When I first started out in the business an older colleague advised me to “collect copies of any and everything that I was the least bit involved in”. I only took half of his advice, and at first I saved copies like mad but soon I was cherry-picking my favorite projects and leaving the rest to
collect dust in ad agency archives.

But then you find yourself looking for new work, as we often do in this business whether you freelance or not. Quite a few times when people are interested in you, they want to see more work - not just those favorite things you did but also the bread and butter, the smaller items, specific types of items, the back pages ads, the things you *gasp* didn’t save.

Don’t just save all the work, set aside a time to scan your things and sort it neatly. I find myself here in the middle of the night scrounging through my CD’s and nearly killing my scanner so that I can show a potential employer some things that I have done but are not included in my ‘favorite work’ portfolio. It’s not the first time someone has asked to see the “bread and butter”, so be prepared, and have it all scanned so that you may reply quickly with a PDF of the less interesting but still so important pieces of your work history. At least you’ll get more sleep, and maybe even the job you’re applying for.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Advertising, Design, Design Careers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.