“Request for full portfolio”

I don’t understand why a business would tell it’s client to “send in a request to see why we are as good as we say we are”. The main reason why a client would like to work with a particular service provider/person/company/business is because they like their work – that is the FIRST consideration. Other factors like price, proximity, etc. come in later – once I’ve decided that I like the work that this particular company has done previously, then I will go onto answering the next questions.

So why would a design studio tell a client that in order to see our “whole” portfolio you need to send in a request? [ One reason would be that the design studio wants to know who are the people who are taking an interest in its services and would like to follow-up with them – but that’s a very small reason to make the portfolio “exclusive”. ]

Another reason for making the full portfolio not available to everyone could be because the design studio has a very extensive portfolio and because they have suddenly become very popular online, their servers are not being able to take the load of the online traffic thus generated – so they put up only some of their best work and tell the very-interested people to send in a portfolio request for the rest of the works. But that too defeats the purpose – instead of asking for a portfolio request, the studio could easily use a service like Flickr and upload the rest of their work there – or they could use a free blog software like WordPress or Blogger and upload their entire portfolio there.

What is the purpose of making your portfolio available on request?

Hey Naina,

that’s a good point you discuss here. In my opinion, the purpose of showing the “full” is more an artistic question rather than informational. It’s not intented to give a full overview of the quality of a design agency, mainly because the full portfolio will still consist of selected work, and thus will not contain work the designer is not particularly pround of. I think that I’d like to see more work of a designer because I like what (s)he does, and once I’ve seen the basic portfolio I got a basic idea of the work that has been done. As I like it, I’d like to see more of the work that has been done for my own wieving pleasure.

It’s like asking a photographer to put all his pictures online and not just a small subset. When I see a nice photgrapher website I like, I always tend to want to see much more of their work, but I need to ask him, and i rarely get an answer. If a museum displays all of his works directly, it’ll take too much time too see all of it, and the important works that no one should miss might be missed by people, because of their own lack of artistic knowledge. It’s a different question I agree, but I think a filterning is necessary. Thus, it’s a good thing to provide only a basic porfolio where only the major works are presented, and the other works would be available only if the guy desires to see more of it, but for it’s own personal interest. I agree that he should not need to “ask” for it, but just click a link saying “wanna see more”. Like on your website, you provide only a small porfolio of you work, but I cannot see more of it unless I ask it to you. So I think, it’d be a good think that I could see more of it by clicking on a “see more…” link. Filtering is necessary, but more data should be always available for those interested withouht the need to ask exclusive portfolios.

4 comments

Vlad says:

September 5, 2006 at 8:09 pm

Hey Naina,

that’s a good point you discuss here. In my opinion, the purpose of showing the “full” is more an artistic question rather than informational. It’s not intented to give a full overview of the quality of a design agency, mainly because the full portfolio will still consist of selected work, and thus will not contain work the designer is not particularly pround of. I think that I’d like to see more work of a designer because I like what (s)he does, and once I’ve seen the basic portfolio I got a basic idea of the work that has been done. As I like it, I’d like to see more of the work that has been done for my own wieving pleasure.

It’s like asking a photographer to put all his pictures online and not just a small subset. When I see a nice photgrapher website I like, I always tend to want to see much more of their work, but I need to ask him, and i rarely get an answer. If a museum displays all of his works directly, it’ll take too much time too see all of it, and the important works that no one should miss might be missed by people, because of their own lack of artistic knowledge. It’s a different question I agree, but I think a filterning is necessary. Thus, it’s a good thing to provide only a basic porfolio where only the major works are presented, and the other works would be available only if the guy desires to see more of it, but for it’s own personal interest. I agree that he should not need to “ask” for it, but just click a link saying “wanna see more”. Like on your website, you provide only a small porfolio of you work, but I cannot see more of it unless I ask it to you. So I think, it’d be a good think that I could see more of it by clicking on a “see more…” link. Filtering is necessary, but more data should be always available for those interested withouht the need to ask exclusive portfolios.
Naina says:

September 5, 2006 at 10:11 pm

You’re right Vlad – I too would prefer that approach I suppose. I am re-designing my website and there are some sections in my portfolio which have more work than others and I have designed the site in such a way that the visitor can see ALL my work – everyone has different tastes so it is quite improbable that any one person will like everything. After you thoughtful comment, I am now thinking of putting a “see more” link to allow “gallery viewers” to browse at leisure – at the same time, it should not overburden a prospective client who wants to see select work from my portfolio.

Thanks for stopping by!
roshan says:

March 31, 2008 at 3:42 am

provide me best picture
Naina says:

May 6, 2008 at 9:47 am

Roshan, thank you for visiting the blog. I am assuming that your asking for the best picture means that you want to see my complete portfolio – kindly correct me if I’m wrong. My latest PDF portfolio can be downloaded here : http://www.aside.in/asidePortfolio.pdf [ it is a 1.7mb PDF file. ]