Posted 26 March 2020

Portfolio reviews, WFH help and chat forums: The creative resources you can’t afford to miss

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen an amazing wealth of opportunities and resources pop up in response to the coronavirus pandemic. From online courses, live talks, portfolio reviews, apps, film and podcast recommendations to name just a few. Here, we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of the resources currently available that you simply cannot afford to miss.

Adobe: Creative Cloud
With universities shutting their doors, Adobe are providing all higher education institutions who currently make Creative Cloud apps available to students via on-campus logins – the ability to request temporary ‘at-home’ access. You can find out more info here.

This is available until the end of May, 2020, and it’s worth noting that your administrator or tutor will have to request access to this by filling out this form.

Creative Boom: Chat Forum
Online magazine Creative Boom have launched their own chat forum. It’s free, private and a step away from social media and the search engines. Described as a a friendly and supportive community, you can request to join here.

Google: Teach from Home
Google have set up Teach from Home, a temporary hub of information and tools to help support the hundreds of millions of students and educators currently facing school closures. Providing information, tips, training and tools to help remote teaching and learning, it’s worth a look for tutors and studios alike. Find out more here

Portfolio Reviews
Our Twitter feed has been buzzing with companies and studios across the country offering up their virtual doors to students and emerging creatives for portfolio reviews. Here are some of the ones we’ve spotted:

Illustration agency Handsome Frank are running free portfolio reviews for illustrators in lockdown zones. Tweet them with a link to your work, tag it with #hfreview, and they’ll pick an artist each day to set up a 15-20 minute-long video chat.

Students and junior photographers can also call on Handsome Frank’s sister company, photography agency Hancock & Handsome. The team will be setting up video calls to talk about photography careers, how to make it as a photographer, editing your folio, and more. Drop them a line and they will pull names from a hat.

Bath-based design studio Supple are offering up some online advice to third year students. Send them a message at [email protected]. They’ve said they’ll try to report to as many as they can.

Design and branding agency DBD based in Manchester are also offering advice and portfolio support to students or graduates. Send them a DM over on their Twitter.

Based over in Sydney, Australia, creative company Christopher Doyle & Co. are similarly ready to hear from you for project reviews or any questions you might have. You can email the team at [email protected]. They’ll take on as many as the can – also worth making note of the time difference!

If you’re a junior advertising creative, founder of mentoring tool, Fellow, Aisha Hakim has set up a spreadsheet, where you can type in your details and have your book critiqued.

Written by Creative Lives in Progress