I said goodbye to our old portfolios this week. My partner, Gary, and I were cleaning out the office closet. There were four portfolios filled with past printed samples. We had used them to show potential clients our work, hopefully, to win a client over, and to sell our creative services.
The portfolios were filled with company brochures, magazines, folders, stationary, calendars, etc. It was time to send them to the dumpster, move on, and save space in our closet. Goodbye old samples.
A blast from the past
It had been a long time since we looked at these projects, and they stirred up old memories. We were reminded of many people who helped make our company a success.
“Remember this project?” One was a company folder with a matching brochure for a former client. We recalled some details: “That was a rush project. I bet they’re no longer in business.”
“I worked with Annie on this calendar — that’s a name from the past.”
“Here’s an old catalog. I’m sure they’ve switched to an online catalog by now.”
Keepers
“Do you want to save this one?” Yes, of course. There were some Cardinals promotional printed pieces that were worth keeping. We saved our favorites in a separate pile. The bigger pile went to the trash bin.
Times have changed
We no longer present our work as a face-to-face meeting. We’re past that. Our creative portfolio has been on our website for many years. It’s easy to post new projects, take down old projects, and sometimes, write a blog post or case study.
We send links to people who want to see our work. Plus, people can discover our portfolio when they search for a specific term, such as book design or logo design.
Does this mean that print is dead?
Printed marketing materials are not dead. N-K primarily designs for print. Here’s a short list of recent print projects: tri-fold brochures, business cards, postcards, calendars, fliers, letters, and magazines.
End of an era
We moved the empty portfolios to the basement. Revisiting them had been fun; sorting through years of history jogged our memories; relegating so much of our work to the recycle bin was definitely hard. But change is inevitable, the past is over, and future is full of possibilities.
Goodbye! Thanks for reading.
