OT - Case studies

Question

I just wanted to get some insight and/or opinions on this. I
have seen a few designers out there that have what they call Case
Studies in their portfolios. Are these projects that fell through?
Are they fictitious projects?
I had talked to a friend of mine who told me that if I lose a
potential project or feel I need to add different styles to my
portfolio to just make up a company and design the site with fake
info...
What are other people's thought on this?

Answer 1

Well, I know my friend is a very ethical person with very
good morals and values. I do not think he was implying I should be
deceptive in my approach. He is a fairly successful application
developer and I don't think he would be as successful as he is by
being unethical in his business practices (although there was a guy
who had some little startup called Micro something that was
ethically questionable
I think his point was if I am having trouble building my
portfolio through pro-bono work with friends and family or a few
paid customer projects, then pick a category or type of business
and design a site as if I was hired to do so such as Real Estate.
Build it as if, so to speak but with readily apparent fake
information such 123 some street in somewhere with a fake email.
This way you are showing your skills and artistic style. I guess
almost like designing a template maybe.
Hence my original question of listing these type of sites in
the portfolio as case studies. That was what threw me off. I was
thinking I should put these type of sites in a case study group to
convey they were not real. When I think of a Case Study I think of
a lab assignment in school or like a controlled experiment. If that
makes sense.
Some other reasons for my initial question are that I
designed a site with a friend but he may be shutting it down and
not renewing his domain. Granted the site is nothing that fancy or
elaborate, but it was one of my first efforts and there are some
things in it that I was proud of. Once he removes this site from
his server, I would need to keep it on mine to show it to people
but some of it would not be functional anymore such as the email
and the url would no longer be his valid domain address. I also was
working on a design for a potential client that has pretty much
fallen through the cracks. I designed a nice concept logo and did a
quick 1 page photoshop mock up with my proposal. We never came to
an agreement on the price and the customer has just strung the
whole process along. I would like to finish this site and use it as
an example for the portfolio.
So I guess the real issue is if not calling these case
studies then what might be a better name for these examples that
conveys to people that they are not active sites but doesn't shout
out "Here is what I could've done but no one was willing to pay
me"