Lessons

Lesson Info

Create a Contact Page

So the final page that I want to create is a contact page. Um, I do think no matter how simple your portfolio is, the contact page is the one page that we all need, even if it's just a a business card. Um, you can make it a simple as you want, but obviously, people need to know who you are and how to get in touch with you. So I personally I like to put on about paige and my contact page at the end of my portfolio. You could put it, you could absolutely put it at the beginning. I just tell a bit of a story, so I think if they see my work and then read it, then they have a better sense of why it all comes together, but absolutely feel like you can put that anywhere you want. So I am going to delete the background here, and I have a couple of bio images over here on my branding board. What else do I need? Um, and then these two patterns I haven't used yet, so I'm gonna grab. I'm gonna grab my two photos and these two patterns that I haven't used, and I'll copy those over to my document, u...

m, if you're like me, it feels kind of funny to put your but you're a picture of yourself uh in your book but people want to know who you are and what you look like and that helps them connect so it feels kind of funny to me but ah if I were looking at someone's book I would love to see something personal so I always try toe let them know this is my dog I need to update these because I have a baby now it would be but I still have his name's toaster I still have toaster too ridiculous um so I'm gonna nestle those over oh here and I just to give like kind of one more glimpse at patterns I'm gonna just fill in like kind of a border of patterns over here on the left hand side so I'll just draw boxes to begin with um I think I'm going to do for so I'm not going to pay too much attention to my measurements right now I'm just going to drag and drop one down to make two and then hit commanded to duplicate that and I'm close but not close enough so I will select all four of those hey, it s for the scale tool and moved my scale to the top I haven't mentioned this to I should also say when you wanting to scale like I want to scale this straight down so I'm going toe hold the shift key and drag straight down um if I wanted to scale this you know all over bigger I would hit scale and dragging from a diagonal no matter which dagnall it is is always going to give you more control over your scaling than from left right or up or down so I was scale holding the shift key from a diagonal just gives you more control and if you're playing with illustrator at home right now you'll be able to tell that as well. So these four squares I'm gonna send to the back and using the eyedropper tool I'm gonna grab these couple of patterns um I can delete these and then maybe some of the patterns that I didn't use on my samples page I can use I can use now like this one and what else did I not use now so that just gives like, one little more glimpse at at my work um I want my images to be centered so I'm just gonna eyeball that but I'm going to use the arrow tools on my keyboard to move them over to the right. Okay, so this is where you need to build in some information I believe that I have written one last two last things that I've already typed out I'll copy and paste over um and I need to do the same thing again I will create a text box so that I so that I keep it I just want it right there so that's filled with a pattern that's fine if I hit t for type tool and come up here and start clicking in that top left hand corner it'll give me an area toe um pace that text in and I'm not ready for like this contact info yet so I'm just going to delete it really fast so this is just a little note I would love the opportunity to work with you please find an online version below I look forward to hearing from you so I am on my contact page I've done a couple of different things but I like to give a private link tio an online digital version of the same portfolio on my contact page so that they can review it online after they send my hard copy back another option would be to have kind of a cheaper option printed hard copy printed I'll show you one resource for that in a minute but you could include kind of um uh a less expensive version for them to actually keep and just let them know the small version is for you to keep to refer to the handmade version you know I'd like you to send back or whatever so I will center that and then right here I want to make real obvious my contact info so that would be my email um my web address again and probably my phone number that I'll leave off today but I usually include my phone number two in case somebody wants to speak to me directly so I'm gonna grab the rounded rectangle tool this I think is really the only thing that's different if you're working in cc you khun access rounded edges directly from the rectangle tool but it's not going to be confusing I think you'll be able to figure it out either way but insist six it's under the flyout menu of the rectangle tool grounded rectangle tools here and I'll just start drawing one you can use the up and down arrow keys here to change the curvature of those corners so I want something curved you know roughly like that this is going to be cream I'm going to change it to this cream color that we've been kind of using throughout the throughout the portfolio but I want to add like a border of a pattern so I could and a stroke but another way to do that would be teo make a copy of this and copy it behind so to do that I mean hit command c and command be and so you can't tell but there are two coffees there now okay so I need to do that again because that messed it up so now the one come and see come and be the one behind is selected and I'm gonna use the eyedropper tool to change it to this stripey pattern and hide my edges you still can't see it but one way to enlarge ok, so if I use the scale tool and enlarge this like so um it doesn't do it because those rounded edges it excuse it and it gets it off so one way to do this is to take the stroke off is to come up tio effect um path offset path okay, I use this all the time that brings off the offset path dialog box and if you hit preview it will show you what this is going to look like so you can choose miter around that's not going to have an effect on this particular shape but ifyou're it does on some so choose whether you want a miner like appointed edge or rounded edge and then you can choose the offset to be anything you want I'm going to do like maybe twelve not twenty one maybe twelve so I'll hit okay um there's a couple of things now that I want to dio if I bring back my edges you could see that this eye access that too under effect which means that this is an effect applied to that shape and one thing I harp on my other course especially is to expand all of your effects in order to keep your document a reasonable size and easy to work with so what I want to do is come overto object and expand appearance did you see my line jumped right there that takes it to where this is no longer in effect applied to a shape is just a shape but this is how we accomplished getting a perfectly perfect match to those rounded corners on the other thing I want to do is twist, not twist but angle my pattern because this striped looks kind of funny from the top and the sides so if I right click and come to transform and rotate then I don't want to rotate the box just want to rotate the pattern and I want to rotate it probably toe like forty five degrees which just puts it like on a bias um and I like that look so I'll hit ok arrange cindy back okay, so what I want to do now is, um just type in my contact info so I'll hit thie title and I want to label this contact looks like I'm already using the thought that I like so I'll just scale it up I do want to use gray though um um how about I just grabbed the colors from this kind of striped right here I can come over tio my stroke, my swatches panelists letting you call a group and hit ok and then I've got this is kind of a purple but it will it'll work stroke and what I feel to be that purple okay um so I think I already have this yeah, I have my email I just typed these out to make it easier today um while I was here with you ah, so I already have my email I blogged and my instagram handle you can choose I would add my phone number here tio or anything else that you think would be a quick and easy way for them to get in touch with you. Um so I do want to change this to that I just wanted to be really easy to read so if I change it, um like this size it's probably about right change it to that champagnes and lemony limousines and center it bring it back over and increase its scale I just wanted to be really easy to read I don't want anybody to have to squint or anything like that. Um and then the other thing I could do is increase the spacing between these using the character panel um it's called lead I believe it's called leading so it's right up here and I can just hold that down until I'm happy with the spacing um that just spaces things out a little bit give it some breathing room and I might stick thiss guy in the corner just for some added um you know, visual interest ah and then the thing I would do here is make a clipping mask of that just so that it's nice and clean around the edges so I'll draw a box over it and select both of those and hit command seven okay, so this is a kind of a mini. Yes, but any copyright information on any of your page is like, if you have a true page with the collection, would you put your yeah, it depends on who you're showing it to, for sure. The people I'm showing this teo, you know, I'm they're aware of it. Yeah, but it's always a good idea, though, so yeah, I haven't built in the space for here, but it's definitely a good idea to put copy your copyright information in it it's also a good idea to just copyright your work, your work, you know, anyways, so throwing that in there because we did have some questions of people saying, well, how do we protect our work think that comes up a lot, you know, that we talked about that in your last course too, but people are always concerned about that how to protect it, how to copy, write it. So I'm glad you touched on a little bit there, uh, it's a really tough subject, especially the legalities of it, I'm not going toe touch on because I don't know it's it's deep and confusing way say rightly checked with a lawyer don't are checking with your lawyer first, but this issue always of whether to show you work or not show your work, show your work you could copied don't show your work, you don't get found so you have to decide I am I keep my digital portfolio version private, so I only so I have control over who has a link to it if I was showing these pages, you know, like all over like, like I am, then of definitely like if they were, especially if they were pen a ble images people who could print than that would definitely be putting my copyright information on there, so you definitely have to just play kind of play the game I've been copied. Um, but not I've been copied once and that's, not all that much it's kind of unfortunate, but at the end of the day you have to show your work in order for it to get found. So yeah, if you sell one of those designs that you displayed your portfolio, how often do clients than say, please take it out so that it's not publicly shown anymore because it's going to be mine? I have so I license my work, I never sell it outright. Selling it outright means it's no longer mine I don't have any rights to it I can't shit I can't put it on anything else um if you license your work it's always yours and you always have the right to show it so I have never been approached by anybody telling me not to show something anymore because it's mine and if I buy licensing you're able to license across several different industries so definitely like this is a fabric collection I would definitely not be sending this to another fabric you know producer but maybe wallpaper or maybe stationary or something like that so it's just contract specific and once you you have one you'll be ableto kind of maneuver that ground easily yeah, one more follow up brands do you have clients who say I cannot purchase or I cannot license this pattern because because you should have already exactly so I've never had that happen I do know that it has happened I have a really good surface pattern designer friend who I think landed her like dream company and they found where she had posted this pattern previously on her on her block as work and they pulled the contract. This is super uncommon this's the only time in my whole career I've ever heard of that happening but it is maybe something that happens but I don't have a good answer for you because I go back to saying if you don't put it out there than who's who's seeing it, when you have a close working relationship with the company, you'll be able to play. You know, you'll talk, be talking with them and maybe set a release date. You know, like for sure, I don't share images too soon, um, because they're not available yet. And that's a respect thing that you want toe, like debut, a collection at same time, or something like that. But if nobody has licensed your work, then I I say, I personally say, show it, because the chances are that all you're going to get from that is positive, you know, in more work from that so it's touchy, though.