Saying the same thing in 500 words takes effort.A portfolio is a sampling of your best pieces of art and design and should demonstrate creativity, neatness and how you developed your ideas. It’s a fine balance that comes with confidence and frankly, hard work.
They still walk through their projects and process, but without exhausting us.
GRAPHIC DESIGN PORTFOLIOS HOW TO
Senior designers learn how to tell a story rather than write an essay. That may please your professor, but it likely won’t impress your potential employer. They’re taught a specific formula for a UX project, for example, and feel the need to hit each part of that formula, in exhaustive detail, to get an A+. I see this carry over into young designers’ portfolios. How strange, considering we’re also taught to be concise in Grammar 101. In school, we’re rewarded for more pages and extra word count instead of simply clarity and quality of thought. There’s a lesson we spend years unlearning after school: That the longer something is, the better it is. Junior designers write novel-length case studies. Henrik & Sofia feature only five of their best projects on their homepage. Even if curation narrows your projects down to two or three, it results in a stronger portfolio and a more clear picture of who you are as a designer. Junior designers could benefit from a senior designer mindset when it comes to choosing their projects. They have the confidence to show only their best work, not all the work they’ve ever done. They have more work to choose from, so it’s easier to curate. Senior designers, on the other hand, have learned where their skills lie and what they want to do more of in the future. You also haven’t done much work yet, so you’re pulling together whatever you can between school, self-initiated projects and your first paid jobs. When you’re new in your career, you’re still figuring out what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing. Many portfolios I’ve seen from young designers tend to feel unfocused. Junior designers share every piece of work they’ve done. Every image, link-state and typeface on Ayaka Ito's portfolio is beautifully considered.
They know a simple, subtle hover effect can change the entire feel of their site.Īfter years designing, they know the little stuff makes all the difference. They don’t overlook tiny elements and interactions like link states and favicons. They perfect spacing and kerning on every page, for every screen size. They pay attention not only to their headline typography but also their body type. It’s because designers with experience know that half of excellence is simply a love for detail. View a successful senior designer’s portfolio and you’ll notice the beautiful typography, the perfect color choices, the sense that everything just works. "Designers with experience know that half of excellence is simply a love for detail." Senior designers obsess over the details.
We want to see your personality, how you communicate yourself, your attitude about the world. We need to understand how you process complex problems and find solutions. What we need to see as a company hiring you is how you think and approach your work. Your work might suck when you’re just starting out, and that’s fine. But this is especially necessary for young designers. Even the best designers need to explain their work on their portfolio, or it’s just a bunch of pretty meaningless pictures. If that were true, Apple wouldn’t do Keynotes every time they released a new product. That it should be so good it needs no further explanation. As a junior designer, your work does not speak for itself.Īs designers, we are lead to believe our work should do the talking. But does the way you present it change too? Should it? Here are our thoughts on the subject. What features do today’s designers need to show off their work in the best possible way? What do recruiters want to see in an online portfolio? What will portfolios look like one year from now? Five years from now?Ī question we’ve been asking ourselves lately: Does your portfolio change depending on your seniority? Of course, we know the work will evolve. I am always trying to understand what makes a good portfolio.
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