Design Portfolio Review Helps RISD Students Find Their Place in the Professional World

“Our firm comes to RISD’s Design Portfolio Review every year, whether or not we have open positions,” says Hutker Architects designer and RISD alum Aaron Teves BArch 20. “We always want to be in touch with talented designers and visual communicators who have a real understanding of materiality and space.”

What stands out among RISD portfolios, Teves adds, is a certain complexity as well as a focus on intellectually challenging and socially conscious work. Teves has been representing the New England-based architecture firm at the annual RISD Careers event since he was hired in 2021 and is one of more than 80 design professionals who participated this time around.

“Portfolio reviews help students make connections with professionals in their field,” says RISD Careers Director Kevin Jankowski 88 IL, “and reviewers gain insights into the ways students are experimenting and innovating with new materials, technology and ideas while also identifying students to follow up with for future job openings.”

One of the designers Teves met with this year is Architecture grad student Estephania Granados MArch 25, who participated for the first time. “Aaron was very helpful and suggested that I switch up my portfolio to focus more on the academic projects I worked on at RISD and less on the professional work I did after finishing my undergrad degree,” she says. “I’ve worked at interior architecture firms in the past, which I loved, but after Commencement I want to get some experience designing building exteriors.”

Graduating senior Oscar Walsh 25 FD is also in the midst of an intensive job hunt and hopes to work for a large design firm where he can “collaborate with a group of people to solve problems. I didn’t have high hopes that I would get a job offer out of this experience,” Walsh adds, “but what I did get was really good feedback on how to tailor my resume and portfolio for specific job applications. One reviewer shared his contact info and told me to keep in touch.”

Many of the reviewers made that generous offer, including Sam Proctor, associate principal designer on the Transformers team at toy manufacturing giant Hasbro. “I’m not a hiring manager,” he says, “but we’re always scouting for potential talent. I talked to students about how they present their work. Do they have too many projects on their websites? Too few? Is it the right mix of projects? When you’re applying for a job or internship, you have to remember that people will be looking at something like 30 portfolios per hour, so you shouldn’t bury your best work at the bottom.”

Alum Joe Marianek 03 GD, cofounder and creative director for the design and branding agency Small Stuff, advises graduating students on the job market to “know who you’re meeting with and ask good questions about what they’re looking for to see if there’s any alignment. The last thing we want to see is a generic, formal email that looks like it has been sent to hundreds of agencies. Do your homework.”

Marianek describes himself as a “lifelong RISD Graphic Design loyalist” and comes to RISD portfolio reviews in search of graphic designers “charting new ground and creating experimental work. We’re familiar with the RISD culture,” he adds, “and that collaborative and critical iterative approach works well for us.”

Junior Joyce Kim 26 GD is getting a jump on the process, using the Design Portfolio Review to gather feedback on her work but also to learn about who is out there and where she might fit in. A Korean-American, Kim hopes to work in Seoul, South Korea after she graduates. “One of the reviewers I met with really liked my illustration pieces and recommended that I move them to the top of my website,” she says.

Kim practiced presenting her portfolio with friends beforehand and also worked with RISD Careers staff to develop a professional resume. “I tried using online templates and taking cues from other RISD resumes I found online, but I was still kind of lost,” she explains. “That one-on-one feedback from an advisor was really helpful.”

Top image: detail from Joyce Kim’s Concrete Dreams, Forgotten Greens, a projection envisioning a greener urban future.

Simone Solondz
May 5, 2025