Things you want to consider when putting your portfolio together:
A portfolio is an important part of your creative career – whether you are interested in graphic design, web design or interface design.
If you’re creating a graphic design portfolio or showcasing your work, you want to show that you:
- Understand your client and the brief
- Have utilised graphic design elements and principles
- Have created something that fits in with the client’s needs and brand universe
If you’re creating an interface/product design portfolio, you want to show that you:
- Understand the problem and your users
- Have utilised research methods
- Conducted user testing and iterated
If you’re creating a web portfolio, you want to ensure that:
- You show you understand the client’s requirements
- The websites are able to be used or viewed as intended (host a copy on your own server, if possible or take multiple clear, obvious screenshots)
- Explain what code/languages you used and why
For every type of portfolio, you want to consider the following points!
P – Personality of your brand
O – Objectives of your portfolio
R – Review your work. What pieces are your best? Include less pieces, of higher quality.
T – Text introducing and talking about the project.
F – Focus of your portfolio. What work do you want to do?
O – Outcome, will it be a PDF portfolio? A website? A video?
L – Layout should be designed intentionally, let the work take center place.
I – Inspect it for spelling, grammar and image quality.
O – Opinions of others, get feedback and objective points of view on your work.
P – Personality of your brand
Personality is all about you and your brand. Who are you? Are you quirky or quiet? Is your work pretty bold or is it more reserved?
Come up with a few words to describe yourself and your work, then take some time to consider what sort of typefaces, colours and graphic styles you might use to represent these words.
Basically, what do you want your brand to say about you, and how would you show that visually?
O – Objective of your portfolio
Objectives are what you want your portfolio to do. If you’re making it to show off your improvement/skills, or to get into a course, then it’s going to look a bit more informal, with more of focus on process and development.
However, if you’re making it to get a job or freelance work, then you’ll want a more polished and refined collection of work in your portfolio.
It’s good be aware of why you’re making the folio, what you want from it and who the audience is.
R – Review your work.
Taking the time to review your work is probably the most critical part of the process. If you include weak work, you may be judged on your weakest piece. It’s better to have less pieces of great work, than more pieces of weak work.
- What pieces are your best?
- Do they still look original?
- Are they well designed?
- Did they solve the problem?
- Is it work that you want to be doing in the future?
- Does it show that you are confident in that work?
- Are you still proud of it now?
Work through the questions for each piece, and try to be objective. Ask yourself if you think your interviewer or audience would think it was a great piece of work.
T – Text introducing and talking about the project.
Your text is as important as your work. It gives the viewer the context for your work, and helps them to quickly decide if your work met the brief or not.
Each project should have:
- A title and a brief paragraph that describes it.
- Who the client or company was and what they wanted.
- Your role in the project.
- Enough details so the viewer knows what the project was and what you did, try to be as concise and as informative as possible.
You don’t want to bore the viewer, but they should know all of the basic information about the project.
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F – Focus of your portfolio.
Once you’ve got your work, look it all as a collection. Judge it critically and try to see it from a potential employer’s perspective. Take the time to consider your ordering and flow. If you want to, ask another creative, a tutor or a mentor for their opinion.
To understand the focus, think about what work do you want to do in the future
It’s a bit of a subjective topic, but it is suggested that you put one of your best pieces on both your first and last pages, to create a strong initial and final impression. Your mid-range pieces can go in between these.
O – Outcome, will it be a PDF portfolio? A website? A video?
Your outcome will largely depend on the type of industry you are in and the work you are including. Printed portfolios are no longer the standard, but are appropriate if you work a lot in print or tangible mediums.
Websites or digital PDFs are now the norm, and are appropriate for most types of work, especially digital.
You can use Behance, WIX, Squarespace, Adobe my portfolio, WordPress, a showreel or an InDesign doc exported as an interactive PDF. If you go with InDesign, be sure to include hyperlinks to your email or website, and check the links once you export it. Also be logical in naming your file – something like ‘firstname_lastname_year_folio’ is a safe choice.
L – Layouts should be designed intentionally.
You should consider your layout carefully. It may take some time, but consider your work as a whole and pick the best website layout or page grid for your work.
- Don’t over complicate the layout, keep it simple and clean to allow your work to really stand out.
- Make sure you include your branding, your CV and your contact details.
- Consider adding a short bio/about page if you’d like.
I – Inspect it for spelling, grammar and image quality.
Make sure that there are no errors in it, attention to detail is key to being a great creative!
Inspect your work thoroughly before you make it live or send it to print. Check for:
- Image quality
- Spelling and grammar
- Links and navigation
- Your contact details etc
Check everything!
O – Opinions
Get feedback and objective points of view on your work. Ask a fellow designer, tutor or mentor to have a look over it before you put it out into the world. It’s always a good idea to ask someone whose work you respect, even better if they’ve looked at a lot of portfolios before!
Try to ask family members or friends specific questions to see what impression they get from it, things like:
- What personality do you think this gives off?
- What work stands out?
- Is any work weaker?
Then, look back through your portfolio as a whole and see what impressions you get and what stands out to you. Did you meet your brief? Take an hour or two away from it before you do the final sign off, fresh eyes can save designs!
Extra tips:
- Including personal work is a great way to add more depth to your portfolio.
- If you have little experience in a specific area that you w, focus on deliberately improving that area.
- Create your own briefs so you’ll have a few more projects to include. Try to make them “real world” based, so they have a client and an audience.
- Consider designing something for a family member or friend, or creating a new company or product identity etc.
- Make a list of problems that you notice in your daily life, or revamp and designs or apps that you find frustrating.
Portfolio Pron: https://www.underconsideration.com/flaunt/images/Flaunt_sample_spreads.pdf
Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_task,_action,_result