I've got a very simple but frustrating question because I haven't been able to find an in-depth answer to this. Also I'm not sure if this is in the right forum, if it's not, mods feel free to move it. Sorry.
I'm studying Creative Technology (design and technology) and it's my first year there. I was wondering what kind of work would a creative technologist exactly have in a portfolio? We're going to be studying a lot of things such as OpenFrameworks, Cinder and use a whole lot of Arduino but i'm still confused as to what work the real world companies, jobs expect to see from a creative technologist?
If anyone has a portfolio as an example too offer inspiration that would be great! Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Maybe I can give you a few ideas. Im an architect on my way to get my professional license. As architecture students, our design schools aim to train us on how to be effective visual-communicators. Most of our ideas have to be comunicated visually...with minimum words, but with an abundance of clearly understandable conceptual diagrams, illustrations, data graphics, etc.
It was of great help to me when I finally learned to use a vector-based drawing/illustration program like Adobe Illustrator to easily and quickly translate my designs and conceptual hand-drawn sketches into digital illustrations. It increased my production speed to almost double of what it was before and allowed my ideas to be communicated to my mentors in a faster, easier, more concrete way. In return, i instantaneously received valuable feedback from my mentors that was easily translatable into a tangible design concept later on.
I dont exactly know what you need, but in my opinion as a visual communicator, if your portfolio-reviewer can see that you are good with putting down your ideas into effective diagrams and graphics, that will be a huge asset in your favor.
Portfolios these days NEED to be as visual as possible, so I would advice you to go online an search for design portfolios in pages like issuu(dot)com ...and also to google out "info-graphics" and related vector/icon based diagrams. Keep an eye for those few ones that rather than empathizing on quantifiable data, lean more towards trying to explain the processes on which a thing/process happens. After you do your research and get and idea of how to put down your ideas as graphics, you can also search for "vector icons", "vector graphics", etc. as there are a lot of free graphic elements online that you can download and modify to suit your needs. There are a lot of tutorials on YouTube about how to do so with softwares like AdobeIllustrator.
Again, I dont exactly know what you need, but here is a bit of my usual process when it comes to electronics and interactive Arduino things is. Maybe it can help you.
I write down the tasks that I need to accomplish with my "thing" (whatever it might be).
I now try to translate each task into a process diagram of interconnected bubbles. Each task is a big bubble...and each result of the process is a smaller bubble connected to the big one.
I now try to find out the basic sensors and components that I will need to use to achieve those tasks.
Each sensor usually ends up being one of my big bubbles from step 2. Each smaller bubble tends to end up as a piece of code that i have to find/generate in order for the sensor to achieve its task.
I now try translate all that previous gathered info into a "YES or NO flow diagram".
After that is done, I start trying to write my code... or i use my graphics and diagrams to explain what i need to other that might be able to help me with the code.
