Are you struggling to get a portfolio together? How do you decide what’s good enough to put in your portfolio? What’s the best way to show your portfolio to potential clients?

A portfolio is the most important document of your design career. A portfolio is a document that shows off your design skills and the projects you’ve worked on. It helps clients decide if you are the person they want to hire for their project.

Updating your Portfolio should be a part of your design process, and a way to promote yourself and your work.

Intro

Creating a portfolio can be intimidating. So I’ve tried to explain as much as I can in this post to make it easier for you to start. If you’re an experienced designer, but feel like portfolio needs work, there is something in here for you too.

I’ve included some examples from my own portfolio to help guide you.

If you’re an interdisciplinary designer, like myself, I’ve also shared ways you can divide up your work to make it more accessible for clients.

If you want to expand your design skills, check our 12 Principles of Interdisciplinary Design.

In This Post…

We want to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. Here’s everything we’ll cover in this post…

What is a Design Portfolio?

Every designer, no matter their field, requires a portfolio. If you’re not a Graphic Designer, then this is a great way to start building some knowledge of that field.

It’s a perfect way to begin to explore Graphic Design and see how you can develop more interdisciplinary design skills.

A Design Portfolio is a place to showcase the work you do, and the way you do it. It is such an important document because it shows your previous work, your skillset and your process.

A Portfolio is an Archive of your Previous Work

A Portfolio is a document where you should display the very best of your previous projects. This allows you to create an archive of work. Having an archive on your work, allows you to see where you started and how far you’ve come.

By keeping a collection of your work, you can revisit past successes and learn from old mistakes. It’s not uncommon for designers to go back to update old projects, especially if they’re applying for a job with a similar project.

By keeping an archive, you can also see how your design style has changed over time. As you grow as a designer, and you learn new techniques and discover new influences, you’ll be able to see this progression in your archive.

At Nollie, we highly recommend keeping an archive, even just for your design process, and recommend keeping A Design Process Journal too.

A Portfolio is a Place to Show Off Your Skills

To get hired, clients will want to know that you can do the work. Your portfolio should be a place where you can show off your skills as a designer. You need to prove you can tackle complex design challenges and demonstrate an understanding of what makes good design.

You’re portfolio should be a reflection of who you are as a designer and what you’re capable of. You should highlight your strengths

Your portfolio should also offer some insight into your design process. Potential clients want to see how you work, your design process and the way you tackle new problems. 

A Portfolio is a Place to Prove Your Value to Clients

You’re portfolio is a great tool when looking for jobs. Whether your looking for freelance work, agency work or inhouse work, the decision on whether you get the job or not will largely come from your portfolio.

Showcase your most successful projects and include client testimonials and measurable results. You’re more likely to be taken seriously if you have a client’s positive feedback in your portfolio. 

If you don’t have any clients yet, don’t worry we’ll show you how to get real client projects in your portfolio later in the next topic.

The recruiters are looking for someone they trust to complete the work. This comes from knowing the client’s needs and what they’re looking for and tailoring your portfolio to fit those needs.

What Do Recuiters Want to See in Your Portfolio?

Here’s a poorly-kept secret in the design world. Most people will spend only around 30 seconds looking at your portfolio before deciding whether they like your work or not. 30 seconds is not a long time to make a first impression!

So what can do to make your work stand out?

Show Client Work and Feedback in Your Portfolio

You need to prove you can work with clients. The best way to demonstrate this in your portfolio is to include real projects you’ve worked on for real brands. 

A great way to bring this home, is to include client testimonials. When you’ve finished working with a client, ask them for a reference you can include in your portfolio. Clients need to know that you are able to do the work, if you have someone explaining that you are a great designer who helped solve their problems they will be more likely to trust you.

What to do if you don’t have any Real Clients

If you’re a new designer, you might not have worked with any real clients. You can include your student work, and any personal projects. If you’re just out of school, recruiters will expect student projects in your portfolio. 

But having honest feedback from clients is invaluable!

If you need to show real world experience in your portfolio, especially when starting out, the best way to get this is by working with local community-run charities. 

Local charities are often stretched for resources. They often don’t have a lot of time to spend on their design solutions, they are spending most of their time providing help to those who need it. It’s not hard to find a charity that needs a new logo, a new website, interior layouts, the list goes on.

Go out in your local community and find those charities that could use your expertise. It will help you get a better understanding of working with clients, and do something good in your community. 

You can work with charities you’re passionate about, so it feels like you’re helping those with issues that are important to you.

Your Portfolio Should Show Your Technical Ability

You want to show off in your portfolio! This is the place where you can prove you’ve got what it takes to be a great asset to their team.

Put in your best work, and give a small description of the project and some insight into your design process.

Not everything needs to be a shiny finished project. In fact, potential employers love seeing some aspects of your creative process. They want to see things like sketching and development. 

Pick one project in your portfolio that you’re particularly proud of, and demonstrate the full project in 2-3 pages. Designers LOVE talking about the process, we want to see yours.

When to Update Your Portfolio

The best time to update your portfolio is at the end of every project. We call this the Promotion phase. 

It can be hard to stay on top of your portfolio, and many designers leave it till their looking for their next opportunity before updating it. This is a bad habit. 

Instead, you should regularly update your portfolio. At the end of your project, spend a few hours putting your work into your portfolio, and across portfolio platforms like Behance and Dribbble (more on them below).

If your work is under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, you will need written consent from your client to determine whether you are allowed to post the work in your portfolio, and if so under what terms. A common one is after the NDA work has been published.

Where to save your portfolio?

A Digital PDF Portfolio

These days you’ll definitely need a digital portfolio. As almost all of the hiring process is done via job market sites, LinkedIn, portfolio sites and by discovering your work online. To be able to apply to jobs in this digital age, it pays to have a digital version of your portfolio.

A digital portfolio is a version of your portfolio that you can send out digitally. You want it to be send your folio to potential clients quickly and easily.

The best way to send out your portfolio is to have it saved as a PDF format. Make sure that all images are high quality but the file size is low. 

If you have a massive PDF file, it will struggle to open quickly on a recruiter’s computer. Remember you only have 30 seconds to make an impression! Any time wasted waiting for the file to load isn’t going to help you land a job.

If you’re PDF file is massive, try using CompressPDF or Adobe Acrobat to help you get the file size down.

Online Portfolio Platforms

There are many great portfolio sites out there, but the two biggest platforms out there have to be Behance and Dribbble.

Behance is the best place for posting your work. It’s one of the largest portfolio sites online. It is a place to find inspiration from other great designers and also where potential clients can find your work. 

Behance is a free portfolio platform run by Adobe. So if you have an Adobe subscription you can also link your Adobe Portfolio to your Behance account. You can post something on your Adobe Portfolio, it will automatically appear on Behance.

Dribbble is another popular portfolio site where you can post your work. Unlike Behance, Dribbble is designed for building a community with other designers. It’s more exclusive, in the past you had to be invited on to the platform.

To get your work out there, you should aim to be on both of these portfolio platforms.

Create Your Own Portfolio Website

Having your own portfolio website is a great way to engage potential clients. It shows that you are serious about your design career. It allows you to control your branding, demonstrate your clients and showcase your work.

It also helps you improve your web design skills and helps you further your larger understanding of design. 

You must have a full domain to look professional. For example, “joedoesdesign.com” looks more professional than “joedoesdesign.blogsite.com”.

Buy your website domain. It really doesn’t cost much in the grand scheme of things.

Adobe Portfolio

If you have a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, you also get access to free website hosting with Adobe Portfolio. Adobe Portfolio allows for up to 4 domains.

We highly recommend using Adobe Creative Cloud if you want to be taken seriously as a designer. It’s the industry standard and will be the software that the recruitment team will be expecting you to be able to use.

You can read more about the software we recommend, in Best software for Designers.

As Adobe owns Behance, there are several integrations you can use with Adobe Portfolio. For example, if you upload a project to Adobe Portfolio website, you can export it into Behance using the “Share to Behance” in the Pages section of your site.

You can check out more about Adobe Portfolio here.

Design Your Own Website

The best options for building your own website are WordPress and Bluehost. It’s a combination that’s used across the majority of websites online.

I recommend setting up your own website and buying your own domain with WordPress.org. Make sure it’s not wordpress.com which gives you a long URL like the one listed above.

We also recommend using Bluehost for hosting. They are a great hosting provider, we even use them for the Nollie website! They’re hosting is great value for money, doesn’t come with a subscription and gives you full control of your website. They are also great with customer service.

Click here to find out more about setting up your own website with Bluehost.

Building your own website allows you to do many things you wouldn’t with Behance, or even Adobe Portfolio. You have more options with web design, you can add a blog and you can tailor your site to match you as a designer.

Having your own website, you can also implement your own SEO strategies to get your work infront of the people who you want to see it.

Also being able to understand WordPress is a great skill to add to your Design Skillset. 

A Physical Portfolio

You don’t see many physical portfolios anymore. With most job applications being done online via emails and websites there isn’t as much need for physical websites now. 

But that doesn’t mean they don’t still have their purpose. There are times when having a physical copy of your portfolio is more practical than a digital one. Remember design exists in the real world, not just online.

They are a different way to look at your portfolio. You can see things differently when looking at a piece of paper vs looking at them on a screen. 

You may notice details that look wrong that you never noticed on a screen, so you can change it across all the different versions of your portfolio.

You can make your physical portfolio much more decorative. If you’re going to use a physical portfolio, it’s better to invest in a good looking one. A plastic portfolio looks cheap and thrown together. Also, spend a little bit extra on good quality paper. A physical portfolio should show you understand that the devil is in the details.

I recommend this portfolio case on Amazon.

In the times where it would pay off to bring a physical portfolio you want it to look like an amazing extral, not an after thought.

I still take mine to interviews just incase there are any technical difficulties.

How to use a portfolio?

What can you do to make sure your portfolio leaves a great first impression? 

Show Your Best RELEVANT Work

With your portfolio, you should be tailoring it for the person who will be looking at it. Remember that the person looking at your portfolio will only be spending around 30 seconds looking at your portfolio. So you really need to make a great first impression.

Your portfolio should reflect the company that you’re applying to. The work in it should be what they’re interested in. If you’re applying for a company that deals with dog toys, you want to try and bring that kind of energy in your portfolio.

That also means if you’re applying for a specialised role, and you have several types of interdisciplinary projects, only show the ones that the recruiter would be interested in. 

For example, if you are applying for a Graphic Design job and also have Fashion projects, they are going to be more interested in your Graphic Design work. They want to know how you can help them, not how much you can do.

Keep It Concise

When showing your portfolio, keep it concise. Your portfolio should only feature your best work that fits with the job you’re applying for. 

A portfolio should be around 10 to 12 pages long and include a cover, contents page and about section. To save space, I recommend putting the contents and the about section on the same page.

If you have a large collection of projects, you can put them all on your website or on a portfolio platform, but you’re digital portfolio should only be the best work that’s relevant to the role.

Have A Strong Layout

A good looking portfolio is going to make more of an impression than a bad one. Take the time to understand elements of Graphic Design that will help enhance your portfolio.

If you’re unsure how to create layouts for your portfolio, then you can learn some of the principles of graphic design. Or you can just download our template!

Show what the client is looking for

You have a short time to make a first impression, so it is important to know what the client is looking for when they’re hiring.

When you’re applying for job, spend some time researching the job requirements and find projects that fit their criteria. 

How Interdisciplinary Designers Can Update Their Portfolio

Nollie’s goal is to show you how you can become an interdisciplinary designer. That means you have an understanding of more than one design specialty. We do this by sharing the 12 Principles of Interdisciplinary Design.

If you are in your interdisciplinary journey, you might be wondering how to make your portfolio more streamlined. As an Interdisciplinary designer myself, I can tell you that most prospective clients don’t want to see your full scope of work.

Leave Them Wanting More

Using the points above the best thing you can do is focus on the person who’ll be viewing your portfolio. Remove the projects that aren’t relevant for that company and their interests.

What you can do is have a page in particular where you focus on your other projects, and give an example of the other work you’re interested in. 

I trained in Graphic Design and Industrial Design, when applying for Graphic jobs I make sure that that is the sole focus of my portfolio for the interview. I leave a page at the end that goes into my other projects that displays my Industrial Design work. 

I keep it at the end to show, “Hey I can do more than what you’re looking for. But you’ll need to invite me to an interview to find out more.”

For example, when applying for Graphic Design jobs, I like to use this image as a cover. It doesn’t distract from the work, but shows who I am and also that I have experience out with that specialty.

We’ll go more into Interdisciplinary Design Portfolios in an upcoming post. So check out the newsletter to stay up to date.

Conclusion

A portfolio is the most important document you have as a designer. Make sure yours leaves a great first impression and leaves the viewer wanting more.

A portfolio will be your ultimate tool for finding work and you can tailor it depending on your interdisciplinary skills. 

Thanks for reading! Would you like us to do a post on portfolio reviews? Perhaps you’d even be interested in a portfolio review yourself! Let us know in the comments!

Nollie Design is about showing designers how they can become interdisciplinary, by using the 12 Principles of Interdisciplinary Design.