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How to Create a Professional Interior Design Portfolio?

Interior design portfolio

An interior design portfolio is a collection of visual representations that showcase past and current interior design projects, similar to a resume. An outstanding portfolio showcases why an individual should be selected to join a team of designers or hired by a company. An interior design portfolio highlights an interior designer’s personality and planning abilities. A portfolio usually showcases an individual’s style, fashion sense, and creative processes through imagery rather than words, as it contains more pictures than text.

Important steps to make an interior design portfolio
Whether you want to work for an established firm or go it alone, you must show that you are a skilled and competent professional who can be relied on to produce quality work.

Craft an attractive introduction
It is critical to include an introduction in your portfolio. It aims to give readers a clear understanding of who you are and what you hope to achieve in your career. Consider writing a brief biography highlighting your educational background, design philosophy, and exceptional interior design skills. This introduction will establish the tone for the rest of your portfolio.

Select and add design samples
Next, choose a variety of samples that demonstrate your best qualities and abilities as an interior designer. The setup of the samples can be something other than client projects, as you can include renderings, drawings, color swatches, and other exciting content. What is crucial is that the samples you choose represent the business image and design style you want to convey to forecasts.

Organize your design samples
One of the most thought-provoking facets of making a creative portfolio is unifying your work correctly. Creating your book apparent and scannable will help readers navigate your portfolio and discover what’s closest to their interests.

Update your portfolio
As an interior designer, you are continuously embryonic; let your interior design portfolio replicate that! Add new projects as they are completed. And get rid of any older ones that have become out of date. It’s also critical to keep your portfolio current with industry trends.

When you study interior design, you eventually develop an idea about what you want to do afterwards. Which means, out of the many vacancies in the market, you see yourself chasing one interior design job or more, depending on your interest.

And why not? But before you decide your ideal interior design job, you should know what are the different jobs on offer for freshers. Yes, in this field, the jobs differ according to the experience you gain.

To begin with your career, you may go for something that works for your technical skills. However, after a period of time, your dream job improves your overall design skills, along with income, of course! Let us see what we have for you when you pass out as a fresher, ready to take on the world of design.

Interior Design job #1: Site Supervisor

When you come across this vacancy, know that the firm wants someone to look over the site works. Which basically means, daily staff regulation, material inventory and so on. This is one interior design job that needs multitasking.

You should be able to read the working drawings, instruct the staff on-site, adjust to site requirements and much more. Also, you should be able to clarify doubts of workers, clients and sync between different team members in a project. 

A site supervisor’s daily logs are quite important in future arbitration procedures. Now, what do you gain out of this interior design job?

Experience! The experience to handle site and emergency situations. And the courage to indulge in freelancing- since you learn how to handle workers and the work!

Interior Design Job #2: AutoCAD draftsman 

AutoCad software has a big role in today’s design industry. And That is because all the working drawings are made on this platform. Obviously, for a firm with multiple projects, there is always a constant need of proficient draftsmen. So, it is one ever trending interior design job for freshers.

As a draftsman, you can improve skills in Auto CAD, improve your drafting and planning skills and most of all, learn good designing from senior designers’ plans. And don’t worry, nobody is going to pile your desk with pending projects- you get your part of training in most firms!

Interior Design job #3: 3D Visualizer

Have you ever come across the picture-perfect interior images in magazines? many of them are software renders. And that is because such realistic images are a part of presentation drawings. These days, clients need to know how their spaces will look like before the works begin.

And it is here that you shine as a 3D visualizer. As a 3D visualizer, you are going to read the drafted plan and develop it into a full-fledged virtual model. And then you capture the best images from nooks and corners of your virtual model. So, is it as easy as it sounds? Well, the ease factor depends on your basic knowledge. But is it fun? Yes, it is!

Not only do you significantly enhance your 3D rendering skills, but you also end up learning many new software programs available for the same purpose. And since you are a fresher, even a decent rendering can may you land this interior design job!

Also, there are many software in the market, such as 3DSMax, Google SketchUp, Revit etc. That means, different firms opt for different combinations and have different requirements. 

Interior Design Job #4: Teaching Assistant

Since interior design is a professional course, you need to create a good portfolio before you venture into the academic field. And if you have done some freelancing along with your degree, in both residential and commercial design projects, you can try a hand at it.

But, only if you find teaching passionate! As a teaching assistant, you may take certain topics from the syllabus as compared to a whole subject. Of course, you need to be in touch with the field and keep updating yourself, when you decide teaching is your call.

As you gain experience, you can climb your way through the positions of Senior designer, Associate designer, product designer, Design consultant, Set designer and so on. Take any interior designer job, at the end of the day, it comes down to your passion!