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Designer | Fall'18
Like every problem you try to solve as a designer, write down the core purpose of your portfolio first...
The purpose of a design portfolio is to showcase our best work and skills as designers. But everyone's specific goals can differ:
1. You’re a designer searching for your a role.
2. You’re looking to take on freelance design work and attract your first clients.
3. You just want to build a space to document your design projects.
4. You want to grow your professional online presence and build a following of your work.
For today's discussion sake, we will be focusing mostly on 1-3 for recruitment (stay tuned for 4. in the upcoming module). In this discussion with LavaLab alumni Stormy Jackson, we will explain the objective of a design portfolio for our own angle AND our hiring manager's angle. Coming straight from Stormy's experience, you will also find resources that useful tips to help you get started!
(Editor's Note: The following interview has been edited and condensed.)
Having a strong portfolio is important because it’s a way for recruiters and hiring managers to understand our thought process and gauge our abilities to come up with creative solutions to problems. But Google recruiters like Tiffany Eaton go through so many candidates and look through so many portfolios that they often have less than 5 minutes, along with looking at resumes, to determine whether someone will pass the screening or not.
Therefore, a strong portfolio also relies on HOW we communicate our thought process and problem-solving abilities in order to catch the eye of a recruiter. Lets look at a few things that can help us do this:
Breadth
Recruiters want to see a wide range of project that showcases the scope of problems we have worked on.
The more experience you have solving a wide range of problems and presenting varied solutions, to recruiters, it will probably be obvious that you are capable of doing design work at their company, especially if you have projects that relate to what the company is doing. - Tiffany Eaton
Obviously, to push the breadth of our portfolio, we need to find work! Therefore, doing side projects, collaborating on projects, building our own products, interning and etc. will help us become better designers and curate a portfolio that shows that.
Process
Recruiters also want to see how we document and provide a walkthrough of our design process throughout every project. They want to know how we and think and problem solve. For example, we can provide:
- Basic context around what the project was about
- The design problem
- Who we were trying to design for
- Why (instead of what) we made certain design decisions
- Visuals to support our reasoning and well documented steps
- Iterations and mistakes we encountered in our process
But, be warned, don't fall into the trap of the cookie cutter format! Recruiters want to see how we can apply our design thinking processes to different kinds of projects (going back to breadth).
Every design problem will have a different design process.
Obviously, to push the breadth of our portfolio, we need to find work! Therefore, doing side projects, collaborating on projects, building our own products, interning and etc. will help us become better designers and curate a portfolio that shows that.
Craft
What this means is that recruiters also like to see a developing style, consistent presentation, and passion for craft. According to designers from Salesforce and Google, here are what made portfolios stand out to them:
- Really clean, no glaring errors, work is good, relevant, understandable, what/how is it, how was team, etc.
- Let the work stand for itself, prevent people from clicking too much, make portfolio built for speed (make it easier for person to view your portfolio).
- Coherence and impact (something that looks good, makes you stop)
- Hook people in and tell story as efficiently as possible”I wish I worked on that project” I wish I could have thought about the problem
Small details in how we structure our design portfolio goes a long way in representing ourselves as designers: do we possess a varied skill set, are we thorough with our process, do we care about details, do we emphasize over process or visuals, ...etc. This can often be the secret sauce that differentiates us from other applicants.
The problem: Designers are not making user-centered portfolios. They are making self-centered portfolios.
Conciseness
This last point is probably the most defining aspect of our recruiting process: the content can be easy to digest for hiring managers in 5 minutes. In different contexts, we may need to structure our portfolio by skill, clients, or experience. But whatever we choose, the lasting impact on our hiring managers should be:
1) Telling me you can do the job
2) Showing me you can do the job
3) Making me want to work with you
Recommended platforms (cheapest, easiest, and most customizable)
If you are looking for the cheapest way to host your portfolio site and have some of the basics of HTML/CSS, then I highly recommend using Github and a Bootstrap theme. Through Github, you can get a free domain name for your site. There are also a variety of free templates to choose from and you can easily customize the layout and color schemes of your site.
In terms of the easiest way to build your portfolio, consider using Adobe Portfolio or Squarespace. They have tons of built in templates to choose from and both sites make it easy to drag and drop content and get creative with layouts without needing to know a line of code. I’m currently using Adobe Portfolio and it only took a few days to get my website up and running.
If you really want to go all out with customization, consider using Webflow. You can create the portfolio you want with little restrictions. The only downside is that there is a steep learning curve and that Webflow is aimed towards businesses and not individuals. But if you don’t mind putting in the work, it’s a great choice.
Quality over quantity
We recommend having 3 - 6 pieces in your portfolio. Your portfolio is all about quality over quantity and you want to showcase your best work, not every single piece you’ve designed.
Balancing substance and style
As said before, the structure of our portfolios should also be a statement of our craft and how we present our work as designers. Think through the UX and UI of your portfolio's readability just as you would with any design project.
Organization
Back to the point on conciseness, if you have multiple types of design like product, packaging and graphic design, take advantage of the navigation. You can separate each category of design work in a navigation which makes it easy for recruiters to know what exactly they’re looking at.
Storytelling
When writing about your projects, tell a story! Stories are memorable and help the reader understand your journey of your thought process. With any effective storytelling, you should flesh out the beginning and end, goals and outcomes, then fill the middle about how you got there. Storytelling is a crucial aid in explaining difficult concepts and establishing a shared understanding for the reader.
Remember to keep your portfolio concise, concise, concise! Don’t feel like you need to have fancy transitions and animations throughout your site. Most recruiters only spend ~5 minutes going through your portfolio. Don’t waste their time by having extra components that aren’t adding to your featured projects.