There are also lots of people who specialize in industrial design, fashion, photography, editorial, and more importantly many who've been in the business 5+ years or who are full blown studios. A lot of those people look like they're going for awards or trying to pull in edgy clients by exploring the boundaries of good taste, or going beyond it.
Someone had a squashed photo of their face in a square, rotated, with a drop shadow, floating diagonally across the screen. There was some good stuff but also some seriously questionable use of type, colors, layout, and animation. I didn't see any way to sort by type (Portfolio, Landing Page, Use Case, etc), which was surprising. I checked out about 40 of the portfolios on that site. (edit 12/11/23 – three previous portfolio websites listed above have expired after this was originally posted – here are more recent examples): and modify my own portfolio based on those findings.
If I were a new designer, I would make notes as I looked through these, tracking things like the number of projects, how thumbnails are presented, type of navigation, number of images in each project, types of clients, number and types of uses/applications in each project, etc. But they all stand out as being complete presentations that are effective in doing what they're designed to do – selling the designer as a job candidate or freelance designer for hire. If you've read my Portfolio Advice for New Designers post, these don't all follow what I've recommended there. Since ten is a nice round number, here's a bite-sized list of portfolios that I recommend you study if you're a new designer building your own. I just checked my list and there were ten asterisked portfolio sites – actually eleven but one of them was no longer online. Join our Discord server Design Subreddits LISTįor more than a year, I've tracked every portfolio that's been posted here for review and each time one of them really stands out, I put an asterisk next to it. Please report any posts which break these rules, to maintain the quality of the subreddit. No Candid / Non-Consenting Explicit / Sensitive ContentĬontact / Engage Moderators Appropriatelyįor full explanation of the rules see here. Shared work must have a comment for context and use the green "Sharing Work" flair.