How to Create an Online Design Portfolio

Improve your chances of success with these useful tips

Building a portfolio can be an extremely overwhelming and time-consuming process. In the last few months, I’ve received many questions from junior designers on how they should go about creating their first portfolio:

How might I begin creating a portfolio?

What if I don’t have any experience?

What do recruiters look for in a portfolio?

I recently had the opportunity to conduct a portfolio workshop on behalf of UNSW’s Digital Society and Sydney University Experience Designers (SUEDE) society. In this article, I’ll walk through how you can use the design process to create your portfolio and include links to some exemplary examples that I’ve come across online.

For the full presentation and recording, you can scroll down to the bottom of this article or view the video here.

What’s a design process?

The design process a critical framework that we as designers use to solve problems. Not only do we use this process to approach problems at work — we can also lean on it for guidance when it comes to building a portfolio.

Find your purpose

Before we begin, ask yourself what the purpose of your portfolio is and how you want to be represented. Figure out who your target audience is, what they seek and use your portfolio as a way to show them how your skills meet their needs.

As a designer, your portfolio is like your design fingerprint — it represents your identity, style and approach.

Take a few minutes to think about who you are and what makes you unique as a person.

Consider the following:

• What is unique about me?
• What is my background and experience and how can I relate this…