Archive for January, 2010
6 great ways to promote your work online
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Having your own place on the web to display your work is an absolute must for someone in the Digital Media industry. As with most creative or technical disciplines the proof is always in the pudding. Potential employers don’t care too much about education or what software you can use, they want to see what you can do. Having your own portfolio site with your own domain is pretty standard these days and for a nominal cost you can register a domain and get your site hosted.
So we know that having your own web portfolio is essential, but is it enough? Why limit the exposure your work can receive to simply the people that stumble across your web portfolio? Why not try to maximize the audience and the reach that your work could potentially have?
I’ve compiled a list of some of the places to promote your work in addition to your own website. Doing so will not only get your work in front of more people but will help drive traffic back to your own website.
Here are some of the best places to get started.
The Behance Network
I’ve long been a fan of the Behance Network. Not only is it a great place to host a portfolio and get exposure it is a fantastic resource for exploring and finding inspiration. The service is free and the community is supportive and thriving.
Carbon Made
Carbonmade is a very simple and well done service for easily creating an online portfolio. You add and organize the content and it gets presented in a very clean interface with your own yourname.carbonmade.com sub domain. The free version allows you to host up to 5 projects with 35 images. For $12/month you can upgrade and get 50 projects with up to 500 hi-res images and 10 high quality videos.
Pink Muse
Pink Muse isn’t so much a hosted portfolio site as it is a huge collection of art and design work from different contributors. You can create a free account, customize your profile information and upload examples of your work. Your submissions will then be included in the searchable user gallery.
Society 6
Society six provides a platform for people in the creative industry to promote their work and potentially connect with opportunities. You can create your own page at society6.com/yourname and add examples of your work and links to your other websites. They have also built some great community features that allow you to follow and explore the work of other members.
Coroflot
The coroflot site offers both a job board for designers as well as a hosted portfolio service. The Hosted portfolio service is free and includes a personal URL unlimited file uploads and detailed traffic reports.
Krop Creative Database
The Krop Creative Database service is in my opinion the most feature rich and well built hosted portfolio service. The basic package is free but is limited to 10 images. This package gives you a custom URL and your choice of a number of very nice layouts .
For $9.99/month you can upgrade to unlimited images, domain mapping (So you can use your own domain), RSS and Video embedding.
http://www.krop.com/creativedatabase/
If you have any additional resources that I’ve overlooked feel free to leave a link to them in the comments.
Posted by Daelan Wood in Resources | 1 Comment »
We Have Liftoff!
Friday, January 15th, 2010
After many months of development, demos, redesigns, beta-testing, reiterations, more beta-testing and not much in the way of sleep I am very happy to announce that I have finally launched DigitalMediaJobs.ca. This project has been festering in the back of my mind for going on 6 years so it feels pretty good to see it finally take shape and launch.
Why build ANOTHER Job Board Website?
One of the most common questions I get from people when I tell them about the project is “why would you waste your time building another one of these Job Board sites?”. This is a pretty fair question. There is definitely no shortage of job board sites and the Digital Media industry in particular certainly has their fair share of them so why throw another one into the mix? My answer is pretty simple.
DigitalMediaJobs is not just a Job Board.
On the surface it appears to be just a Job Board. Employers post jobs that are listed on the homepage and job seekers apply for them. This is pretty basic and common job board functionality. What sets this site apart is the additional tools that i’ve created to streamline the process for both Employers and Job Seekers. Digital Media Jobs is a full featured web application that if used to it’s fullest will drastically streamline your search for a job and your search for the right employee. I won’t rattle on about features of the site but if you are interested you can view the details on our Feature List or better yet why not register for a free account and try it out.
Another reason I had for building the site was driven by my daily experience as a post secondary instructor in the Digital Media Industry. My job gives me a unique vantage point that often places me between students or alumni trying to find work and companies trying to find the right fit for their team. In the 6 years i’ve been in this position I have yet to find a tool that does a good job of facilitating this connection. So I did what most slightly obsessed web developers do. I built my own.
What’s Next
I’ve got a lot of plans for the site most of which i’ve listed on the feature roadmap page. My biggest challenge is of course getting people to use the site. Eventually I want this site to become the de-facto place for the Canadian Digital Media Industry and I am committed to putting the work in to get it there.
In the meantime I need all the help I can get. I am a 1 man show and their are only so many hours in the day.
Why not help me out by spreading the word on Twitter or by sending a link to someone you know that may find this site useful.
Got Questions?
- View our full Feature List
- Read the About Page
- Give us some Feedback
Posted by Daelan Wood in Site News | No Comments »