Freelance For Money

Graphic Design Portfolios

Posted on 17. Jan, 2010 by Chris Green in Promoting Yourself

We’ve spent a lot of time in recent blog posts examining many ways of getting people onto your website. This is obviously very important. If no-one knows you exist, you wont get any work.

What I haven’t really covered yet on this blog is getting your portfolio right. When you’ve spent all that time marketing your site, there better be something awesome to see when they get there.

So what makes a good portfolio?

Let’s start with the premise that your portfolio is your most important calling card.

I’ve been involved in both sides of the portfolio wall. Often times i’m exhibiting work to get more work. But there’s been many occasions where i’m checking people’s portfolios when we’ve been overloaded with work and need to outsource to other freelancers.

I’ve seen a load of portfolio and here’s my opinion on what makes the best ones…

1. Well designed.
This goes without saying, especially if you are a freelance designer. I don’t just mean pretty with some nice choice of colours. I mean make sure that your work is set out in a way that is very easy to scan through. Don’t over design and complicate the navigation either, just keep it simple.

Think of your portfolio like an art gallery. The walls never intrude with the work, which brings me to my second point.

2. Don’t try and be too smart.
I’ve seen some portfolios with some crazy ideas and navigation. I understand that the person is trying to stand out and be clever, but I haven’t got the time or inclination to guess how to find the work. I other words, don’t make me think.

3. Show it all!!
This is my personal opinion, but I think you should show off your work in all it’s glory and don’t get worried about being ripped off. I’ve seen some portfolios with tiny little thumbnails of work or short paragraphs of written work because they don’t want to be copied.

If people want to steal, they will.

4. How do you work?
Seeing what you do is great. What’s even better is when I can see the process you went through to get to the final result. What was the situation the client was in when you met them? Did you have to start from scratch? Was their a brief or did you have to research and help create a marketing plan? What were their goals for the project?

This is the stuff people want to know when they take you on. Some will be trusting you with their brand and they want to know you’ll be able to work with them and not in your own little world.

Here’s a video of one site that I personally really like. Please add a link to your portfolio underneath.

Tags: Freelance portfolios, Graphic Design Portfolios