Illustration Portfolio Deck

About this template

The file you take into a ten-minute conversation

Ten slides for agency applications, freelance pitch meetings, or art-fair booth conversations, where you have to explain the character of your work in ten minutes. The artwork is the point; this file only supplies the frame: cover, agenda, two dividers, two body slides, one left-right comparison, one metric slide, one bar slide, and a closing. Only two slides carry written explanation, and the cover line itself says the template runs from artist statement to trend analysis in ten slides. With more than twenty pieces to show, treat this as the opening section and append image slides after it.

You have to add the artwork slides yourself

The agenda lists five items – artist statement, style and color, sketch stage versus final artwork, key metrics, trend analysis – and every one of them has a matching slide. What is missing is any slide where work is actually laid out: key originals, commissions, publishing and merchandise. Build those yourself, in this order.

1. Duplicate the slide 3-4 pair (the CHAPTER 01 divider plus its body) three times for key originals, commissions, and publishing/merchandise. The body layout is one subtitle plus three item lines, so on image-led slides delete the text boxes and place one large picture instead.
2. Put rates, turnaround and contact details on the closing slide; it holds only a short line about talking through pictures plus a thank-you, so there is room, and it is what stays on screen longest.
3. Extend the five agenda lines to match the slides you built. The 01 to 05 numbers are typed text and will not renumber themselves.

What to write on the two text slides

Slide 4, the artist statement, is subtitled “explain in one paragraph what you draw and why” and ships with working name and subject matter, tools and working setup, and a theme carried for ten years. Slide 6, style and color, is subtitled “show how you handle line and color with sample images” and ships with line weight and finishing, a fixed six-color palette, and three-step shading. Keep the headings and fill in your own practice. As its own subtitle says, style has to be shown rather than described: if you claim a fixed six-color palette, a picture using those six colors must sit on the same slide.

• Statement, e.g. watercolour-textured figure illustration for children’s books and editorial.
• Setup, e.g. drawn in Procreate, CMYK press proofing included.
• Delivery, e.g. A4 300dpi plus 2000px for web, layered file included.

Decide whether your rate goes in the file

The metric slide reads 12 key originals, 9-day commission turnaround, 7 book covers, and 180,000 KRW for a half-body color piece, captioned as self-reported figures. The first three are simply counts; the rate is different, because once the file is forwarded that number becomes the starting point of every negotiation. For open commission work, keep it but state the usage scope alongside – web only or print included. For corporate pitches, swap that tile for something like longest client relationship or repeat commissions, and move pricing to a separate quote. The nine-day turnaround also changes meaning depending on whether revision rounds are included, so add a note to the caption line.

The four bars are your mix of work

The chart holds figures 64, backgrounds 38, cover work 22, and merchandise art 17. It shows the share of work by type rather than change over time, so retitle it accordingly. Unlike the metric slide, it has no caption line at all, so add a text box stating whether the numbers are scores or job counts. This is where a client decides what to hand you, so relabel the bars to whatever actually comes in; if figure work dominates, lead your new sample pages with figure work too.

Sending the file

The ten-slide shape is built for a face-to-face conversation, but it gets opened as an email attachment first, and artwork pushes it past 20MB quickly – keep the original and send a PDF. Put your name, contact and site on the cover line that currently reads 2026 plus presenter name and affiliation, and repeat the same details on the closing slide, which is on screen longest. The English label at the top of the cover can be swapped for your field, and naming the file with your name and the month beats “portfolio_final” for getting a reply.

Where replies dry up

• Filling the slide edge to edge so no margin is left; the boundary between background and artwork disappears and the piece looks cropped.
• Leaving slide 7 as six lines of text. The left column (composition and eye flow only, contrast checked in greyscale, three options compared side by side) and the right column (colored with the agreed palette, converted to CMYK for print, 300dpi master delivered) only make sense with a rough and a final of the same piece placed beside them.
• Publishing client work without checking confidentiality; for unreleased jobs, remove the client name and show only part.
• Omitting usage scope. With a rate and a turnaround but no scope, the conversation stops on that question.
• Writing sentences on the dividers; slides 3 and 5 hold only the SECTION label, a number, a title and a CHAPTER tag.