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Had a recruiter tell me my portfolio looked too 'safe' and it stung
I was chatting with a recruiter from a studio in Portland last Tuesday and she straight up said my work looked like I was scared to take risks. She pointed to a branding project I did for a coffee shop and said it was clean but had zero personality, like I was trying to please everyone. It hit different because I've been playing it safe for months, picking projects that felt 'professional' instead of stuff I actually cared about. I'm wondering if anyone else has gotten this feedback and how you pushed past the fear of putting weird or personal work in there?
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rowanp158d ago
Eh, one recruiter's hot take isn't gospel.
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rowanp158d ago
The whole "trying to please everyone" thing is a trap, right. That coffee shop project sounds like it was made by committee in your own head. I did a branding project for a local bike repair shop last year and it was the same way. Clean logo, nice colors, but it could have been for anything. A bakery. A law firm. It was so safe it was boring. What finally helped me was doing a fake project for a band I liked, where I went full weird with collage and hand-drawn type. I put that in my portfolio and it got way more comments than the "professional" stuff ever did. People remember the oddball stuff, not the safe stuff.
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