Preparing a Professional Portfolio: Designers and Illustrators

Gardner DeFranceaux is an award-winning Executive Vice President of Creative at Cold Open, a highly-acclaimed creative agency in Venice, CA. With 27 years in the industry—21 of them at Cold Open— Gardner currently oversees creative direction and execution on theatrical and television projects. He has worked with countless high-profile studios, including Warner Brothers, HBO MAX, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, Meta, Universal Pictures, Nickelodeon, Sony Pictures, and Disney Pictures. Some of his most memorable campaigns include Veep, Game of Thrones, the Fast & the Furious franchise, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Big Little Lies, among others. His work has received multiple nominations and wins for both the Golden Trailer and Clio Entertainment Awards. Today, Gardner continues working with passion, creating evocative and provocative key art.

Andrew Shalat is an author, designer/illustrator, educator, and Mac expert. Since 1985 he has been designing and writing articles about Graphic Design, Macintosh, Mac software, and publishing technologies that have appeared in Macworld, maccentral.com and macweek.com (for which he was a columnist writing "Shalat's Web"). He holds both a Master’s Degree in English Literature and a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Experience and Graphic Design. To date, he has written three books: How to Do Everything with Online Video (McGraw-Hill, Osborne), Do It Yourself Mac Projects (McGraw-Hill), and MacDesign Out of the Box (Peachpit). His design work has covered a large range of media from print, web, identity campaigns to sometimes just plain old layout. He is currently writing a collection of essays on Design (with a big D).

Gordon Drummond is the President and Chief Academic Officer of Sessions College. Gordon is an educator and instructional designer with a passion for art, design, and technology who joined Sessions in 2001. As President, Gordon’s role is to provide the leadership to help our school directors achieve their goals in education, operations, marketing, and student services. Key tasks include managing accreditation, licensing, and relations with government agencies and other institutions, coordinating strategic and educational planning, and representing the school at conferences and other public events. Outside of Sessions, Gordon has served on the Middle States Association Commission on Secondary Schools (2007-2015) and the Distance Education Accreditation Commission (DEAC) board (2017-2023).