Portfolio (The Awesome Version) – It’s Coming!!!

At deviantART, we want all artists to thrive. We’ve spent the last few months working on a Portfolio tool that helps artists promote themselves online in a highly professional manner without having to deal with the hassles of web design, hosting, coding, and so on. We looked into all sorts of online and off-line portfolios, talked to artists, students, professors, art schools, creative professionals, focus groups, etc., to learn how to build the best system on the Internet for formal presentation and review of artwork. As we begin beta testing the Portfolio system we wanted to share some of our key findings and design decisions with you.

Designing the Portfolio Engine – Key Findings

Portfolio will be used by many different types of people and is therefore designed to meet and exceed all needs. It serves artists by concentrating entirely on presenting work so the art speaks for itself; and, simultaneously serves the people who look at and evaluate art day in and day out by using an open, easy and efficient navigation. Simplicity is the key to both of these core goals and functions.

• Many artists said that portfolios have to be easy and quick to build so special versions can be organized and compiled on the fly to meet the specific requests of a proposal or submission. For example, you may want to submit only your landscape photography to clients and not distract them with your portrait photography. We built a super-simple editing wizard, threw in a ton of storage with reasonable file formats and requirements so building and re-building a custom Portfolio is a snap.
• Clients and professors told us that artists overwork the design of the portfolio and that, instead, artists should concentrate on picking and showcasing their strongest art. We’ve made the configuration options in Portfolio simple and highly functional. The configuration wizard brings you through a short process where you select layout options, fill in biographical and contact information. Then you can concentrate your time on selecting and organizing the art. You get complete access to your art and can pull images from your hard drive, from your deviantART galleries or from your prior Portfolios.
• We were told that online portfolios failed and lost credibility for artists when they didn’t function correctly or as intended. We made certain that Portfolio is optimized to all major browsers on all major operating systems (even the iPhone). We’ve got a team of highly skilled engineers and have lots of redundant servers in a top notch hosting facility to make sure that your portfolio is always online. dA’s got your back.
• We were told that handmade websites used as portfolios often end up confusing clients and teachers when the navigation is inventive, but not necessarily obvious. So, the navigation on Portfolio is designed to be elegantly obvious, simple and reliable.
• Many schools and employers said that a portfolio should be a showcase for the artist’s best and most recent work. Too much content overwhelms a good pitch or academic application. Portfolio has up to 4 galleries that hold up to 18 images each for a maximum of 72 images overall. This encourages selectivity. And, if you don’t use one or more of the 18 slots in a gallery or if you use just two of the four galleries, the Portfolio structure automatically adjusts and nobody will know that the Portfolio could have held more.
• We were told portfolios should go straight to the point of showcasing the artwork. So the backgrounds in Portfolio act like neutral gallery backgrounds. We chose placements for the artwork that are stable so the eye doesn’t have to hunt around from image to image. There are no textures, overwhelming colors or patterns to interfere with the review of the art.
• First impressions are critical. Portfolio opens with a huge home page image that dominates the space so the artist can make their best image the first statement of the Portfolio.
• Other online portfolios are pretty dreadful and some pitch the portfolio website more than the artist. In the worst models, there are Google ads next to images (for shame). In our Portfolio there are no advertisements at all. You get a unique professional URL without the “deviantART” name. There is only one sales pitch on the page – - you – - not us.
• Artists love deviantART, but sometimes being a “deviant” can be a problem in professional situations—like presenting yourself to a business or a school. With the free version of Portfolio, we allow you to use a custom “*.daportfolio.com” domain and we quietly say “Powered By dA” in the bottom-left corner of the page. In the Premium version of Portfolio, no dA branding shows up on public pages, and you can even select a URL that has no implied association to deviantART whatsoever.

Enough Talk – What do they look like?

All the essentials are there. We threw all kinds of art at this design. Portfolio (The Awesome Version) came through.
Here are some sample Portfolio’s put together by our super talented in-house design team using dA Portfolio:

• Ryan Ford (liquisoft) – http://ryanford.cleanfolio.com/
• Zack Isaacs (endosage) – http://myrealname.daportfolio.com/
• Ian Field-Richards(zilla774) – http://zilla774.darkfolio.com/
• Patrick Eagar (bionikdesign) – http://bionikdesign.daportfolio.com/
• Mario Luevanos (marioluevanos) – http://bullzito.darkfolio.com/
• Danielle McKay (moonbeam13) – http://daniellemckay.daportfolio.com/
• Mukunda Modell (20after4) – http://portfolio.20after4.net/

We’re Pretty Freaking Proud of Portfolio!

Millions of members of deviantART will all be able to take advantage of Portfolio. Artists will soon have, absolutely free, an industry standard tool to showcase themselves in a clean, simple and pure design.

We showed this design to hundreds of people in the arts before release. It works. When you use Portfolio we expect you’ll love it. We do.

Coming Soon!!!! Beta Testers:Click Here for More Info
Beta Testing is a benefit of a Premium Membership. Premium Members click here to turn on Beta Testing.