Building your Portfolio:

an Adobe Portfolio review

[oliviameadows-blog]

7. Final Judgment (link: https://oliviaannemeadows.myportfolio.com/)

The time has come to give my final judgment of Adobe Portfolio as an effective, good writing space. Having made my criteria for a good writing space clear in prior posts, and with sharing some of my experiences already with the site, I want to give my clear opinion on why I personally think Adobe Portfolio is a good writing space.

AESTHETIC - when I first opened the website, I mentioned in my initial thoughts that I liked the appearance. It shared common factors and visuals that all Adobe products have: bright, colorful and clean. In terms of the site I created, there were quite a few options for customizing considering this is a free website. While of course if I had free reign to create a website however I wanted it to look, it would be a little more artistic and aesthetic, what I created is clean and professional looking. And I believe the professional aesthetic is a very important feature for a portfolio-building site.

USER-FRIENDLY - I did have a few bumps in row in terms of figuring out how to do certain features, and there are still features I’m not entirely sure how to perform. However, Adobe Portfolio, especially compared to its counterparts, made it very easy for people with little-to-no experience in website building to figure out how to customize a very simple site. The interface was clean, and I later found lots of guides on their site to help you if you get lost (wish I had found them earlier!).

INDIVIDUALITY - I believe individuality might be where it ranks lowest. Its hard to differentiate website builders from each other. They generally all offer the same features. Adobe Portfolio in the scheme of things doesn’t stand out of the crowd in terms of features and customization. The main thing it offers is being free, and the easy access and connection to Adobe products.

SIMPLICITY - The site itself was very simple looking and easy to navigate because of it. The site I created was simple as well, nice and clean. The instructions and guides were all very straight-forward and made the process fairly simple as well. I would say Adobe products tend to capitalize on being simple to use, hard to master.

As a writing space, Adobe Portfolio may not be the most traditional. While you tend to express more through images than words with Adobe Portfolio, there are plenty of opportunities given to write, caption and explain your thoughts. However, I think Adobe Pf is a unique writing space as the artwork and designs you choose to upload do communicate a message, and the ways in which you organize and share your thoughts are all part of writing and communicating as well. In terms of being a good writing space, I believe Adobe Portfolio gets the job done and offers a lot of simple and easy ways to express your ideas, thoughts and words in a professional setting, all while not costing a penny. If you would like to take a look at the site I created (as well as some of the artwork I created during this project) please click the link in the title of this post. Thank you!

[oliviameadows-blog]

The Future is Yours. Make It.

Short but powerful video about making our future ours, through art, through expression, through Adobe.

[oliviameadows-blog]

[...] Our culture is also redefining the visual and conceptual space of writing.

David Bolter, Writing in the Late Age of Print

[oliviameadows-blog]

6. Competition (link: https://www.wix.com/account/sites)

Because I have never personally tried to create a portfolio (or a website for that matter), I decided to check out what other sites looked like to have some reference when I made my final judgment on Adobe Portfolio. Wix is one of the most heavily advertised products I have ever seen, with an ad running on almost every Youtube video. I decided to quickly make an account and check out a few of the starting features. I will say, Wix is cute, playful and fun. They start off by “asking a few questions” where I fill in the blank what I want from my site (see first picture). They then offer to create a site for you based on your responses, which is pretty advanced and cool. I thought Adobe had a lot of theme options, but Wix blew me away with the library of different themes, and all for different kinds of sites. I will say the biggest downfall of Wix is most of the features aren’t free, which is a big con. While it seemed easy to use, the features and customization was not as intuitive as Adobe Pf in my humble opinion.

What really is the biggest draw to Adobe Portfolio is that its a free-to-use portfolio building site, where you’ll only pay if you want to customize your domain name. Wix fails in that aspect so I would definitely rank it lower that Adobe Pf.

[oliviameadows-blog]

Quick Guide to Getting Started with Adobe Portfolio

We suggest having Adobe Portfolio open as you follow this guide. If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team. Signing Up for Adobe Portfolio To signup for Adobe Portfolio and...

Adobe Portfolio Guide:

Although its a little late for me, I found a helpful guide that answered some of the questions I had during my time using Adobe Portfolio. From signing up to adding content and special features, this guide explains plainly how to use Adobe Pf’s main features (though I still think you’ll have to do some of your own exploring to really figure out the site). 

[oliviameadows-blog]

5. The Following Days of Exploring Adobe Pf

My next couple of days exploring Adobe Portfolio were slow. It wasn’t terribly difficult figuring out how to customize things, everything is pretty straightforward, but I wanted to make sure I had something to write and do each day. Although at first it appeared that there was a lot of customizable features, the more I poked around the space, the less options I seemed to have. I was at least able to choose the different colors, images and fonts I could use on various different pages. On each page, I had choices of things I could add like photo grids, file uploads, text boxes and more (see second picture). It also showed they had added new features like social media plugs and buttons, which is a nice touch and shows that they update their site and try to keep things fresh. They also make it easy to publish your site whenever your ready by constantly having the publish button floating around, no matter what page your on. Let me get into the pros and cons of some of the different features of Adobe Portfolio and some of the challenges I faced over my ten days of using the site:

PROS 

Straight-forward: while there were a few bumps in the road, the site has everything laid out for you. As soon as you create a page, it tells you what steps to take next to add content, a cover page, a theme, etc. Adobe Pf doesn’t skip telling you any steps.

Layouts: there were a variety of different pages and layouts to choose from, giving you a lot of freedom in how you showcase your work. While I personally only choose a hand-full of layouts, it allowed you to create a really detailed site if you desired it. If each theme has their own layouts, Adobe Pf is very thorough in the amount of content they created for their users.

Easy to use: pretty similar to straight-forward, everything was very intuitive and easy to figure out. Once you learned how to change the fonts and colors, you could figure out how to do it on each page even if it doesn’t explicitly say how or where. All the features are very intuitive (and luckily even if you’re not very good at figuring out technology, Portfolio generally will tell you exactly how to customize certain details on your site)

Clean looking: the overall look of the site I was able to create is very clean and aesthetically-pleasing. While I had to option to add lots of images and colors, I could also keep it very clean and simple which is my style. They include all the Adobe fonts on the site which is A LOT of options.

CONS -

Updating: unlike tumblr, where you can simply click save after making a change to your blog, you have to republish your site every time you make a change. This isn’t exactly what I would call convenient, but its not the end of the world either.

Prompts: Often times if I didn’t choose to do something when Adobe Pf prompted me to, I couldn’t find the option later. For example, when you create a new page, you’re prompted to add a cover image to the page. While I didn’t want to do it at the time, I decided later I would like to add a cover image. I couldn’t find the option anymore so the only way to add one would be delete the page, make a new one, and click on the prompt the first time.

Navigation: the navigation bar disappears on certain page layouts which makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t you want the home button available at all times, otherwise how else would people return back to the home page? I still can’t figure out if I’m missing something or if they seriously keep the navigation bar out of certain layouts. On my About page, I had to add a Back to Home button which just seems extra to me.

Social media plugs: maybe this is petty of me, but I think that Snapchat is such a big social media platform that it should be included in plugs. Vimeo is pretty much non-existent in today’s media, but there’s a plug for them and not snapchat. Just food for thought, I would update to add in a snapchat plug in.

To summarize my experience, I spent the past 10 days customizing my site, as well as creating a few new pieces of art to upload. I was able to finally name a few of my pieces that were up until this point nameless, and I also spent time going through my art and picking what I believe to be some of my best work. On the customizing side, using Adobe Portfolio allowed me to choose how people would be able to see my work. The way I chose to organize my works and caption them, in addition to the colors and themes I chose for each page, all have an affect on how people receive my message. It was a cool experience getting to finally compile a portfolio and in a way, it felt like it was an art project in and of itself.

[oliviameadows-blog]

Contact Page:

includes warm, handwritten note to whomever wishes to work with me in the future

[oliviameadows-blog]

4. Day One of my Adobe Portfolio experience

I began my first deep dive into Adobe Portfolio by exploring the examples provided by the site. Amongst over 50+ examples, I was able to view the work of professionals who took advantage of all the features of this site to express their thoughts and ideas and share a little bit about themselves. After viewing a few examples, I logged into my Creative Cloud account and began creating my site. The first question the platform asked was, “What do you want to create?” and from there, I had the choice of making a gallery of work or a splash page.

Gallery of work - “Ideal for showcasing your body of work”. This option would take you down the more traditional route of a portfolio: uploading your images and artwork along with descriptions and organizing your work in a clean and professional manner. Choosing this option will start you off with a gallery and a contact page and allow the user to choose where to go from there.

Splash page - “Ideal for creating a single-page site website to present yourself”. A splash page encapsulates the idea of a traditional writing space a little more clearly. Similar to a Linked In profile, a splash page is your own customizable biography, created as a resume of sorts for professional viewing. Choosing to create a splash page will ask you to start with your contact information, a short bio and a list of your social media for visitors.

The gallery of work seemed to fit my personal needs nicely, so I chose this option to begin with. The next step was to pick from 11 themes, all free of cost and listed with examples of each theme. I chose a simple and colorful theme called Marta that seemed to include more spaces to write, and if it didn’t fit my needs I could change themes at any time and while transferring my work. Because this was my first day using the site, I didn’t want to create my entire portfolio just yet, so I decided to explore a few more features included in my theme.

Customize design - allows me to customize the Masthead, Page covers, Gallery Background and “Back to Top” feature. Also included advance settings for each of the previously stated categories like color, image upload, font size and type, etc. Allowed me to customize settings that affected a single gallery, all galleries or the entire site.

Pages & Integration - opens a tab that shows the titles of different galleries and pages, as well as the app integrations included in the site. From here I can add pages to a specific gallery, change title names and upload images to my Creative Cloud library from specific Adobe apps. This app integration is part of what sets Adobe Portfolio apart from different website-building platforms.

Add page - a large, blue plus sign button that allows me to add a new page to the gallery I’m currently in.

Settings - a variety of different features from changing my domain name to analytics to password protection. You can also unpublish your site from settings if need be.

To conclude my first day of using Adobe Portfolio, I created my Contact page (which I will link and picture in a separate post). The site seems to offer a lot of fun features to customize my site. I appreciate the wide range of free choices of themes, as well as the abundance of examples to help inspire my site-building. I was surprised to see two different options for what type of site I wanted to create. I am excited to see if the site is as user-friendly and simple as it appears to be, and how I can use this site further as a writing space.

[oliviameadows-blog]

3. Definition and Analysis of a Writing Space

My simple definition of a writing space: “A place, whether digital or material, where on can express their ideas through words, images, symbols, etc.”

As I’ve progressed through this project, this simple definition of mine has evolved. While I initially just viewed a writing space as a literal place to write (like a blog or a notebook), my perspective on what could be classified as a writing space changed and expanded to include more abstract ideas, such as Tumblr, Adobe Portfolio, Buzzfeed—places I never would’ve originally considered a writing space. The term writing space is a lot more vague and subjective than it seems, as many people interpret it differently, and many people express their thoughts and ideas in ways other than words. Similarly, a writing tool can is both a place and the product being used to express people’s ideas.

I believe that Adobe Portfolio fulfills the definition of a writing space. While it is primarily image base, people’s ideas are communicated through the art they upload to their portfolio. In addition, there are different areas of the site where you can include descriptions or pages solely dedicated to writing. I chose to review this site because I wanted to find a unique writing space that still serves its function even though its not primarily word based, and I plan on showing these features that make this a writing space while reviewing them based on my previously stated criteria.

[oliviameadows-blog]

2. My Criteria for a Good Writing Space

These are my own personal criteria for what I value the most in a writing space:

AESTHETIC - a BIG part of what makes a person continue to use an app, a site or any other media after first opening it is the appearance. Whether we like it or not, people generally base their entire experiences on first impressions. For me, the aesthetics of a writing space is what will draw me to it in the first place and what will make me continue to use it. Aesthetics can range anywhere from the fonts, color palettes, images, icons and structure of a writing space. For me personally, I enjoy unique, simple or unusual aesthetics that you don’t see in every other media.

USER-FRIENDLY - nobody likes confusion. When you first start an app, spending more than 5 minutes figuring out how to use it is a huge drawback. In our society, we like things quick and easy. The same goes for usability; if I feel like I have to spend too much time or read a manual to figure out simple features of a writing space, than its not for me.

INDIVIDUALITY - I like different and unique things. To me, there’s no point in recreating something that’s already been made a thousand times before. The individuality of a writing space could come from a variety of things, like the features, the visuals and the content. In order to grab my attention, you have to stand out and be different, and that’s where individuality comes in.

SIMPLICITY - the simplicity of a writing space lies in almost all of my previous criteria. If a media is confusing, no one will keep using it. While it might look cool or different, an overpowering design can also be a drawback and overwhelm the user. Generally, simple aesthetics are more appealing to the eye. Simplicity in features and usability are also important as they help keep the attention of the user.

[oliviameadows-blog]

1. My Initial Thoughts (link: https://portfolio.adobe.com/)

For this class project, I choose to learn, use and review Adobe Portfolio, a site built to showcase your work in a variety of different styles. I chose this site as the focus of my project because, as an avid user of Adobe products and a design major, I need a place to upload and organize my artwork for future employers. While sites like Wix and Behance tend to be the most advertised model for portfolio builders, what drew me to Adobe Portfolio is how it is linked directly to your creative cloud account, making it easier to upload works from their other applications. I also look forward to seeing if the site is as user-friendly as their other products and if they share similar characteristics in some of their more creative features.

To give you my honest first impression of Adobe Portfolio, the homepage is clean, bright and easy to navigate. Along the top bar of the homepage were different tabs allowing me sign in to my creative cloud account in addition to giving me information like pricing and examples of people’s sites using this platform. Scrolling down, I was able to see a few of the different layouts offered as well as some of the features included in the site, like password protection, Adobe fonts, domain names, photo grids and many more. All in all, Adobe Portfolio gave me a great first impression. My initial thoughts of the platform are promising as it appears very user-friendly and easy to use, in addition to offering a variety of different and creative ways to display my work. I look forward to exploring the site more within this class project.