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Your design portfolio represents a window for the world to view your work and judge your talent, skills and experience. Whether you are a graphic designer, a product designer, an illustrator, a web designer or a multimedia artist, design portfolios are the prism through which designers are constantly evaluated by new clients and potential employers. A great design portfolio can propel you towards success, open up new opportunities, and get you just the kind of work you want. However, failing at putting your best foot forward with your design portfolio can lead to rejects and spell doom.

Given that it can make or break your career, creating your design portfolio in itself becomes the most important design exercise of your career. With online design portfolio websites becoming the default medium of presenting your work to the world, it's important to make sure that you understand the dos and don'ts of a successful design portfolio website. A winning graphic design portfolio website showcases your work, tells your story, inspires confidence, and opens doors for collaborations.
We have carefully selected 25 of the best portfolio websites built on Pixpa for your inspiration. We have also listed 20 pro tips in this article to create an awesome graphic design portfolio. With these professional tips and a little bit of ingenuity, you will be well on your way to creating a portfolio that would be able to attract and impress potential employers, clients, or collaborators.

Portfolio Mobile App.

Pixpa is a portfolio website builder platform that is trusted by creative pros around the world. Pixpa offers an easy yet powerful drag-and-drop website builder and includes Client galleries, eCommerce, and blogging tools to enable you to manage your complete online presence through one seamless platform. Explore all features that make Pixpa the perfect choice for creative professionals.

Create your professional portfolio website with Pixpa.Sign up for a 15 days free trial.

Here's our selection of 25 of the best design portfolio websites for your inspiration.

1. Adrien Loret

Paris based Adrien Loret is a designer, passionate about illustration, typography, and photography. His website has a clean, minimal look and feel. His portfolio clearly illustrates each project, giving a lot of importance to white space and a simple colour scheme.

2. Marcus Artis

Branding and Packaging Designer, Marcus Artis's online portfolio website is straight-to-the-point. Marcus makes a great first impression with a strong, vivid use of his own branding. His portfolio website has simple, full image galleries that are easy to browse.

3. Fake Honey Pictures

Fake Honey Pictures is a film and photography initiative that creates visual stories around the world. Their portfolio features visually stunning videos, short documentaries displayed in a grid-layout based multimedia gallery, and fine art projects created for global brands, organizations, and major international media outlets.

4. Chris Tammar

Designer, Chris Tammar, presents his multi-faceted graphic designer portfolio through a simple, intuitive website. Tammar's own logo design gives his brand a personality. The clean square grid on the home page puts his work center stage.

Tip: Chris Tammar's website is a perfect example of 'less is more', with only two links in the navigation that present his portfolio and contact details.

5. Brendan Dowling

Creative Director, Brendan Dowling, takes a simple approach to present his designer portfolio. Brendan showcases a selection of his best projects directly in the website vertical menu. This makes it easy for site visitors to access his work and highlights the range of clients and projects he has worked on.

6. Made Architects

Made Architects is a multi-disciplinary design firm with architecture, interior design and furniture design projects. Made's online portfolio website showcases their awards and achievements on the home page. They have a projects section which has case studies on selected projects. Made's about page is structured nicely with their vision, team, awards and exhibitions establishing their experience.

7. Allison Bratnick

Based out of Boulder, Colorado, Allison Bratnick is Head of Design & Production at Protein Bar & Kitchen, a healthy fast-casual restaurant. She has chosen a clean grid-style theme to illustrate her work, which makes it easy for the viewer to scroll through her marketing and communication projects.

8. Mingfei Yang

Game Designer, Mingfei Yang, uses a black background as the base to feature his game design artworks portfolio. Mingfei's artworks are edgy and surreal, and as he says 'more level designs combine visual expression, architecture style, and interactivity to bring out great emotional experience.'

9. Brian Winston

Brian Winston is a graphic designer based out of Denver, Colorado. He is passionate about creating clean and elegant on-brand designs for print and web and that is clear in his portfolio too. His work is divided into project categories ranging from Creative Direction, Branding and Design, Illustration to Digital Ads and Product Mockups. A minimal aesthetic makes his portfolio website a treat to explore.

10. Elizabeth O'meara

Elizabeth O’meara is a graphic designer, with experience in creating packaging design, magazine, catalog design, logo design, wedding invitations, websites, and much more. Her extensive portfolio in packing design along with her other works is showcased beautifully in her graphic design portfolio website which features a horizontal scrolling gallery. The visual design of the website is minimalist and uses a pastel palette that complements Elizabeth’s portfolio.

11. Kim Dero

Graphic Designer, Kim Dero's graphic design portfolio comes alive through his clean, minimalist website that features large dynamic grids that accentuate the beautiful imagery of Kim's portfolio. His vast experience with global agencies has offered him a well-rounded skill set in food and beverage packaging design. Lots of negative space, consistency in the style of portfolio images, and an understated, simple portfolio website design makes Kim's online portfolio a winner.

12. Obladee

Obladee is a UK based design studio focussed on branding projects. Obladee’s simple, to-the-point portfolio website delivers on this brief by presenting its services and select brand design projects in a neatly designed home page. Visitors can click through to get more details on the project with more images and a project description available for each project.

13. Brandon Perez

Brandon Perez's graphic design online portfolio does a great job of showing his diverse range upfront on the home page. Brandon uses a eye-catching green and greyscale color combination with strong typography to create a high recall value. The website layout is kept simple yet smart with a fantastic use of a small grid on the home page.

14. Justin Maelzer

Justin Maelzer uses a dynamic grid to present his graphic design print portfolio. Justin keeps his website navigation simple and small and keeps the focus on his portfolio projects, all of whom can be accessed directly from his website home page.

15. Brook Perryman

Brook Perryman's graphic design portfolio website is a perfect example of how a graphic designer should approach her portfolio website. Brooke clearly lays out her strengths right on the home page, has a well-curated portfolio section that showcases her vast repertoire of work, includes a client testimonials section, a bio/resume, and a contact section that's well laid out and presents all the information needed clearly.

16. Robert Irish

With over two decades of experience, Robert Irish creates compelling stories through branding and design. His portfolio showcases his extensive work in web, mobile, brand and logo design, which is displayed in a grid-style gallery.

17. Matthew Park

Matthew Park's web designer portfolio website presents his digital artworks, web design projects, and UI/UX projects through vertical scrolling galleries with large images and captions for each work.

18. Polar Sun Designs

Polar Sun Designs is a showcase of artist James Bassett's vividly colorful work, experiments in shape and color. His work is on sale through his online store, neatly displayed in grid-style on the home page.

19. Lindsay Zautke

Based in Colorado, Lindsay is pursuing her career as a professional designer. Through her visual design skills, she wants to create beautiful and impactful designs for businesses to help them achieve their goals.

20. Michael Collins

After pursuing his master's degree in Film at UCLA, Michael went on to make a career in design. He believes in asking the right questions and combining the actionable insights with imagination and openness before starting a big project. Through his work, Michael has led the design of award-winning products.

Pro tip: If you are showcasing design, its best to photograph it in a real setting and present vivid imagery of the product actually being used.

21. Amelia Abromaitis

Amelia has been working as a strategic communication professional and graphic designer for more than 15 years. She studied graphic design at Moore College of Art and Design. She specializes in creating effective designs and tailored messages for political and community campaigns.

22. Jim Stahn

Jim Stahn says, 'I love building satisfying graphic design experiences, and am passionate about reaching out to new people and finding imaginative ways to communicate ideas.' His online portfolio gives a clear view of his work and design style.

23. Jena Locastro

Based in New York, Jena has been passionate about logos, typography, and branding. Her design portfolio is minimalistic, with lots of white space and a simple color scheme.

24. Maria Maka

Maria Maka is a highly passionate designer and illustrator. Along with design and writing, she loves to explore the interplay between type and content. Her work is neatly displayed in a grid-style gallery.

25. A. Darvishi

Designer and Creative Director, A. Darvishi has worked with several design firms and esteemed clients, offering his skills and talents in Graphic Design, Advertising, Pre-Press, Photography and Interior Design. His portfolio is detailed and work is thoughtfully put together.

It's important to see how other designers are putting together their online portfolio websites - to learn from them before you start creating your design portfolio website. We hope that the examples above gave you insights, inspiration, and ideas on how to create your own portfolio website.

Here are our 20 pro tips to create an awesome graphic design portfolio website for yourself:

Have a Clear Purpose

Start with deciding on the purpose of your portfolio. If you are looking for a job, focus on the work you want to do more of and showcase similar projects upfront. Polish your resume and clearly layout your skillsets and strong points along with your expertise in various design applications so that employers can judge whether you are a good fit for their requirements. If you are a freelancer seeking clients, showcase your successful case studies and emphasize how you have helped clients achieve success. Including a few client testimonials are also useful. If your online graphic design portfolio is mainly to build your brand, you have a lot more freedom to showcase experiments and personal work that you have done along with commercial work.

Curate your work

At its core, creating a great graphic design portfolio is all about presenting your best work and keeping it simple. Put your best designs upfront. Make sure that your portfolio does not exceed 20 projects (better still, a super-sharp selection of 10 projects). Once your final selection is ready, review it to make sure that it's cohesive and represents you well.

Pro tip- The first project that you showcase in your portfolio is the key - this would be seen by most people and be referenced in interviews or client meetings.

Showcase your versatility

While choosing your strongest projects, you also need to make sure that you are presenting the full breadth of your work. This can be a tight-rope walk and if it comes to choosing a project based on quality vs. a range of work, choose quality. Remember that you are as good as the lowest quality work you put out, so make sure that your curate only your best works.

Designer - Brandon Perez shows his diverse skills right on the home page of his portfolio website - Brandon Perez

Pro tip: Do not include an inferior work in your portfolio even if it is for a big brand name. Outstanding work done for a smaller client would do the job better. Clients are judging your talent, not your clients’ size. Having big brands in your portfolio helps though :).

Invest in a proper graphic design portfolio website

Putting a bunch of your work on free platforms such as Bechance, Coroflot or DeviantArt undercuts the very purpose of creating your own portfolio website - which is to stand out and make an impression. These free platforms reduce your work to just another link amongst millions others, with the same shared experience. When showcasing your design portfolio, you need to be professional and come off as someone who is serious and successful at work. With your own portfolio website, you create your brand and control the experience of how your work is viewed and you are perceived by potential clients and employers. Invest in a real portfolio website and connect your custom domain name with it. Its a worthwhile investment that would payoff many times.

Choose the right platform for your online graphic design portfolio

There are a ton of website builders now which make it simple enough to create and manage your own graphic design portfolio website. Wordpress is the most prominent of these, but if you do not have programming skills or would rather not invest your time / money in creating a custom-built website, it make a lot more sense to choose one of the hosted website builders. Even within the hosted website builders, there are platforms that enable building any business to create any kind of website and not-just designers. Choosing a platform that focuses on building online portfolio websites would give you a lot more options in terms of showcasing images, videos, gallery layouts themes etc. that are well-suited for online portfolios. The key to finding the right builder for you is to narrow down precisely what you want your site to do. We have put together a list of 6 Best Website builders for 2021, that could help you pick the one you like best.

Chris Tammar's portfolio website built on Pixpa - Visit - Chris Tammar

Pixpa is an online website builder tailor-made for graphic designers to create your portfolio website easily and showcase your work with style and simplicity. Check out the portfolio website themes and graphic design portfolio examplesbuilt on Pixpa.

Keep it simple, stupid

The best graphic designer portfolios are all about showcasing work in an easy and intuitive interface. Follow best practices and choose a clean, minimal design that highlights your graphic design works as the centerpieces of the viewing experience. One of the big mistakes that many designers make is to “over-do” the design of their portfolio. Your portfolio website design should not overshadow or take away the attention from your graphic design portfolio. Rather, it should serve as a backdrop that highlights your work and makes it easy for visitors to explore your online portfolio.

Designer, Bjorn Borgers, presents his work with a minimalist, clean website - Bjorn Borgers

Create your brand

As a graphic designer, you would be working on creating, enhancing, and evolving the brand equity of your clients through various creative mediums and projects. What better way to prove it than to create your own brand to present your graphic design portfolio. Creating your own logo is the first step to establishing your personal brand. Follow this through with a consistent visual language for your portfolio website, resume, and even your business card. Your brand identity should not only look nice but also be a statement on the kind of designer you are.

Marcus Artis's distinct logotype creates instant recall - Marcus Artis

Pro tip: Do not include an inferior work in your portfolio even if it is for a big brand name. Outstanding work done for a smaller client would do the job better. Clients are judging your talent, not your clients’ size. Having big brands in your portfolio helps though :).

Write about the process behind your work

Graphic designer portfolios should be more than just a visual collection of your work. Add authenticity and context to your work by sharing your thought process behind the project. Write about what was the starting point of the design process, what were the challenges and requirements of the project brief, and how the final design solution fulfilled those requirements. A successful graphic design project is not just about beautiful visuals, it's also how the creative process led to finding a successful design solution to a real-world problem. Share these insights into your portfolio projects.

Show results and case studies

Clients and employers are always more interested in real-world results. Showcase how your designs translated into the real world by including action photographs of your design in action - the brand design rollout on various collaterals, a printed brochure, a shot of the storefront. Make sure you photograph your completed work being used in the real world - that’s the best kind of design portfolio you can create.

Graphic Designer - Ling K writes a detailed case study about each of her projects - Visit - Ling K

Don’t beat around the bush

There’s plenty of research that states that a website visitor just takes 2-3 seconds to make their impression. Don’t waste away this tiny window where you need to grab the attention by showing lengthy animated flash intros or a heavy website that’s slow to load. Put your best foot forward and make sure you communicate effectively right from the word go.

Inject it with your personality

Add an “About Me” page to tell your story. This is where you talk about yourself, your interests and inspirations and how you started off in your field. Your “About Me” page should give an idea of the kind of person you are to work with. Given the choice to choose between two people with the same skills and experience, clients typically hire the person that they “like” better. Make sure that you win that choice.

Add a downloadable resume

Create a proper resume page that details your education, experience, projects and clients you have worked with. Make it chronological with the latest events coming on top. Your resume is all about your work and qualifications - be truthful but pick the right details, do not cram it with irrelevant or avoidable information. Add a link to your downloadable resume as well if you are seeking a new job.

Clearly include your contact info

Portfolio App

You have done all the hard work, created a great portfolio, and got visitors to your website. The last thing you want to do is to make it difficult for potential clients, employers, or collaborators to reach you. Make your contact information available as clearly as possible on your website. Every lead that you get from your website is a potentially big one, so make sure that the email address or phone number you are providing is actively used by you.

Memento Grafia Studio has a clear contact details page that does the job well - Contact - Memento Grafia Studio

Make sure your online portfolio website is responsive

Over half of the total internet browsing now happens on mobile devices. Make sure that your portfolio website is fully responsive and optimized to display your work beautifully on mobile devices. The mobile experience of your website should load fast and leverage the basics of a touch screen interaction.

Add a blog

Add a blog to your website to let people know what you're working on and share behind-the-scenes experiences of your life as a designer. Write about ongoing projects and experiments that you pursue in your free time. Make your personality shine through and let people know about you as a person.

Get reviews from your peers

It's important to get objective feedback from others before you lock down on your portfolio website. Your peers will see mistakes, gaps, and opportunities that you would most probably miss or overlook. The constructive feedback you would get from your peers would help you re-look at your portfolio website from a fresh perspective.

Review and refresh often

You need to put in place a constant and consistent process of reviewing and refreshing your portfolio website periodically. The review should not just be about adding new work, be ruthless in deleting old work as well that you feel is no longer representative of your best work. Make sure that you do not end up with a bloated portfolio over time, keep pruning it as you add new works.

Create a print portfolio

While your online portfolio website is going to be probably your first point of interaction with people, it helps to have a classy, sophisticated, and impressive print portfolio in hand when you are meeting someone face-to-face.

Promote your portfolio website.

Your work does not end after creating a great portfolio website. In fact, that is just the beginning of the process of marketing yourself. Get active on social media platforms, start posting your work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and Facebook with links back to your website. Create your profile and share portfolio works on Dribble, Behance, and other such showcase platforms.

Use social media to expose your portfolio to as many people as you can and start building traffic for your website. Have a look at these 31 online resources that you can use to promote your website.

While you are in the process of creating your graphic design portfolio website, it's important to focus on the end result that you are striving to achieve. Your portfolio is not a vanity showcase, but a careful constructed engine to drive your career growth and bring you more opportunities.

Take a free 15 day trial on Pixpa to create your design portfolio website.

Do share your feedback and any design portfolio website you love in the comments.

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Your design portfolio represents a window for the world to view your work and judge your talent, skills and experience. Whether you are a graphic designer, a product designer, an illustrator, a web designer or a multimedia artist, design portfolios are the prism through which designers are constantly evaluated by new clients and potential employers. A great design portfolio can propel you towards success, open up new opportunities, and get you just the kind of work you want. However, failing at putting your best foot forward with your design portfolio can lead to rejects and spell doom.

Given that it can make or break your career, creating your design portfolio in itself becomes the most important design exercise of your career. With online design portfolio websites becoming the default medium of presenting your work to the world, it's important to make sure that you understand the dos and don'ts of a successful design portfolio website. A winning graphic design portfolio website showcases your work, tells your story, inspires confidence, and opens doors for collaborations.
We have carefully selected 25 of the best portfolio websites built on Pixpa for your inspiration. We have also listed 20 pro tips in this article to create an awesome graphic design portfolio. With these professional tips and a little bit of ingenuity, you will be well on your way to creating a portfolio that would be able to attract and impress potential employers, clients, or collaborators.

Pixpa is a portfolio website builder platform that is trusted by creative pros around the world. Pixpa offers an easy yet powerful drag-and-drop website builder and includes Client galleries, eCommerce, and blogging tools to enable you to manage your complete online presence through one seamless platform. Explore all features that make Pixpa the perfect choice for creative professionals.

Create your professional portfolio website with Pixpa.Sign up for a 15 days free trial.

Here's our selection of 25 of the best design portfolio websites for your inspiration.

1. Adrien Loret

Paris based Adrien Loret is a designer, passionate about illustration, typography, and photography. His website has a clean, minimal look and feel. His portfolio clearly illustrates each project, giving a lot of importance to white space and a simple colour scheme.

2. Marcus Artis

Branding and Packaging Designer, Marcus Artis's online portfolio website is straight-to-the-point. Marcus makes a great first impression with a strong, vivid use of his own branding. His portfolio website has simple, full image galleries that are easy to browse.

3. Fake Honey Pictures

Fake Honey Pictures is a film and photography initiative that creates visual stories around the world. Their portfolio features visually stunning videos, short documentaries displayed in a grid-layout based multimedia gallery, and fine art projects created for global brands, organizations, and major international media outlets.

4. Chris Tammar

Designer, Chris Tammar, presents his multi-faceted graphic designer portfolio through a simple, intuitive website. Tammar's own logo design gives his brand a personality. The clean square grid on the home page puts his work center stage.

Tip: Chris Tammar's website is a perfect example of 'less is more', with only two links in the navigation that present his portfolio and contact details.

5. Brendan Dowling

Creative Director, Brendan Dowling, takes a simple approach to present his designer portfolio. Brendan showcases a selection of his best projects directly in the website vertical menu. This makes it easy for site visitors to access his work and highlights the range of clients and projects he has worked on.

6. Made Architects

Made Architects is a multi-disciplinary design firm with architecture, interior design and furniture design projects. Made's online portfolio website showcases their awards and achievements on the home page. They have a projects section which has case studies on selected projects. Made's about page is structured nicely with their vision, team, awards and exhibitions establishing their experience.

7. Allison Bratnick

Based out of Boulder, Colorado, Allison Bratnick is Head of Design & Production at Protein Bar & Kitchen, a healthy fast-casual restaurant. She has chosen a clean grid-style theme to illustrate her work, which makes it easy for the viewer to scroll through her marketing and communication projects.

8. Mingfei Yang

Game Designer, Mingfei Yang, uses a black background as the base to feature his game design artworks portfolio. Mingfei's artworks are edgy and surreal, and as he says 'more level designs combine visual expression, architecture style, and interactivity to bring out great emotional experience.'

9. Brian Winston

Brian Winston is a graphic designer based out of Denver, Colorado. He is passionate about creating clean and elegant on-brand designs for print and web and that is clear in his portfolio too. His work is divided into project categories ranging from Creative Direction, Branding and Design, Illustration to Digital Ads and Product Mockups. A minimal aesthetic makes his portfolio website a treat to explore.

10. Elizabeth O'meara

Elizabeth O’meara is a graphic designer, with experience in creating packaging design, magazine, catalog design, logo design, wedding invitations, websites, and much more. Her extensive portfolio in packing design along with her other works is showcased beautifully in her graphic design portfolio website which features a horizontal scrolling gallery. The visual design of the website is minimalist and uses a pastel palette that complements Elizabeth’s portfolio.

11. Kim Dero

Graphic Designer, Kim Dero's graphic design portfolio comes alive through his clean, minimalist website that features large dynamic grids that accentuate the beautiful imagery of Kim's portfolio. His vast experience with global agencies has offered him a well-rounded skill set in food and beverage packaging design. Lots of negative space, consistency in the style of portfolio images, and an understated, simple portfolio website design makes Kim's online portfolio a winner.

12. Obladee

Obladee is a UK based design studio focussed on branding projects. Obladee’s simple, to-the-point portfolio website delivers on this brief by presenting its services and select brand design projects in a neatly designed home page. Visitors can click through to get more details on the project with more images and a project description available for each project.

13. Brandon Perez

Brandon Perez's graphic design online portfolio does a great job of showing his diverse range upfront on the home page. Brandon uses a eye-catching green and greyscale color combination with strong typography to create a high recall value. The website layout is kept simple yet smart with a fantastic use of a small grid on the home page.

14. Justin Maelzer

Justin Maelzer uses a dynamic grid to present his graphic design print portfolio. Justin keeps his website navigation simple and small and keeps the focus on his portfolio projects, all of whom can be accessed directly from his website home page.

15. Brook Perryman

Brook Perryman's graphic design portfolio website is a perfect example of how a graphic designer should approach her portfolio website. Brooke clearly lays out her strengths right on the home page, has a well-curated portfolio section that showcases her vast repertoire of work, includes a client testimonials section, a bio/resume, and a contact section that's well laid out and presents all the information needed clearly.

16. Robert Irish

With over two decades of experience, Robert Irish creates compelling stories through branding and design. His portfolio showcases his extensive work in web, mobile, brand and logo design, which is displayed in a grid-style gallery.

17. Matthew Park

Matthew Park's web designer portfolio website presents his digital artworks, web design projects, and UI/UX projects through vertical scrolling galleries with large images and captions for each work.

18. Polar Sun Designs

Polar Sun Designs is a showcase of artist James Bassett's vividly colorful work, experiments in shape and color. His work is on sale through his online store, neatly displayed in grid-style on the home page.

19. Lindsay Zautke

Portfolio App For Ipad

Based in Colorado, Lindsay is pursuing her career as a professional designer. Through her visual design skills, she wants to create beautiful and impactful designs for businesses to help them achieve their goals.

20. Michael Collins

After pursuing his master's degree in Film at UCLA, Michael went on to make a career in design. He believes in asking the right questions and combining the actionable insights with imagination and openness before starting a big project. Through his work, Michael has led the design of award-winning products.

Pro tip: If you are showcasing design, its best to photograph it in a real setting and present vivid imagery of the product actually being used.

21. Amelia Abromaitis

Amelia has been working as a strategic communication professional and graphic designer for more than 15 years. She studied graphic design at Moore College of Art and Design. She specializes in creating effective designs and tailored messages for political and community campaigns.

22. Jim Stahn

Jim Stahn says, 'I love building satisfying graphic design experiences, and am passionate about reaching out to new people and finding imaginative ways to communicate ideas.' His online portfolio gives a clear view of his work and design style.

23. Jena Locastro

Based in New York, Jena has been passionate about logos, typography, and branding. Her design portfolio is minimalistic, with lots of white space and a simple color scheme.

24. Maria Maka

Maria Maka is a highly passionate designer and illustrator. Along with design and writing, she loves to explore the interplay between type and content. Her work is neatly displayed in a grid-style gallery.

25. A. Darvishi

Designer and Creative Director, A. Darvishi has worked with several design firms and esteemed clients, offering his skills and talents in Graphic Design, Advertising, Pre-Press, Photography and Interior Design. His portfolio is detailed and work is thoughtfully put together.

It's important to see how other designers are putting together their online portfolio websites - to learn from them before you start creating your design portfolio website. We hope that the examples above gave you insights, inspiration, and ideas on how to create your own portfolio website.

Here are our 20 pro tips to create an awesome graphic design portfolio website for yourself:

Have a Clear Purpose

Start with deciding on the purpose of your portfolio. If you are looking for a job, focus on the work you want to do more of and showcase similar projects upfront. Polish your resume and clearly layout your skillsets and strong points along with your expertise in various design applications so that employers can judge whether you are a good fit for their requirements. If you are a freelancer seeking clients, showcase your successful case studies and emphasize how you have helped clients achieve success. Including a few client testimonials are also useful. If your online graphic design portfolio is mainly to build your brand, you have a lot more freedom to showcase experiments and personal work that you have done along with commercial work.

Curate your work

At its core, creating a great graphic design portfolio is all about presenting your best work and keeping it simple. Put your best designs upfront. Make sure that your portfolio does not exceed 20 projects (better still, a super-sharp selection of 10 projects). Once your final selection is ready, review it to make sure that it's cohesive and represents you well.

Pro tip- The first project that you showcase in your portfolio is the key - this would be seen by most people and be referenced in interviews or client meetings.

Showcase your versatility

While choosing your strongest projects, you also need to make sure that you are presenting the full breadth of your work. This can be a tight-rope walk and if it comes to choosing a project based on quality vs. a range of work, choose quality. Remember that you are as good as the lowest quality work you put out, so make sure that your curate only your best works.

Designer - Brandon Perez shows his diverse skills right on the home page of his portfolio website - Brandon Perez

Pro tip: Do not include an inferior work in your portfolio even if it is for a big brand name. Outstanding work done for a smaller client would do the job better. Clients are judging your talent, not your clients’ size. Having big brands in your portfolio helps though :).

Invest in a proper graphic design portfolio website

Putting a bunch of your work on free platforms such as Bechance, Coroflot or DeviantArt undercuts the very purpose of creating your own portfolio website - which is to stand out and make an impression. These free platforms reduce your work to just another link amongst millions others, with the same shared experience. When showcasing your design portfolio, you need to be professional and come off as someone who is serious and successful at work. With your own portfolio website, you create your brand and control the experience of how your work is viewed and you are perceived by potential clients and employers. Invest in a real portfolio website and connect your custom domain name with it. Its a worthwhile investment that would payoff many times.

Choose the right platform for your online graphic design portfolio

There are a ton of website builders now which make it simple enough to create and manage your own graphic design portfolio website. Wordpress is the most prominent of these, but if you do not have programming skills or would rather not invest your time / money in creating a custom-built website, it make a lot more sense to choose one of the hosted website builders. Even within the hosted website builders, there are platforms that enable building any business to create any kind of website and not-just designers. Choosing a platform that focuses on building online portfolio websites would give you a lot more options in terms of showcasing images, videos, gallery layouts themes etc. that are well-suited for online portfolios. The key to finding the right builder for you is to narrow down precisely what you want your site to do. We have put together a list of 6 Best Website builders for 2021, that could help you pick the one you like best.

Chris Tammar's portfolio website built on Pixpa - Visit - Chris Tammar

Pixpa is an online website builder tailor-made for graphic designers to create your portfolio website easily and showcase your work with style and simplicity. Check out the portfolio website themes and graphic design portfolio examplesbuilt on Pixpa.

Keep it simple, stupid

The best graphic designer portfolios are all about showcasing work in an easy and intuitive interface. Follow best practices and choose a clean, minimal design that highlights your graphic design works as the centerpieces of the viewing experience. One of the big mistakes that many designers make is to “over-do” the design of their portfolio. Your portfolio website design should not overshadow or take away the attention from your graphic design portfolio. Rather, it should serve as a backdrop that highlights your work and makes it easy for visitors to explore your online portfolio.

Designer, Bjorn Borgers, presents his work with a minimalist, clean website - Bjorn Borgers

Create your brand

As a graphic designer, you would be working on creating, enhancing, and evolving the brand equity of your clients through various creative mediums and projects. What better way to prove it than to create your own brand to present your graphic design portfolio. Creating your own logo is the first step to establishing your personal brand. Follow this through with a consistent visual language for your portfolio website, resume, and even your business card. Your brand identity should not only look nice but also be a statement on the kind of designer you are.

Marcus Artis's distinct logotype creates instant recall - Marcus Artis

Pro tip: Do not include an inferior work in your portfolio even if it is for a big brand name. Outstanding work done for a smaller client would do the job better. Clients are judging your talent, not your clients’ size. Having big brands in your portfolio helps though :).

Write about the process behind your work

Graphic designer portfolios should be more than just a visual collection of your work. Add authenticity and context to your work by sharing your thought process behind the project. Write about what was the starting point of the design process, what were the challenges and requirements of the project brief, and how the final design solution fulfilled those requirements. A successful graphic design project is not just about beautiful visuals, it's also how the creative process led to finding a successful design solution to a real-world problem. Share these insights into your portfolio projects.

Show results and case studies

Clients and employers are always more interested in real-world results. Showcase how your designs translated into the real world by including action photographs of your design in action - the brand design rollout on various collaterals, a printed brochure, a shot of the storefront. Make sure you photograph your completed work being used in the real world - that’s the best kind of design portfolio you can create.

Graphic Designer - Ling K writes a detailed case study about each of her projects - Visit - Ling K

Don’t beat around the bush

There’s plenty of research that states that a website visitor just takes 2-3 seconds to make their impression. Don’t waste away this tiny window where you need to grab the attention by showing lengthy animated flash intros or a heavy website that’s slow to load. Put your best foot forward and make sure you communicate effectively right from the word go.

Inject it with your personality

Add an “About Me” page to tell your story. This is where you talk about yourself, your interests and inspirations and how you started off in your field. Your “About Me” page should give an idea of the kind of person you are to work with. Given the choice to choose between two people with the same skills and experience, clients typically hire the person that they “like” better. Make sure that you win that choice.

Drdp Portfolio App

Add a downloadable resume

Create a proper resume page that details your education, experience, projects and clients you have worked with. Make it chronological with the latest events coming on top. Your resume is all about your work and qualifications - be truthful but pick the right details, do not cram it with irrelevant or avoidable information. Add a link to your downloadable resume as well if you are seeking a new job.

Clearly include your contact info

You have done all the hard work, created a great portfolio, and got visitors to your website. The last thing you want to do is to make it difficult for potential clients, employers, or collaborators to reach you. Make your contact information available as clearly as possible on your website. Every lead that you get from your website is a potentially big one, so make sure that the email address or phone number you are providing is actively used by you.

Memento Grafia Studio has a clear contact details page that does the job well - Contact - Memento Grafia Studio

Make sure your online portfolio website is responsive

Over half of the total internet browsing now happens on mobile devices. Make sure that your portfolio website is fully responsive and optimized to display your work beautifully on mobile devices. The mobile experience of your website should load fast and leverage the basics of a touch screen interaction.

Add a blog

Portfolio Appraisal

Add a blog to your website to let people know what you're working on and share behind-the-scenes experiences of your life as a designer. Write about ongoing projects and experiments that you pursue in your free time. Make your personality shine through and let people know about you as a person.

Get reviews from your peers

It's important to get objective feedback from others before you lock down on your portfolio website. Your peers will see mistakes, gaps, and opportunities that you would most probably miss or overlook. The constructive feedback you would get from your peers would help you re-look at your portfolio website from a fresh perspective.

Review and refresh often

You need to put in place a constant and consistent process of reviewing and refreshing your portfolio website periodically. The review should not just be about adding new work, be ruthless in deleting old work as well that you feel is no longer representative of your best work. Make sure that you do not end up with a bloated portfolio over time, keep pruning it as you add new works.

Create a print portfolio

While your online portfolio website is going to be probably your first point of interaction with people, it helps to have a classy, sophisticated, and impressive print portfolio in hand when you are meeting someone face-to-face.

Promote your portfolio website.

Your work does not end after creating a great portfolio website. In fact, that is just the beginning of the process of marketing yourself. Get active on social media platforms, start posting your work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and Facebook with links back to your website. Create your profile and share portfolio works on Dribble, Behance, and other such showcase platforms.

Use social media to expose your portfolio to as many people as you can and start building traffic for your website. Have a look at these 31 online resources that you can use to promote your website.

While you are in the process of creating your graphic design portfolio website, it's important to focus on the end result that you are striving to achieve. Your portfolio is not a vanity showcase, but a careful constructed engine to drive your career growth and bring you more opportunities.

Take a free 15 day trial on Pixpa to create your design portfolio website.

Do share your feedback and any design portfolio website you love in the comments.

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