If you are in the creative industry, a portfolio is essential to showcase your talents, your previous work, and your style.
Whether you're a seasoned professional looking for your next creative project, a designer transitioning to freelance work, or a recent graduate looking for their first job, a well-crafted portfolio can set you apart from the competition and might just be the deciding factor in getting that project.
This is why we prepared for you today a comprehensive guide on how to create an impressive graphic design portfolio. We’ve also included some tips on how to brand and market yourself as a designer – all made easy with our logo maker tool and our wide suite of creative marketing templates.
Let’s dive into it!
Best Practices For An Impressive Portfolio
You may be the most talented designer on Earth, but if you don’t have a place to show your work off, it’s meaningless. You’ll need to have a portfolio that clients and companies can easily view and access, and one that clearly and concisely displays all your previous outstanding creations.
Here are the steps that you should follow to build your portfolio:
- Curate your portfolio
- Organize them properly
- Build a great website
- Think of your brand identity
- Add interactive effects or immersive visuals
- Include reviews or testimonials
- Prepare for online or offline viewing
- Keep it updated
- Market yourself
Curate your portfolio
You may be tempted to put all your work in your portfolio. After all, the more the merrier, right?
Wrong! Your portfolio should only showcase your best and most high-quality work. It should be something that will catch your potential client’s eye and make them think that you’re the best person to do the job.
Quality over quantity should be your mantra. Don’t put in works that don’t reflect your current style, your design sense, or your best efforts.
Curation also includes having a diverse portfolio. See if you can include samples from various design types (ex., show logo, print, illustrations, and web design works) to show that you are flexible and versatile. If you can create works in various art styles (ex., abstract, colorful, minimalist, 3D), then you should showcase that as well to show your range.
Organize them properly
Your portfolio should be arranged and organized in a way that is easy for clients to understand.
You can either arrange them by type (by Logo, Brochure, Social Media Graphics, UI Design, Videos, etc.), by industry (all your works for Beauty vs. all your works for Tech, etc.), or by style (Abstract, Minimalist, Retro, etc.).
Try to also provide more info or a short description to your works. This can help give clients more context to your design as well as get a glimpse of your creative process.
Build a great website
You’re now ready to create the place that will host your portfolio – your website!
Make sure your website is easy to navigate. Your clients should be able to find all the information that they need without having to dig deep into your website.
You may also want to create an About Me page so that potential clients can get to know you better. You can share your personal story, your inspiration, or what got you into designing in the first place. This gives you that sense of personal connection.
A Contact Page is also crucial so that clients can easily message you if they want to tap into your service.
Check for usability issues and errors as well. Are all your links working? Are all the buttons clickable? Is the contact information correct? And so on.
You can also read our guide on how to create a user-friendly website for more tips.
Think of your brand identity
How your portfolio/website looks should be aligned with your desired brand identity.
You may be wondering, what is brand identity? It’s essentially the “image” or “personality” that people will associate with you based on your overall visual aesthetic, your works, and how you present yourself in the digital world.
Think of it as Louis Vuitton vs H&M. Louis Vuitton is seen as classy, luxurious, and high-end. Meanwhile, H&M is seen as more trendy, hip, and affordable. This image is derived based on their logo design, color scheme, and overall branding.
The same applies to your portfolio, and your identity as a graphic designer. Do you want to be seen as a funky, bold, and retro cool designer? How about one that specializes in chic, black-and-white works? Or maybe you want to be known as a designer who creates all these amazing fluid animations?
Once you have your brand identity sorted, you can think of suitable visual elements to incorporate into your website.
Add interactive effects or immersive visuals
Speaking of visuals, let your creative spirit shine in your portfolio!
Add elements such as parallax scrolling, responsive design, hover reveal, micro-interactions, or 3D effects.
Need some inspiration? Check out these amazing design portfolios or read through our UI/UX Design Trends guide.
Include reviews or testimonials
Social proof is a powerful marketing strategy. It means adding some reviews or testimonials from your previous satisfied clients to add more credibility and trust in your skills. If you can, add some excerpts of their reviews or comments on your portfolio website to reinforce your credibility.
Prepare for online or offline viewing
Make sure your portfolio can be properly accessed no matter which browser, device size, or phone your client might use. Check if the portfolio still looks visually ok, and if there are any issues.
You also need to prepare for offline viewing as well. Consider printing a physical portfolio, or creating a business card that contains a link to your portfolio that you can give out during events or job fairs.
Keep it updated
Always keep your portfolio up to date with your recent works and achievements.
Remove works that are too outdated or those that are not aligned with your art style anymore. You should also remove works that do not fit your career goals – for example, you want to focus on video creation now so update your portfolio to only show your video projects.
Market yourself
Lastly, make sure you market yourself.
Create social media accounts that people can visit to get more information or to get updates regarding your work. In fact, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube can even serve as your “portfolio” as well. You can also share some behind-the-scenes videos, your art creation process, your most-used design tools, or have a Q&A on how you got started.
Building a strong online presence can significantly increase your visibility and help you attract new job opportunities.
What If I Don’t Have Much Experience?
Creating a portfolio might seem difficult especially if you are just starting out and don’t have tons of previous work projects to draw from.
If that’s the case, you can start by gathering all the work that you have done before. This can be school projects, volunteer work, or projects that you have done for family and friends.
You can also create new works specifically for your portfolio. You can create mockups, marketing materials, or designs for hypothetical brands or clients. Let’s pretend Coca-Cola asked you to create a new logo for them. Or if Spotify asked you to redesign their annual Spotify Wrapped. And so on. Just make sure you create a note that these are all hypothetical and that you didn’t do actual work for them.
Level Up Your Portfolio Today!
Creating a beautiful and impressive graphic design portfolio takes a lot of planning and careful consideration. Think of it this way – your portfolio is your shot to make a client choose you. It should display your skills, expertise, and range. At the same time, it should reflect your art style and your identity as a designer.
Getting work as a designer doesn’t end with just your portfolio as well. You should start building your brand as early as possible so that you can start marketing yourself even little by little.
Start with your logo design. You can make use of our logo maker tool to find customizable templates that fit your design aesthetic. You can then easily edit these templates by changing the color, background, layout, text, and more.
Leverage the power of marketing as well. You can read our guide on how to run Facebook Ads, utilize Instagram Stories, or create a professional email signature to promote yourself.
Written by DesignCrowd on Thursday, April 4, 2024
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.
