You’re a university student. You’re going over various concepts that might or might not work for your upcoming finals. You’re forgetting about those extra things that you swore you would do a month ago and only now remembering about them. You’re hammering together a display to showcase several years of late nights, deadlines, and hard work. You’re about to graduate.

We’ve all been there. Sure, not every major has to deal with showcasing your work right in the middle of finals but I’m positive that whatever the “I can’t believe I’m almost done” procedure of any department is just as stressful as the other. The most satisfying part of the entire ordeal is that one big night when all of your hard work and dedication is realized. For the CSU Fresno Art and Design Department this particular night was the Senior Portfolio Show.

This year the graduating class chose “Shift” as the title for their showcase. I’m not sure if the name was largely inspired by the internal department shift from the Graphic Design Option to the BFA program or the major shift that these students are about to make as they leave their college lives behind. Whatever the reason for the name I found some sort of meaning behind it and since I’m the audience, that’s all that matters.

Just kidding, that’s not really what matters here at all. What matters the most is the fact that there is some seriously inspiring young talent entering the industry this year and not only are we going to let you know about it but we’re going to show it off to you too.

In case you were wondering, they do have a website all of their own, over there at shiftseniorshow.com.

B.F.A. Graphic Design

Grace Nemy

Jennifer Wong

Janis Reboton

Matt Weir

Andrew Pethoud

Angel Rodriguez

Allison Liles

B.A. Graphic Design Option

Alejandro Rios

Jessie Irwin

B.F.A. Illustration

Isaac Ibanez

Bryan Gummersheimer

James Smith

Mark Quesada

Byron Hamilton

B.F.A. Interactive Multimedia

Jennifer Her

If you were in the show and I did not list you even though you do have an online portfolio please contact me so I can add you to the article!

Some advice for serious consideration:

As you already noticed not every participant is featured in this article. The reason for this is the lack of online portfolios. For some individuals I had to dig a bit to find something online that represented them (Behance, Facebook Page, Deviantart, etc.). If you were in the Shift show and you are reading this article: build a website to showcase your work and contact info.

Hosting is cheaper than ever these days, if you don’t know how to build a single page portfolio there are plenty of Wordpress themes (paid or not) out there, and I can’t stress it enough how important it is to have an online presence. Facebook Pages are not adequate, but I used a couple in this article because I was grasping at straws at one point trying to find examples of peoples’ work. Even if you are already employed or about to be: Always have a personal online portfolio (i.e. yourname.com).

CSU Fresno Senior Portfolio Show - Pixelnaut Press Original