Rule 6 & 7: Include Simple Wins and Show a Broad Range of Work

There's a temptation, when building your portfolio, to go big or go home. To fill every slot with sweeping integrated campaigns, multi-platform activations, and polished award-entry videos that run two minutes long. And yes, those pieces matter. But if that's all you show, you're actually making a strategic mistake — one that could cost you the very opportunities you're working so hard to earn.

Rules 6 and 7 are about balance. They're about understanding how Creative Directors actually experience your portfolio, and engineering your work selection to meet them where they are — not where you wish they were.

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Why Simple Work Still Matters in a Complex World

Let's be honest: the classic print ad is not what it used to be. Social campaigns, experiential activations, branded content, influencer integrations — these are the currencies of modern marketing. So why on earth would Ross Chowles, a co-founder of one of Africa's most celebrated agencies, tell you to include print work?

Because a print campaign does something almost nothing else in your portfolio can do: it gives a busy Creative Director an instant read on your concept and execution skills.

Think about what a great print ad requires. A single, undeniable idea. A visual that earns its place. A headline that does real work. Typography that serves the concept. Every element pulling in the same direction. There's nowhere to hide in a print ad. No 90-second narrative arc to build tension. No music to carry emotion. No motion to distract from a weak idea.

When a CD looks at a strong print campaign, they know within seconds whether you can think. That's enormously valuable to someone who has fifteen portfolios to review before lunch.

Pro Tip: Think of your print work as the "proof of concept" section of your portfolio. It's the place where your raw creative thinking is most exposed — and most impressive when it's good. Even if you work primarily in digital, having one or two strong print campaigns signals that your ideas have structural integrity.

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The Palate Cleanser Effect

Here's a concept worth internalizing: simple wins act as palate cleansers.

Imagine sitting through a tasting menu where every single course is rich, complex, and intensely flavored. By the fifth dish, your palate is overwhelmed. You stop tasting. You stop appreciating. The chef's best work lands flat because you're fatigued.

Your portfolio works the same way. If every piece requires the viewer to watch a two-minute case study video, read a lengthy brief, and mentally reconstruct a campaign ecosystem before they can appreciate what you did — you're exhausting them. And an exhausted Creative Director is not a generous one.

Peppering your portfolio with easy-to-digest visual work creates rhythm. It gives the viewer a moment to breathe, to feel a quick hit of satisfaction, before diving back into something more complex. That simple, clean poster campaign you're tempted to leave out? It might be the piece that makes your integrated campaign more impressive by contrast.

Key Insight: The goal of your portfolio isn't just to show what you've done — it's to control the experience of the person viewing it. Simple wins give you a tool to manage pacing, sustain attention, and make your complex work land harder.

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What "Simple" Actually Means

Simple doesn't mean easy. And it definitely doesn't mean throwaway.

Simple means immediately legible. It means the idea is clear, the execution is clean, and the viewer doesn't need a decoder ring to understand what they're looking at. A beautifully art-directed poster. A tight three-ad print campaign. A social series with a strong visual system. An outdoor execution that stops you cold.

These pieces should still represent your best thinking. They should still be conceptually sharp and technically polished. The difference is that they communicate their value fast — and in a world where seven seconds is the average time someone spends on a website, fast is a feature, not a compromise.

Think about how Ross describes the ideal portfolio structure: your best work first, then your second best, then quick wins, then your third best work, then a display of essential skills. Notice where "quick wins" sit — right in the middle, acting as a bridge between your heavy hitters. That's intentional. That's architecture.

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Rule 7: Showing Range Proves You're Genuinely Useful

Now let's talk about breadth.

Unless you are a deliberate, committed hyper-specialist — someone who has consciously built a career around one specific discipline — your portfolio should demonstrate that you can think across mediums, applications, and executional styles.

Here's the business reality: modern creative organizations are lean. Teams are smaller than they used to be. Budgets are tighter. The briefs are more varied. A Creative Director hiring a mid-level creative doesn't just need someone who can crack a TV script. They need someone who can crack a TV script and think through the social extension and have a point of view on the OOH and maybe even contribute to the experiential concept.

The more flexible you are, the more useful you are. It's that simple.

Pro Tip: When curating for range, think in terms of: medium (print, digital, film, experiential), format (long-form, short-form, static, motion), and tone (serious, humorous, emotional, provocative). If your portfolio only demonstrates one or two of these dimensions, you're signaling a limitation — even if it's not one you actually have.

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How to Show Range Without Losing Focus

There's a version of "showing range" that goes wrong: the portfolio that feels scattered, inconsistent, and hard to read. Where every piece seems to come from a different creative mind. Where there's no throughline, no sensibility, no you.

The goal isn't to show that you can do everything. The goal is to show that your creative thinking translates across contexts.

The way to thread this needle is to let your thinking be the consistent element, even as the executions vary. If you have a knack for unexpected visual metaphors, that should be visible whether you're showing a print campaign, a digital activation, or a film. If your strength is wit and economy of language, that voice should come through in your social work as much as your radio scripts.

Range without a point of view is just noise. Range with a point of view is proof that you're a versatile creative with a genuine perspective — and that's exactly who creative organizations want to hire.

Key Insight: Think of your portfolio like a great album, not a greatest hits compilation. A great album has variety — tempo changes, mood shifts, different instrumentation — but it still sounds like it came from the same artist. That coherence is what makes range feel like an asset rather than a liability.

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Putting Rules 6 and 7 Together

These two rules work in concert. Simple wins give your portfolio rhythm and accessibility. Broad range gives it depth and versatility. Together, they communicate something powerful to anyone reviewing your work: this person can think, they can execute, and they can do it across the full spectrum of what modern creative work demands.

Here's a practical exercise: lay out your current portfolio and ask yourself two questions.

First — is there anything a Creative Director could appreciate in under ten seconds? If the answer is no, you need some simple wins.

Second — if someone looked only at the mediums and formats represented in your portfolio, would they see genuine range? Or would they see one mode, repeated? If it's the latter, it's time to surface work you may have undervalued, or to create new pieces that demonstrate your flexibility.

Your portfolio is a curated argument for your own potential. Rules 6 and 7 are about making that argument both accessible and comprehensive — giving busy, discerning people every reason to say yes.