10 Best Tips to Create a Good Design Portfolio

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We collect 30-35 portfolios every month from people who actually want to work with us. It should be a pleasure to go through the effort of young designers, see fact-finding stuff… But frankly speaking, it's a pain. A most of the portfolio’s we get are poorly structured, have too little or too much work, are 30-35 MB zip files, provide no background.In this article we are sharing some strategies to design better portfolio that actually work.

Portfolio is Dissimilar from Backup Folder

Many of us treat  portfolio as backup folder.Don’t treat your portfolio as your backup folder, discard everything you have ever done in it. Show us a collection of your best and most recent work. Put in material you are really proud of. Don’t ever place something in your portfolio which you perform long back.

What we are looking for

When we look at our portfolio, we are essentially looking for indication of a great aesthetic sense that matches ours, visualization skills, proper understanding of elemental design theory, capacity to do real commercial work.

Stop your Art, Practice work and College Exercises

No matter how best you are at doing watercolor painting or in sketching, we don’t want to see it. Discard all your practice sketches, typography exercises.We want to see work that are applicable to the kind of work we do and would expect you to do.

Do Real Work

If you are start-up and don’t have much work to put in your portfolio, take some time and do a set of hypothetical projects before applying.When you execute hypothetical projects, recognize the kind of work you want to be doing and do projects in that area.

Design Mockups

Just placing together flat artwork of your project is fair, but if you really want to standout from others, develop mock-ups of your work. If its a web page you’re showing, put it on a internet.

 Keep the Portfolio Minimal

Let the attention be on your work. Don’t stir your work with the design of your portfolio. Give it some space.

Provide Context

Write a summary about the project. What the brand or client does, how you get the project, how well it worked. If other company contributed to a project, indicate your role clearly.

**Writer of this blog is owner of design agency in bolton uk.