A Mad Man with a Box
By: 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞
Tags: Portfolio, Doctor Who, Visual Communication, Mythology, Theory

In the theoretical sense, What could the portfolio be today?

Doctor Who — The Pandorica Opens (19 June 2010 on BBC One) — Vincent Van Gogh tardis painting

I like to share a way to look at portfolios and by being within the graphic design background: I am going to be broad in stating that most people outside of the creative industry carries their version of a portfolio.

All of us have our own Tardis and if you are not familiar with this British pop-cultural reference: The Tardis is the fictional time machine from the television show called Doctor Who, where the show is about this mysterious 2,000-year-old time-travelling figure who travels with his/her companions across time and space.

The Doctor: “Amy Pond, there’s something you better understand about me ’cause it’s important, and one day your life may depend upon it. I am definitely a mad man with a box.” — The Eleventh Hour air on 3 April 2010 and written by Steven Moffat

You are probably wondering why this has to do with portfolios? As there is the mythology surrounding the show and that the Tardis can be view as a cultural artefact. If we step into the Doctor’s shoes where we go travelling across space and time: When as travellers navigating through life, we have our metaphorical vehicle as it can help us to deliver a thing used to express or fulfil something.

In marketing and advertising context: media vehicle is a specific median where the message is placed, by being the station. The portfolio isn’t just the journal but, instead, it’s a vehicle. I am not saying that we can drive our portfolios like cars or even fly them like a Tardis but, we are responsible for carrying our portfolios by using them as media vehicles to help us deliver and convey upon our communications.

If the Doctor is a mad man with a box: what is his message? The portfolio is the organize content of information that may consist of visual or contextual discourse but, importantly behind it is philosophy and intellect. By one moment of consideration: Social Media accounts are portfolios because they are collections of opinions and experiences that are showcase within that portfolio or what I like to refer as the remote vehicle.

The funny thing is that the Tarsis looks like the old police phone box and it’s bigger, from the inside. My point is that when Tarsis is the vehicle: it functions as a product or service and if we think about different applications of digital or traditional portfolios, they always consist of having storage that utilized our fulfilments of making and taking space depending upon activity.

I think about my portfolio, by having an objective and subjective, relationship and, this involved developing subconscious memorisation of categorising thoughts, hopes, fears and ideas into my storage that travels with me. If we think of the Tarsis as the Doctor’s sense of place: it’s not just the vehicle but, the home-like architecture of thought.

To the Doctor and us, we know that the Doctor’s Tarsis helps to inform his identity status as well to share his mental model of delivering communication through channelling the media vehicle. As the Doctor fulfilled within his Tarsis, I know of this allegory with regards to box-ticking as it is about fulfilling our sense of identity to help inform ourselves as well of what is deem expected to communicate towards others.

We all have a phenomenological relationship with personal-mythology aka our portfolios because self-activation of self myths involved developing your own semiotic (Portfolio) to be used to help inform others and yourself of identity status. When we treat our portfolio as the form of methodology, epistemology and ontology: We become the hero of our journey when demonstrating our dialect through the story of our work and progress.

As the Tarsis is what makes the Doctor: The time-traveller will be known as Doctor Who or, else he would become primitive.