Digital-Footprint
Embracing the spirit of the “Handmade Web,” Min Guhong Manufacturing builds websites through the overlap of code and design. The website is both the company’s primary product and its most direct mode of self-introduction. Semantic coherence is valued over technical complexity, and whenever a new tool is introduced, the first question is always: How might this allow the company to reintroduce itself differently?
– Min Guhong Manufacturing Operational Guideline, Min Guhong
Our activities online are a form of self-introduction. While we may post things strictly with a small audience in mind, much of the information we post online is public and can be viewed by anyone with an internet connection. Furthermore, depending on a website's "search engine optimization", or SEO (and now what data is collected by AI), the information we want to communicate about ourselves online may not be what people easily find.
In this exercise, you'll assess your public digital footprint and see what you feel is helpful to establishing your career as a designer and what can be improved. We can then use this assessment to decide what sort of web portfolio to create.
- Start by cataloging your (public) digital footprint. List the number of online accounts you have (IG, Tiktok, etc.) and the number of posts you've made on them. Think thoroughly about what unexpected things you may be sharing online!
- Search for your own name through various channels. Are finding information about yourself or others? What are causes for confusion, and what is working well?
- After collecting this information, reflect on your own goals. Do you have a digital footprint that expresses your reputation as a designer in the way you hope? Given your personal goals, how would you try and change your digital footprint, and re-introduce yourself? Does this mean making several social media accounts? An artistic alias or design studio? A full portfolio on a website builder? A simple informational page you code?
- Find one web portfolio you admire, and think could be a good model for you, and paste a link to it in the class Google doc explaining why.
Based on this experience, and after discussing decide how you would like to move forward with your own online portfolio. With the intention of sharing a proposal next week!
References:
- HOW TO; Make a One-Person Firm Seem Like a Giant Corporation, by David Reinfurt
- About the Company by Min Guhong Manufacturing
- Becoming Company by Min Guhong Manufacturing
- For Your Information by Min Guhong Manufacturing