Portfolio Statements Editing and Proofreading Services

A portfolio shows twelve projects, each with a title, a client name and three beautiful images. The reviewer likes the work and cannot tell, on any of the twelve, what the problem was, what the designer decided, or which parts they did rather than the four other people on the project. They will assume the least generous answer, because that is the only safe one.

We edit portfolio statements and case texts — project captions and case studies for design, architecture, development and creative portfolios, contribution and role statements for team projects, process narratives, portfolio introductions and about pages, and the tailored versions prepared for a specific application. Our editors work on the words beside the images.

The project caption is what turns a portfolio from a gallery into evidence, and its failure is a beautiful project with no account of the thinking. A reviewer cannot hire an outcome; they hire the judgement that produced it. We work through these so each project states the problem before the solution, in the client's terms rather than the designer's, since a reviewer assessing capability needs to know what was actually being solved; so the constraint is named, because work made without constraint is not assessable and every real project had one — a budget, a legacy system, a regulator, a stakeholder who would not move; so at least one decision is described with the alternative that was rejected and why, as this is the only part of a caption that demonstrates judgement rather than taste; so the applicant's own contribution is stated precisely in a team project, with what others did, given that reviewers discount any portfolio where the boundary is unclear and discount it entirely where they later discover it was overstated; so the outcome is given as what changed rather than as a launch, since shipping is not a result; so something that did not work is included on at least one project, because a portfolio of unbroken successes reads as curation rather than practice; so the caption is readable in thirty seconds with the detail beneath it; and so the selection is cut to the projects that make the argument. Statements written this way get the interview.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including client work, unpublished projects and material under embargo. We are editors rather than designers, reviewers or recruiters, and we offer no view on the work, its quality or any application. What we can do is put the thinking beside the images.