Book Review: Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don't teach you in design school, but should

Michael Janda is a graphic designer who worked his way up from the trenches to where he is now, a creative director who works with big clients such as NBC, Fox, Disney, National Geographic and more.

Burn Your Portfolio is a refreshing no-nonsense guide for designers who are embarking on their career. The book talks about the best practices when it comes to handling your clients, common pitfalls to avoid and a lot of other insights.

This book assumes you already have the technical graphic design skills. The focus is on managing your relationships with your clients. It's all about the soft skills, making sure that there's mutual and concrete understanding of any particular project on hand.

Design schools don't teach this kind of client relationship skills because most of the time you're not working with someone who's paying your salary. The relationship becomes tricky when money is involved. This is where the book shines because Michael Janda has been there and done that before. He talks about the many mistakes he made and how they could have been avoided. Now that he's managing other designers, he also has tips on how to handle employees, outsource jobs and managing internal workflow.

I highly recommend this book to all graphic designers. It might save you a lot of trouble and inconvenience in the future. What Michael Janda has learned throughout his career, you can now learn in a book.

Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don't teach you in design school, but should is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)