How to Create a Compelling Graphic Design Portfolio

If you work in graphic design, your portfolio is one of your biggest assets. A graphic design portfolio gives you a chance to demonstrate your best work to potential employers, as well as showcase your design skills in how you put the portfolio itself together. Most of the time, this portfolio will take the form of a website.

To build a portfolio that gives you a better chance of securing future work, it's important to cover everything a potential employer might look for. This includes displaying a wide range of graphic design samples and building a website that's easy to navigate.

In this article, we'll explore some key elements of creating a compelling graphic design portfolio and how to build a portfolio website that's sure to impress future employers.

Create a Website That's Easy to Use

When building a portfolio of any kind, you need to make sure that your website is easy to use and navigate. Part of this includes ensuring that the samples of your work are viewable and sit within the webpage screen. This is especially important if you're a graphic designer, as part of the skillset is creating work that is compatible with tech devices. Luckily, some tools allow you to perform some quick work to make it compatible and viewable, so you can remove the background from PDF files, convert between different file types, edit the size of images and make other changes to your files.

You might have the best artistic samples or the most beautiful web pages in the world, but none of this will matter if your portfolio site is difficult to use. Besides ensuring your designs are viewable by visitors, there are other steps you can take to create user-friendly web pages. Make sure that your navigation menu is visible and that all your pages load quickly, as you need to capture the attention of employers quickly. You might also want to choose colour combinations and font styles that are easily readable and gel with the design you're showcasing.

Create Stunning Web Pages

Besides building a functional website, you also want to create one that's aesthetically pleasing. This is especially important if you're a graphic designer, as you need to take every possible opportunity to demonstrate your artistic flair.

There's no single method of designing a good-looking site --- every designer has their own personal style. It's important to draw on the artistic principles you use in your day-to-day work when creating your portfolio, like the rule of thirds and optimising negative space. It's also essential to be consistent, as there's nothing worse than a website with wildly differing styles from page to page.

You don't need to build a website entirely from scratch. There are plenty of pre-existing templates online that you can tweak to better serve your needs. While it's important to implement a unique, personalised aesthetic, this can come across through your work itself. It can also help to be aware of the latest web design trends.

Demonstrate Your Range of Work

When building a portfolio, you need to be strategic about the samples you choose to include. If you've been a graphic designer for a while, you've probably created hundreds or even thousands of designs for a wide variety of clients. We don't suggest including everything you've ever done in your portfolio, as it's unlikely prospective employers will scroll through an endless display.

Instead, demonstrate your talent by only including the top work you've done for a particular client or in a particular area of graphic design. Try to include a variety of work, from different marketing formats such as newsletters and social media posts to various stylistic designs. You can use a PDF editor to easily convert and compile all these different samples into a cohesive, easily downloadable PDF portfolio that can then be shared via email to prospective clients or even made accessible through your website.

Of course, you shouldn't hesitate to include a large number of samples if it helps you get the range of your experience across. If you have plenty of experience making logos for clients, there's no harm in including a higher proportion of logos compared to other formats, but try to include a range.

Tell a Story

What separates a good portfolio from a great one is that the former is simply a collection of a designer's work, while the latter tells a compelling story.

A simple way to tell a story with your portfolio is to include a quick description under each work sample you display. This snippet might include a brief overview of the client you worked for, your artistic process and some of the challenges you had to overcome. This gives visitors to your site some context.

Another way to tell a cohesive story is to arrange your portfolio chronologically. This demonstrates your growth as a professional graphic designer in terms of the skills you've developed over time. However, you might want to order it reverse chronologically, starting from the most recent if you've had significant skill improvement since you started.

Include an 'about' page on your portfolio website. Here, you can talk about your background, past professional experience and personal interests and include a narrative around your passion for graphic design. This will help employers remember you.

Create a Graphic Design Portfolio that Showcases your Talents & Expertise

A professional portfolio is an integral asset for any graphic designer. Contributing the necessary amount of time and effort into designing a high-quality portfolio website can be the difference between landing your next gig or failing to do so.

Thankfully, there are several tried and tested methods for building a graphic design portfolio that help you stand out from the competition. These include optimising your designs for a webpage, making your website user-friendly, showcasing a wide range of work and telling a cohesive story through your portfolio. Now, apply what you've learnt here in your portfolio to boost your chances of landing your next graphic design role.