Design Jobs Part 2: How to cut your clips 

When you’re a kid, your family puts every finger-painted masterpiece you produce on the fridge and displays it for the world to see. Although you are honored on the fridge with only the best of intentions, this is crippling in ways you may not notice.

The fridge display makes you feel like a top-notch artist, an original, and all of your work is creative gold. Your inflated ego has lost the ability to self-critique.
 
Every single design job is going to ask to see your work. It’s hands down the most important part of your application.

Although portfolio Web sites with unlimited space are becoming increasingly more common, many of the internships I’ve applied for have asked for printed copies of my clips. I’ve been asked to send in anywhere from 5-20 clips with an application. 

I, too, was a fridge kid. It’s really hard for me to decide what’s portfolio and application worthy, and what should remain as a .pdf hidden on my computer to look back at and see how far I’ve come. Of course everything I’ve done is my best work, right? It’s hard for me to pick the top 20 samples of my work. Five simply is painful. 

First, and most obvious, the clips you submit should fit the job you want. If you want to work for a newspaper, submit some pages you’ve done.

These can be pages for publication, or just mock newspaper pages you’ve done as a class project. If you want to work as a graphic artist, a variety of illustration, typography and layout will probably be your best bet.

I really think this is pretty subjective and pretty hard to decide. Your best bet is to call the organization you are applying to and ask what kind of work they are looking for.
 
The clips that should ALWAYS be included in your portfolio are the ones that have won awards or been recognized in some way. If they’ve made it into a student show or placed in a design contest — if someone with a design eye other than you thinks they’re good, they probably are. If you’ve listed “awards” on your résumé, you want to include the clips that won them. 

But not everyone has published work or enters contests. Many students only have class work, and I think that’s fine. If you don’t have a lot to choose from, it comes down to choosing the very best of what you do have, which can be difficult.

The process often leaves student designers sitting in front of a pile of class projects, wondering which ones will catch an employer’s eye. 

This is where a second opinion comes in. 

If you can’t choose your best work from that pile of clips, I’m betting your design professors can give you some helpful feedback. Take everything you’re thinking about submitting and get some feedback.

Ask your creative advertising, cartography, photography, typography, infographic, page design, anything visual professors what they would submit. Chances are they’re all going to have slightly different opinions, so make sure to ask them why. They’ll be able to look at your work with a more critical and objective eye than you would.

Even if you disagree, they’ll help you see positive and negative aspects of your clips that you may not have considered before. Plus, most of your design professors have been in the same situation, and may offer insight into which clips work best or show your style in the best light. 
 
On the technical side, since I’ve never encountered an application that asks for more than 20 clips, I made a single .pdf of my top 20 pieces. If the application asks for less, I simply remove the ones I feel fit that specific job the least until I have the desired amount.

I never send in hard copies of the published work, or tearsheets unless they are specifically asked for. I’ve found most people don’t mind if you reprint your work onto manageable 8.5-by-11 copies. 

Whatever job you’re applying for, make sure the work you submit is representative of your style, and that you’re familiar enough with it to answer any questions about the design decisions you made while producing it.