20 Pro Tips to Create an Awesome Design Portfolio
These days designers can easily have their work on the internet with a theme, website or a few clicks. Back before the internet, designers had to put together physical, printed portfolios and hope to get an interview so SOMEONE would look at their work. These days EVERYONE connected to a device can see your work.
Sure, you can put your projects on a website and share it on social media, but is just being out there enough? How do you want to get in front? What will make your work stand out from the crowd? Here are 20 pro tips points to create an awesome design portfolio.
1. Be thoughtful about what you include
Don’t grab everything you’ve ever created, snap a few photos and include it with a title. Set aside time to go through all of your pieces and exclude anything you’re not proud of or don’t think is your best work.
2. Select only your strongest pieces
These are the projects you know were successful, got rave reviews and had good results.
3. Showcase your most unique and creative work
These pieces are bucking the latest trends. It doesn’t follow a WordPress theme nor is what everyone else is doing. Make people think “Wow, now THIS is awesome!”
4. Go for variety
Don’t include only one form of design, such as website design or illustration. Though this doesn’t mean that everything shouldn’t work together. Make sure it all still looks like it’s one person’s work.
5. Decide on how many pieces to include
The suggestions vary depending on who you ask. Go for quality, not quantity. Go for 10 on the low end to no more than 20. You don’t want to lose the attention span of the viewer. No matter how great your work is, the viewer will still only click through a few projects before moving on.
6. Do you need an online and physical portfolio?
Most designers are using online portfolios these days but you should think about creating a physical one for those in-person interviews, especially if you’re a print designer.
7. Go high resolution
Even if your portfolio is 100% online, you never know if you may need a physical one down the road or if you need to print any pieces.
Having high-res photos of all your pieces is a great idea, whether you’re producing a portfolio or not. Plus, clear close ups are perfect for sharing on social media. They create drama and give your portfolio a high-quality look.
8. Stay current
Don’t include anything older than 3 years. Trends, techniques and technology changes quickly. You don’t want to look dated.
9. The chosen few
Once you have the final pieces selected, make sure they’re cohesive, that they form your “brand”. You don’t want your portfolio to look like it’s a group of many peoples’ work.
10. Make sure the pieces flow nicely from one to the next
That doesn’t mean you have to group all web design together and all logos together. Look at the colours and how angles work together.
11. Snap a pic
If you only have print piece of a project and want to use it online, take a few photos of it.
If you don’t have a great camera don’t use your smartphone. Instead, hire a photographer for a quick photo shoot or even work out a barter.
12. Make them interesting
If you only have a PDF of a magazine or poster you designed, use online mockup resources to drop your artwork into, so they look like you hired a photographer. These are perfect for websites and apps. Taking a photo of a website on your monitor is not acceptable.
13. Non-client work is okay
What you include doesn’t always have to be paid client projects. If you love to self-start your own projects, go ahead and include them.
14. Give them some street cred
Many projects are probably self-explanatory but others aren’t. Including notes about the project, who the client was, what talents were used and how the project was marketed are all great to include.
15. Results
If you designed a marketing campaign, it’s great to include who else worked on the project, how they measured results and how successful it was.
16. Get a close up
Viewing a piece in person is different than seeing them online. You can touch them to see what kind of paper they were printed on and you can see little details of colour.
Online, include an overall image of the project, then zoom in to some of the most interesting areas of each piece and showcase those too.
17. Showcase the design process
Maybe your client didn’t select the logo you really loved. So can you include it in your portfolio? You can absolutely have a portfolio piece that shows your design process and the 5 logos you designed for your client to pick from. They may not have chosen the one you wanted them to, but you can still show your creativity with the others you designed. It’s interesting to creative directors to see your design process.
18. Don’t use animation to your online portfolio
Keep it clean, simple and non-distracting. Let the viewer click through at their pace. Using parallax or other scrolling features are acceptable and are very hip today.
19. Get a second opinion
You’ve looked at these pieces three dozen times. They’re becoming a blur to you. Before you finalise your portfolio, get another set of eyes on it. Get someone else’s reaction and opinion. Does it flow, look professional, is easy to click through and correct?
20. Review, add, delete, repeat
Think you’re done once you’ve hit “publish” on your portfolio page? If so, go back to #8. You want to stay current, so set a schedule to review your portfolio every 6 months. Add any new projects and delete anything that’s looking dated or tired.
SOURCE: Canva
