If you're a wannabe designer and you're a bit confused about how to get started in the design industry, Mike Davidson's How to Make Friends and Influence Art Directors is a useful read for you. He wrote a six points list of good advices from which I'll show you #2:

2. « With regards to your portfolio, spend every spare minute of your time on it. Nothing impresses me more than a clean book filled with thoughtful work. It doesn’t matter how big your clients are… only how good your work is. You should create imaginary clients if that allows you to flex your design muscle. I would rather see a beautiful poster for an imaginary band than a lackluster design project for a big company like Boeing. In other words, you will never be judged on the size (or existence!) of your clients — only the quality of your work. »

Oh, that's true -- a clean book goes straight to a CD's heart. So run and read the whole article posted on Mikeindustries blog.

I wrote a post about this but it's worth mentioning it again -- while you're at reading lists of advices, have another look at Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School, a great, great article (re)published by Michael Bierut in Design Observer. I feel like reading it again myself, too.