Mark W. Smith - Design Portfolios: A Recruiters View

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 4

MARK W. SMITH, A SLA

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Most people have been told that the 3Rs of education are reading, writing, and rithmatic, but Bruce Archer, the influential British design educator, quoted a family matriarch who said that the 3Rs were, reading and writing, reckoning and figuring, and wroughting and wrighting. The first two pairs of words in this alternative view cover literacy and numeracy, both of which are emphasized in most primary and secondary schooling. The last pair, though, uses terms that can be unfamiliar. Wroughting concerns knowing how the things in our world are brought about or technology; wrighting concerns crafts of making and practices of designing. The notion that knowing how to make and design things is its own fundamental kind of understanding will be obvious to those who are completing any sort of design degree but may seem novel to others. After all, for whatever reasons, experiences in sustained formal coursework in designor even a single semesterlong classoften occur only when a person enters college or even later when they enroll in a graduate program. More needs to be said on this important point, but before that, what does it mean to learn about and to learn how to design?

An inherent aspect of design practice is taking on what are called illstructured problems. In this light, the common feature of all design educationincluding product design, industrial design, interior design, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and all the other design professionsis that the student learns to structure ambiguities and uncertainties of illstructured problems so that resolutions can be found.

Getting to a resolution begins with the designer asking a What if? question. The topic might be about locations, dimensions, or materials; about parameters or interactions within a system; about a social ideal or utopian impulse; or, about an aspect that is of special interest to a professionsuch as qualities of light for interior design or ephemerality of plants for landscape architecture. Regardless of whatever selfdirected prompt is employed, the question and the provisional answer are not idle speculations. Instead, they provide a generative conjecture that begins to establish intellectual order to the illstructured problem. The conjecture is then tested and expanded against facts and assumptions through diagrams, plans, sections, elevations, renderings, and models (and increasingly through animations and Virtual Reality simulations). The asking and answering process is never straightforward. Many lines of inquiry lead to disappointing or unacceptable results, but as promising conjectures are retested and reexpanded again and again and again, the problem becomes increasingly structured. In the end, the designer has developed a consistent argument for purposeful, meaningful, and beneficial change.

So how after three, four, or five years of learning to structure illstructured problemsthat is, of learning design thinkinghow does someone demonstrate this kind of knowing to possible employers and others? Mark Smith wants designers to tell their stories. In this book, he generously shares how to tell effective stories through the making of portfolios, rsums, and cover letters.

Sharing stories about one's work and oneself enables connections with an audience through what is perhaps the most widely sharable form of representation: narrative. The French philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes wrote, narrative is present in every age, every place, every society narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there like life itself.

In part, a story appeals to an audience by interrelating specific aspects of life, rather than by declaring abstract principles.) To avoid any misunderstanding on this point, yes, in all kinds of professional practice, the technical forms of representation used for inventories, analyses, and evaluations are vitally important for making sound decisions; but they will not matter if decision makers do not know why they should care about the details. Telling effective stories about relatable experiences and meaningful relationships can help ensure everyone gives full attention until the end and grasps the significance of everything said.