Building your portfolio: a painful — but necessary — journey
A designer’s bumpy ride on the rollercoaster of portfolio design. True story, frank considerations.
Jeez, I can’t actually believe that my portfolio is finally online — it’s been such a long process, a year full of ups-and-downs, love and hatred, working through evenings and weekends. But let’s start from the beginning — when I was still naïve about the work required.
A dear colleague once told me: “Don’t worry, if you don’t have a portfolio and you’re working, it means that you’re good and busy”. For a while, this idea pacified my nagging guilt over my weak web presence.
When I started my freelance career in 2018, I already had some clients lined up. Three years later, I still didn’t need to have an online portfolio. Why? Word of mouth. To this day, I’m shocked by this powerful, effective, way of advertising.
Yet, lurking below the surface, my pervasive obsession with having an updated and contemporary portfolio haunted me, leaving me feeling like a shadow of a designer.
Portfolio’s goals
It’s very important that each designer defines their portfolio’s mission, which should be personal and easily adaptable to the designer’s situation (i.g. graphic design student looking for their first job, 3D artist showcasing new techniques, UX writer displaying their experience, or a super creative director sharing their impressive career, etc).
In my case, I want to hit three specific aspects: 1. Freelance — I highlight this many times to avoid confusing potential clients; 2. Role — I display past projects to communicate my typical role on projects; 3. Experience — I ensure clients know my past work and what I’m worth.
My portfolio’s mission is to get new clients, whether they’re a startup or creative studio, a digital consultant or tech company, non-profit organization, etc. After reviewing my portfolio, they will have an accurate picture of me and my work, resulting in only true potential clients.
Research: discovering other designers’ portfolio
Let’s be honest — we’re rarely the first to do anything. But this is a good thing! A phase I really enjoyed was researching other designers to see what they did. I based my research on sites featured on Semplice, Awwwards, and CSS Design Awards. My goal was something personal but professional, nothing too off-the-wall, but with a strong case study explanation.
I’d like to mention a list of designers that inspired me: Alexine Beltran, Kurt Winter, Jessica Strelioff, Paul David Price, Lukas Halota, Lorenzo Perniciaro, Tee Tran, Stefano De Rosa, Robert Mayer, Thomas Bonometti, and Adrien Laurent.
Choosing a damn platform/tool/whatever
Oh man, this is a really big topic. Having coded two portfolios from scratch (HTML & CSS) — and dreading repeating the process — the first step was to choose a platform.
I narrowed down my options to Semplice, Webflow, Editor X. Even if Webflow and EditorX seemed more customizable and professional, I was really looking for something simple, with a bit of customization — too much freedom would lead me to a never-published site. And honestly, I’m a bit of a Tobias van Schneider fan, so I went with Semplice, crossing my fingers that one day I would appear in their featured showcase.
And then, shit happened.
It was mid-August, all the content had been made, and two issues caused me terrible frustrations/headaches for the next few months: 1. a MySQL problem generated a bug causing some page content to disappear (WTF? — but thanks to my favorite back-end developer, and a little help from Semplice support, we recovered it), and 2. not one front-end or creative developer I contacted was interested in adding custom code to Semplice.
Damn. All that energy wasted. At this point, I was hoping to add some sparkle here and there, with the optimism of winning some design nominations. So, at a crossroads, I made the painful decision to move everything into Webflow.
This change didn’t last even two months. The suggestions to shift from Semplice to Webflow were truthful — it does have more customizability. If, that is, you’re a coder. It became painfully clear that Webflow was designed with a wink to developers — which I am not.
Where is my grid? My modules? No drag-n-drop for pictures? I have to name divs? Can’t even adjust individual word font-weight except bold? What? Get the hell outta here!
I missed the simplicity of the apt named Semplice. Within minutes of editing, I eased into the familiar tools, like the worn armchair at home you’ve been away from.
It’s a tough life, dear designers.
Which projects to show? Whichever I want!
Yes, yes, I can hear you arguing with me now. This isn’t what’s usually recommended. But, after months of grappling with this conventional idea, I decided I couldn’t care less. I opted to ignore this frequent input for several reasons, responding to the most avid advice I get on this topic:
- “Wanting to show too much work is the main reason why most designers never finish their portfolio”. Yes, I totally agree, but still I wanted to suffer and include every digital product I worked on. Why the extra effort? I wanted to show my path and the expertise that, project after project, I developed.
- “Why do you put all projects? They age!”. Mmm, I wonder if Madonna ever considered only selling her recent work? Afterall, 1983 was soooo long ago — I wasn’t even born! Hang on now, of course I’m not comparing my career to such an incredible idol, but I’m not ashamed of my earlier work, as every project contributed to my expertise. By displaying all of my work at once, I show my career’s evolution. So, I don’t appreciate this tendency to only show the latest and best, while forgetting the early years. Nothing remains trendy forever, but lessons were learned and skills developed. That history is valuable and worth showing.
- “No one will check all that work, anyway”. Yep, you may be right. At least about some visitors. I can’t begin to predict the wide range of visitors my portfolio could attract. From CDs to HR people to startups and others, my top 5 case studies wouldn’t be the same for each. There is no real problem on my end, apart from the damned time suck it is building them all. Yet when that financial tech startup visits my site, I’m going to be happy I took the time to mention all four case studies on financial services I made.
- “You’re not able to select your best projects”. Again, best projects for who? For me? If it was for me, I’d only include the ones that I think are more aesthetically appealing. But I didn’t build this site for me, but for my potential clients.
Ahhhh, and finally: it’s my site. It’s up to the visitors what they freely view, and it’s up to me to decide what I show.
Mobile-first: not always.
Yes, you’ve noticed I’m a bit — I promise — of a rule-breaker. But according to my few (😬) Google Analytics data, the majority of my visitors are desktop-based. I imagine these visitors are at work, an environment appropriate for desktop/laptop use. I can’t picture an HR manager or creative director viewing portfolios on-the-go from their smartphones. It can happen, of course! But, personally, I hope they stick to Candy Crush on the subway!
Ask for help
I believe in vertical expertise, and so I asked for help with the animations, the code, and even the English. Working on it in my free time, it was actually a relief (and even fun!) to count on others, especially when they are people you know and trust.
It’s a lifelong WIP
Working on something personal is extremely hard: every decision comes down to you, and it’s so damned easy to constantly be tweaking. There will always be something to edit, remove, improve. At some point, I made peace with myself: it’s not going to be perfect, ever.
While this happens on client’s projects as well, at least there are users to respond to, stakeholders to consider, PM’s plan to accomplish, team’s effort to acknowledge, and costs to respect.
Throughout this arduous journey, I postponed the release date several times, until I ended up hating the fact that it still wasn’t online. Perfectionism is a goal, but we shouldn’t lose our mental sanity pursuing it, and it’s important to have a deadline, a firm budget, and a fucking “launch” date at some point. Your site is not going anywhere: just publish it like a boss, rinse, repeat. I know, easier said than done!
Alright 2021 portfolio, you’ve been a little bitch. See ya in 2022!
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Special thanks to my English teacher and ghostwriter, Shelby Morrison.
