After much deliberation, I bought an iPad last week to use as a portfolio. I know that there is much debate about what clients actually want to see in a folio and a beautifully printed book is hard to beat but this seemed a good compromise as an addition to print. Logistically, I’ve always found it very difficult to schlep around town with three or four folios of differing sizes with the combined weight of a small car so I’m hoping that it will be well received.
My initial problem was finding an iPad portfolio program that worked smoothly, was easily customisable and didn’t require the intellect of a particle physicist. After a bit of searching I found Foliobook. What I really liked was that it has a pretty easy interface and a whole load of instructional videos. It took several hours of working out what I wanted and uploading images with iTunes to get something I was happy with. I created a simple jpg image for the front page that imitated my website design and overlaid that above a template structure in the program. The results are below as screen grabs. Once your images are in folders its very easy to change orders and set slideshows. I particularly like the ability to email an image directly from the slideshow.
Over the last few years, I’ve had Plastic Sandwich make me several print folios so I was very pleased to see that they’ve made a rather lovely one for the iPad as well. Just like my print books, they’ve embossed my name on the front and the whole thing slips into a very sturdy slip case.
So far, it looks like a very valuable addition to a range of ways to show work.
