Building your Design Portfolio? Read this.
What is a portfolio?
Design portfolios are an essential tool for any designer looking to showcase their work, skills, and talents. Whether you’re a student, a freelancer, or a professional designer, creating a portfolio is an important step in your career. In this article, I will walk you through the process of creating a design portfolio and highlight some of the best tools for creating one
PS: I’m no expert, but the following article is just my own personal thoughts and experiences.
Why create a Design Portfolio?
A design portfolio is a collection of your best work, showcasing your skills, creativity, and design process. It allows you to present your work to potential clients, employers, or collaborators and gives them an idea of your style, approach, and capabilities. A design portfolio can also help you:
- Stand out from the crowd: With so many designers out there, having a unique and well-designed portfolio can help you get noticed.
- Demonstrate your skills: A portfolio is a visual representation of your work, showing off your design and technical skills.
- Show your process: A portfolio can demonstrate your design process, showing how you approach a project and how you solve design problems.
- Get more work: A portfolio can lead to new opportunities and clients, helping you build your reputation and your business.
What to Include in Your Design Portfolio?
A design portfolio should include a selection of your best work, showcasing your skills, creativity, and versatility. Here are some elements you can include in your portfolio:
- A brief bio: Introduce yourself and your background, highlighting your skills, experience, and interests.
- Your best work: Choose a selection of your best projects, showcasing your skills, creativity, and versatility. Make sure to include a variety of projects. Show the kind of work that you want to do in the future.
For example: if you’re a Product Designer, you can have 3–4 projects on your portfolio, each highlighting a different skill based on your interest. - Project descriptions: Provide a brief description of each project, explaining the problem you were trying to solve, your approach, and the results.
- Your process: Show how you work, including sketches, wireframes, prototypes, or designs in progress. This can demonstrate your design process and problem-solving skills.
- Testimonials: Include testimonials from clients or collaborators, showing how you helped them solve their problems and achieve their goals.
How to create Your Design Portfolio?
Creating a design portfolio can seem daunting, but there are many tools and platforms that can help you. Here are some of the best tools for creating a design portfolio:
Notion
Notion is a flexible and customizable platform that can be used for creating a design portfolio. You can create pages for each project, including images, descriptions, and links, and organize them in a clean and professional way. Notion also allows you to embed videos, audio files, or other media, making your portfolio more dynamic and engaging.
Fun fact: My first-ever portfolio was made using Notion. I was super proud of what I had made back then. If you’re someone who’s absolutely new to the field and does not have much knowledge about tools, then Notion might be the best option for you.
You can use tools like Super to customize your Notion portfolio: tweak the typeface, colors, theme, and so much more!
Webflow
Webflow is undeniably a remarkable website builder that has gained a reputation for its incredible capabilities and versatility. It offers a level of creative control that is truly impressive, allowing users to design and build websites that are visually stunning and highly interactive.
However, it’s important to note that Webflow does come with a steep learning curve. While its interface is intuitive and user-friendly, mastering the more advanced features and workflows can take time and dedication.
In my first internship at Sourcewiz, I tried my hands on Webflow for the first time. I was really overwhelmed by the options. But slowly, with time I got the hang of it.
There are many good resources for learning Webflow, including Webflow University, which really made me feel less intimidated by the tool.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a popular website builder that is quite easy to manage. I personally find Squarespace to be a rather lackluster option when it comes to creating a design portfolio. While it does offer a range of templates to choose from and the ability to customize them, I can’t help but feel that it falls short compared to more exciting alternatives like Framer and Webflow.
Framer
Let me tell you about my absolute favorite: Framer!
It is a powerful no-code tool that can be used for creating a design portfolio. There are tons of templates (both free and paid), that can help you get started.
The community is absolutely amazing, always ready to lend a helping hand and share their wisdom. They’ve created a Discord server where you can freely ask any questions and receive prompt responses. Even on Twitter, fellow designers who have experienced the magic of Framer are eager to jump in and offer their assistance.
When it comes to resources, Framer has some amazing ones.
Check them out:
If you’re familiar with Figma, Framer becomes really easy to grasp. Both of them almost work in the same manner, and the Figma to Framer plugin makes life really easy. I shipped my portfolio in only 3 days using Framer.
Conclusion
Creating a design portfolio is an essential step in your career as a designer. It allows you to showcase your work, skills, and talents and can lead to new opportunities and clients. Each tool has its pros and cons, so choose the one that best fits your needs and goals. Good luck creating your portfolio!
If you found it helpful, do not forget to clap and share it with your designer friends.
