How Is Your Architectural Portfolio Evaluated? What No One Tells You and 7 Tips to Make It Stand Out
How Is Your Architectural Portfolio Evaluated? What No One Tells You and 7 Tips to Make It Stand Out by Yacademy
There are several tools you can use as a young architect to make yourself known in the design business: a resume of your personal educational background and working experience, the connections you have built with other affirmed architects, and some evidence of your ability to work in team are very incisive factors in establishing your appeal and expertise as an architect. A portfolio can prove all this and make your application stand out among others and ultimately be successful.
After 15 years of experience in evaluating architectural portfolios – during which we had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the world’s most renowned studios in the field – Yacademy has prepared a list of 7 tips that will help you put together an architectural portfolio able at once to spark curiosity in the most notorious architects and reflect your identity as a designer.
1. Keep it relevant
The architect reviewing your portfolio often has limited time to gather all relevant information about who you are as a designer. Therefore, to seize their attention, your portfolio needs to be impactful. What does this mean in practice? Avoid overloading it with too many pages or design projects, focusing on the most recent or relevant experiences for the architectural world: a long and too detailed list will not be exhaustive, but rather distracting. Overall, Yacademy has found out that a 10-20 pages long portfolio is more than enough to present your architect’s approach.
2. Watch the layout
The way you present your architectural work makes a difference on how your designer’s profile is perceived. This is especially true because architects can’t often assess the content of your project, not knowing if it truly reflects your talent. There are various circumstances that may come into play in designing a project: Was it the fruit of teamwork? Were you working for someone else? How much creative freedom did you have? Since they can’t answer these questions, evaluators focus primarily on how you present your portfolio. The what might not be entirely yours, but the how definitely is. It reflects how mature, meticulous, and organised you are in the architectural project, how much you read about architecture, and your sense of aesthetic. To sum up, there is one important thing to keep in mind: in some contexts, form is substance!
3. Less is more
A few well-presented elements are more effective than crowded pages, which discourage reading and sometimes convey confusion. Yacademy recommends choosing carefully what to show and creating breathing room around texts and visuals. Avoid large blocks of text - or if you must include them, highlight just a few key words. Focus on images, as they are the first elements that capture the eye and are decisive in architecture. Suggestive and strong images can tell much more than a long text. At the same time, however, we suggest valuing empty spaces: designing through the void represents your compositional maturity and often contributes to making the portfolio easy to read, highlighting what needs to be put in the foreground. In a word: make sure the best elements are obvious and don’t need to be searched for!
4. Keep it consistent
Sometimes architectural studios evaluate portfolios by comparison: they select the best and worst page from each portfolio and compare them. That’s why it’s crucial to maintain consistent quality throughout: reviewers will have a hard time finding the weakest page, while they will be more likely to choose appealing ones for the comparison. Be demanding with yourself and shy away from less interesting content. Do not rely on the strength of your best effort: the weakest page might be exactly the one you will be judged for.
5. Be various
It’s hard to know the preferences of the architect that will review your submission, but many studios favour a diverse portfolio over a highly specialised one. If possible, show that you’ve created renderings, detailed plans and sections, and physical models in your architect’s career. If you can’t showcase variety, enhance your commitment and hard work: include plans, sections, and elevations to prove your design projects are the result of effort, not just photo-editing or AI. Let your portfolio show your architectural approach and skills in an authentic and all-round way, to speak of your true potential as a designer.
6. Watch the fonts
Believe it or not, fonts matter a lot. They must be clear and easy to read – no architect will spend time in deciphering too complicated texts. Don’t rely too much on your personal taste, as you might end up picking fonts that are unappealing to other designers! Yacademy’s tip is to look at what’s trending in architectural magazines and design publications – it will help you play safe by using a font that architects probably find familiar. Right now, you can’t go wrong with the “Futura” family.
7. Copy!
Copying is not bad. Especially if you’re just starting out, it helps you keep up with the standards of the world of architecture and create something valuable. Copying doesn’t mean cheating – it means drawing inspiration from the best to create something excellent. But what should you copy from? We suggest browsing architectural magazines and reading books to get an idea of what the world of architecture is asking for and offering now. You can also get in touch with Yacademy staff at application@yacademy.it to receive some excellent templates for inspiration.
Conclusion
Putting together an architectural portfolio that speaks of yourself and highlights your qualities in the eyes of the greatest firms on the international scene may be a challenging enterprise. What a studio likes, is looking for, or aims at is hard to foresee. However, these simple guidelines are a way to ensure that you come through for the designer you are and the professional architect you can become. With them, Yacademy wants to help you represent your architectural approach, personality, and identity in the best possible way.