world of your work within that without even really realising.

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