Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
Advanced GD Project 4: Senior Portfolio
Professional identity, curated work, and the case for your practice
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
METHODS
Personal brand development · Logo and wordmark design · Adobe Illustrator · Typography system · Website design · Portfolio curation · Case study writing (3 studies, 2–3 pages each) · Reflective essay writing · Resume/CV design · Print portfolio layout · Adobe InDesign · Formal presentation
TAGS
Design Education, Identity Systems
Why this project
A portfolio is an argument. It argues that you are a particular kind of designer — that you think in a particular way, make particular kinds of decisions, and are ready for a particular kind of professional life. The work is evidence. The case studies make the argument explicit. The personal brand is the frame in which the argument is presented.
Most students arrive at this project with more work than they think they have and less portfolio than they know how to build. Curation — what to include, what to cut, how to sequence — demands the same kind of thinking as any other design problem: what is the whole trying to say, and does every part serve that?
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
Your portfolio is the primary artifact of your design education. This project asks you to build it as a professional, not as a student completing an assignment.
Begin with a personal brand identity — a logo or wordmark, a color palette, and a typographic system — that represents you as a designer. This is not a decorative exercise. The identity should reflect your aesthetic sensibility, your values, and the kind of work you want to do.
From there, select 5–7 projects that represent the range and depth of your practice. For each project, write a case study (2–3 pages): problem, research, process, solution, impact. The case study is not a description of what you made. It is an account of how you thought — what you identified as the problem, what you learned in research, how your process developed, and what the work does.
The portfolio has two primary deliverables: a professional website and a print component. Both must be built to production quality. A comprehensive reflection essay (3–4 pages) accompanies the final submission — not a summary of what you made, but an account of who you have become as a designer and where you intend to go.
Final presentations take place during the scheduled final examination period. You will present your portfolio as you would to a prospective employer or client.
DELIVERABLE
Personal brand identity: logo/wordmark, color palette, typography system
Professional headshot
Portfolio website: 5–7 projects with case studies, responsive design
2 professional case studies: 2–3 pages each (problem, research, process, solution, impact)
Print portfolio component: curated selection, professionally designed and printed
Resume/CV: designed to personal brand standards
Comprehensive reflection essay: 3–4 pages (growth, philosophy, professional identity)
Formal presentation: final examination period, prepared and professional
Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
The formal presentation is the moment in the course where the full arc of a student's development becomes visible — not just in the work they show, but in how they talk about it. Students who can articulate their design decisions, explain what they were trying to do and how they got there, and receive a question with genuine engagement rather than defensiveness — those students are ready. The presentation makes that readiness visible.
The reflection essay is consistently the piece of writing students find most difficult to begin and most valuable to have written. Accounting for your own development honestly, without false modesty or false confidence, requires a kind of self-knowledge that is hard to come by before you have to put it into words. The essay is the capstone of the writing-intensive requirement and the most personal document the course asks for.