How to create a portfolio of Graphic Design

For the representatives of the creative industries, such a presentation is an essential part of a successful career. The clients you are going to cooperate with wonder what projects you have worked on. To a greater extent, this regards photographers, artists, and, of course, designers because the highly smooth-talking description would never help your clients or future employers to realize your professional level or what hard skills you have.

The satisfactory web portfolio allows you to highlight your best competencies even if you have a minimum working experience duration. The portfolio for graphic design should be a sort of business card or an online visual CV attracting new partners, creating your personal brand, and helping to obtain the first orders. 

Thus, you need to collect the works that show your successful projects to create or expand your client database and assure any stakeholder that you are a single expert who can solve their issues.

How to make a prosperous online portfolio for graphic design?

The designer’s web portfolio is required for enforcing your drafts demonstrated to render the evidence of the relative professionality. To make your self-presentation more extraordinary and comprehensive, it should contain the various projects focused on different target groups and styles.

Notwithstanding being a young student or an experienced marketing manager, your web portfolio would be dedicated to self-advertising and demonstrating your outputs. In this regard, you are obliged to respond to four main background items:

  • The backstory tells your stakeholders some curious and memorable facts about your personality, hobbies, pets, dreams, and so on;
  • Recent works provide potential clients with information on your style and skills. Crucially, your output completion date should not exceed 2 or 3 years. The explanation is simple and depends on the permanent change of tastes, styles, techniques, etc.;
  • Simple navigation that implies content searched by the website visitors and required to be accessible;
  • Creative thinking. You agree on the last but not least secret for the successful portfolio for graphic design. Clients always scroll billions of web resources and, therefore, you have to create a website that will catch their attention.

A detailed guide to making a designer’s online portfolio

A detailed guide to making a designer’s online portfolio

Here you can familiarize yourself with the sequential instruction about the creation of the portfolio for graphic design pioneers:

  1. Upon building the web portfolio background items, you need to assess your basic knowledge of how to make a designer’s online portfolio. If so, you may try to do it by yourself, but don’t risk your future career. In this case, you have two options. The first one is to enter the specialized UX/UI courses. Otherwise, you may forward the query to the professional design studio, where specialists could consult you on how to draw up the exact spec and meet all your requirements. The last way needs less time to be achievable. In any case, the following recommendations should be given to improve your professional image.
  2. Inspire yourself with genius ideas but do not copy them. The famous studios and agencies own client-attractive web portfolios. Their cases identify a high level of excellence and a scrum operation for the client task.  
  3. If you have not formed your own client database yet just imagine a specific client to orient your web portfolio transition; this is a great approach to refresh the designer’s self-presentation via the upgraded, old design of the real company or some inexistent client. You may compile the brief, set a goal by yourself, and send it out.
  4. Choose a particular direction. Try to connect your online portfolio content with the desirable employer activities if you want to offer the individual vision for the business development or scale-up.
  5. Draft the initial web portfolio structure. If you wish to create your own website, decide on the general structure consisting of the volumes aligned in a particular order. The employer usually scrolls many web portfolios searching for the most competent designer; that’s why you should make your pattern so that your level and knowledge would be understandable at once. Demonstrating the open version of the self-presentation tool may match any employer requirements. However, the project outputs should be grouped properly. The flexible graphic design portfolio helps an HR manager or client find out the necessary information more quickly. The wise advice is to follow the studio approach and introduce cross-cutting techniques which reflect a combination of single format detailed projects and an overall showreel. The last one should serve as a cool trailer for the complete presentation of the talented graphic designer.
  6. Use interesting graphical solutions. Diversify your web portfolio with a reasonable portion of various “spices” - gifs, memes, videos, charts, data visualization, and photos keeping the single structure and the main topic.
  7. Add areas for feedback, recommendations, and nice little touches. Insert responses and opinions of persons working with you in the noticeable area by selecting the concrete and objective description of your contributions to different projects and preventing the generalities. After compiling a smart structure and picking all necessities, you may think of the extra audience engagement points.
  8. If you are a freelancer and handle the rights for your action outputs to the other manager or the company, make sure the copyrights are reserved; this means that you are free to post those outputs in your web portfolio unless you violate the confidentiality of commercial transactions. 
  9. Attend the specialized online or offline design contests; this is another source of the graphic design web portfolio content. If you win, you will be rewarded with respect and the prize, which could become a good experience at the beginning of your career.
  10. Be an active civil actor and perform volunteer activities. Participate in charitable events related to the free assistance of junior designers or start-ups. The final result improves your web portfolio and demonstrates your social values.
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