business portfolio

While we in Florida, I got the opportunity to do some design work for some local businesses/companies there. One such project I took on there was this business portfolio for Elite Fine Jewelry, a diamond exchange and jewelry store in Pembroke Pines, FL.

This project was an interesting change from the usual wedding invitations and baby announcements/ shower invitations that keep me most busy; and it was even a refreshing change from logo and identity design.

As opposed to a brochure or booklet used for marketing to a customer/client, this business portfolio is intended to introduce Elite Fine Jewelry, products, principles, specialties, and achievements to potential investors and lenders. Elite Fine Jewelry currently has one retail location and, with the help of investors or loans, they want to expand in South Florida to have several locations.

This eight-page booklet portfolio project was time-consuming and took about 18 hours from start to finish. I acted in somewhat of a consulting capacity on this project as well, offering my business consulting in assessing what content should be included and creating an outline of the portfolio. After we decided what information should be included, I turned to the design and created an initial plan of how I thought the information should be laid out; what should go on each page (kind of an extension of the outline). Next up I turned to the text content, for which I had to sift thought raw information that I collected in the form of a long essay questionnaire. This process of taking the raw answers and turning them in to concise, professional paragraphs was very time consuming.

After I had the text copy written, I turned once again to the design and finalized the layout of the text, as well as let the text guide me in deciding where to place images. I created an inventory of what images I thought were needed to best compliment the information, and my client then got with their photographer to capture those images. We also ended up using two stock images in places where actual images of Elite Fine Jewelry were not necessary. Once I had all images, I plugged those in and we did a final digital proofing of the booklet.  After digital proofing, we do hard copy proofing with the printer. And lastly the final portfolio is sent to print.

So, that is a quick run down of what is involved in a project like this one. Much more content-heavy than my usual work, but also allows me to use my experience and expertise in a different way.