How to Create a Digital Portfolio Design

How to Create a Digital Portfolio? This is one such question every designer would have. In a creative career like graphic designing, there are endless possibilities to curate your unique designs and emerge the best. But how you will be showcasing your creativity plays a significant role. Your portfolio is what will differentiate you from the lot. It is imperative for those, especially in creative fields like graphic designing, to have a stunning portfolio.

Gone are the days when you have to take printouts of your works, store it carefully in a suitcase, and show it to your prospective employer. With the advent of the internet, creating a design portfolio is just a cakewalk. You are only required to select a platform that best suits you and play with your creativity here and there, and design it; however, you like.

The prominence of the digital portfolio overprint

For years and more, print portfolios have been a standard method of presenting the creatives. But the birth of the digital age has emphasized the need for designers to have an internet presence. It has become necessary to have a digital portfolio that can be accessed by anyone 24×7, without the need for you to be present all the time. But the printed ones have to be physically mailed to the potential employer or should be carried during interviews. When you have a digital portfolio, you can keep all your creatives in one place, neatly set, while the printed portfolios may become cumbersome and fragile. You always have to make the effort of arranging and putting them back after each interview. There are even chances of them getting misplaced. The whole process of printing them and arranging them in a case would also cost you more. Whereas in digital, you can maintain an easy and flexible portfolio with relatively lower cost or no cost at all.

Your portfolio will be with you throughout your life. You are supposed to keep updating it now and then till the end of your professional career. That becomes a herculean task with the printed ones. But your digital portfolios are update friendly and can be edited as you wish. All your new works can get into it immediately without needing to redo anything.

Importance of digital portfolio

A survey by Glassdoor.com says that many hiring managers are googling their applicants before the interview process, and not surprisingly, the first thing they look for is an online portfolio. Though it sounds nerve-wracking, it is reassuring to know thats it’s you who would decide what to come on the first page. Is it going to be those party images or your professional profile that narrates your story and skills? Adorn your Google search with the designs you created, and, most importantly, an online portfolio that portrays your best works. It is not uncommon anymore to see creators maximizing their online presence through multiple channels. Be it open platforms like Dribble or Behance or online portfolio building websites like allyou.net.

If you’re a freelance graphic designer, an online portfolio is the best way to inform your services and open the door widely for your potential clients. If you include the contact option, then it becomes easy for people to connect with you. Also, including your social media accounts is a great way to connect with others in the community.

Online portfolios also showcase your experience, creating you a personal branding. Like what is the image you have created with the public? Or how do you want people to see you as? This personal branding is essential to establish yourself as an industry expert and stand out in the crowd. As equally interested in your skills, people would also want to know you as a person: What is your passion, what is your work process like, how you communicate with others and how you test your ideas as a graphic designer. Differentiate yourself from others by broadening your online presence. Your online portfolio will distinguish you from the millions of other designers that your prospective clients can hire.

Best Digital Portfolio Example

Creating a stunning design portfolio is a task open to interpretation. There is no one single method to lay a portfolio. In a way, that’s good, as you are given the liberty to experiment and showcase your creativity when designing your portfolio. It would be wiser to look at your peers’ portfolios, not only for inspiration but also to discover the self-promotion methods they have incorporated. You can also come to an idea about what you would want yours to look like. Here is a list of graphic design portfolios that might interest and inspire you.

Alex Coven is a freelance graphic designer, letterer, and front-end developer from Chicago, USA. He is famous for the three hats he wears, which he easily explains through illustration on his website. This says a lot about his skills and expertise. When you scroll down on his site, you can see his works, and across each of them, you can see more information about that project. He would have cleverly used color overlays to keep things distinctive and exciting.

Rafael Kfouri is an award-winning graphic designer working for AlmapBBDO. He has a one-page portfolio site, which is a tricky thing, but he succeeds by giving colorful and impactful visuals, which includes single images and collages. He provides his designs with the entire screen width, with just slim sidebars for context, allowing visitors to enjoy and complement the wide scope of his work at a leisurely pace. His way of showcasing his graphic designs smartly with minimal clicks needs to get to the central part, and it offers a lot of inspiration.

Heather Shaw has 20 years of experience in graphic design and design brochures, menus, business cards, annual reports, PPT and keynote presentations, and many more her client needs in short. Her eye-catching online portfolio site marshals all these diverse work with utmost simplicity and elegance. It contains overlaying photos of each project with a dark color that provides visual consistency. Also, the big, bold typography and simple yet practical designs make it easy to navigate.

Stefanie Bruckler is an Austrian designer and illustrator based in Newyork. She has a particular interest in branding and editorial design. She is passionate about building cohesive and reliable brands, as well as typography and packaging. She has incorporated a touch of old fashioned elegance to her portfolio. It is a minimalistic grid-based layout that has used a muted color palette.

Peter Komierowski is a visual designer based in British Columbia specializing in illustration, branding, and identity and interface design. He has got many high profile clients like The Huffington Post, NBA, Youtube, and Telus. His homepage takes a quite radical approach. It features minute logo designs that are surrounded by acres of white space. This is a strategy born out of confidence in his designs’ high quality and works brilliantly.

How to Create a Digital Portfolio – Detailed Steps

Quality trumps over quantity

Though you would have a wide variety of designs to showcase, it is necessary to pick only your best works. While curating a graphic design portfolio, it is always quality over quantity. Many expert designers recommend to choose the strongest projects and make them the primary focus. Ideally, it should only contain the 10-20 designs that you feel are sharp and most impressive. Whoever is looking at your portfolio won’t have time to look for more. It would be best if you act smart to grab their attention in the first few designs which would cut their need to look further.

Choose the right platform

If you have a quality website with a custom domain URL, it will pay off in the long run by showing your professionalism to potential clients. Also, having your website lets you organize your portfolio that suits all your business needs. You can include ‘projects,’ ‘About me,’ and ‘contact’ tabs so that visitors can connect with you immediately if they are impressed with your content. Check out the Best Design Work for your portfolios

Include a case study

Through a case study, your visitors get a sense of your project, the problem you are trying to solve through the design, and the process you took to arrive at the final deliverable. It takes a lot of time and effort to develop a unique design, so a written case study will support your hard work.

Go Social

Remember to include your social media handles along with your portfolio. It would be a great way to build your brand and bring the necessary publicity that might convince a client to hire you. Cultivate social media platforms that connect and interact with your portfolio. You can retweet a brochure you designed for a salon or use your Instagram handle to show your works in progress. You can even make a time-lapse video of your work that shows your projects in a short yet entertaining format. You can link this to your portfolio to show the final product.

Keep it alive

A portfolio shouldn’t be stagnant. It should keep evolving as you do. Keep updating it often as your skills improve. As you gain experience, update it in the portfolio to reflect the type of work you want to do more. Your portfolio should feel fresh, unique, and carefully curated. If you execute it well, your prospective clients and employers will receive a strong sense of who you are as a person and a professional. You can also check out top graphic design companies in the United States.

However great a designer you are or how much ever experience you have, a digital portfolio is a must to seek clients and grow in your field. Your creativity on the ground is tested through your portfolio, so make sure it is impressive and unique. Keep it versatile enough for all organizations to consider you. Your portfolio should prove that you are capable of meeting your clients’ business goals and shaping their brand. It is the tool that is going to bring you money, so make sure to keep it updated for the trend.