- Welcome back to another portfolio review video.
This is a series where I take portfolios
that have been submitted by you for me to critique
and give advice on.
I always try to give advice that will be really helpful
not only to the people whose portfolios I'm reviewing
in this particular video,
but for anyone who's making a portfolio.
There's lots of things to consider
and these portfolios that I review often bring up
some good examples of things that you should think about.
So, hope this video will be useful.
Today, I've got three portfolios to share with you,
and to critique and review, and let's start off with Zach's.
Zach is a designer from Berkeley, California in the States.
He's four years into his design career
and he's looking to get into in-house and agency work.
The first thing I noticed on Zach's portfolio
is how well-written his intro copy is.
I think this is a really good example
of how you don't need a whole about page
with paragraphs upon paragraphs
explaining who you are and what you do.
Something short and sweet like this
is a really great introduction to yourself.
I think this is a really great intro to Zach
that says what he does, where he works.
And I like that he talks about his writing
about presentation design, tools, et cetera,
on medium as well, that's a nice thing to mention
straight up front.
I also really like the use of the emoji.
It's very subtle but, you know, done well.
I think emojis can definitely be cheesy
if they're overused or used in the wrong way
but that little wave is pretty cute.
I wanted to review Zach's portfolio
because it was a little bit different from others
that I think you've probably seen in past videos
where you usually see a grid of projects to click in to.
Zach has gone for a one-pager approach,
and so as I scroll down we see that we start working through
the navigation that he had at the top.
I quite like this approach because it means you can control
the order in which people see your portfolio.
If you have a grid of projects, of course,
people are just gonna click on whichever one
they feel jumps out to them the most
which is good in its own, like, has its own merits
but this is kind of nice too,
to be able to control the order
in which people see your projects.
That means you can put your super-impressive ones up front
to make sure people don't miss them.
Zach currently works with Square
and so that's what he's put at the top,
which I think is a smart choice.
All these infographics are really good demonstrations
of your work, and I like that you can click in to them
and see them in more detail.
I will say as I scroll down on this portfolio
when I reach the presentation part
I felt like it was a lot of scrolling
and a lot of stuff that looked very similar.
I don't know if it's necessary to have all of these slides
laid out on the homepage like this.
Just because it is a lot and it gets in the way
of getting to the next project.
What I would like to recommend for Zach is something that
he already has implemented on his site it seems,
is to present all these slides as a carousel
like this report is, as well.
This way I can click through and get an idea
of the different kinds of layouts that you do
and you can also see the thumbnails at the bottom
so you know that there's some variation there,
which I think is what the point is probably
of displaying all these slides out on the homepage anyway
is to show the variation and cohesiveness
across the presentation.
I really like the photography
of this Call of the Vialed project
but I wish that I could see the details up close
because you've said in here that you were
assisting with the branding and the label design,
and so I wanna see the label up close, you know.
I wanna see what you did and these images aren't clickable
whereas the presentation ones before were.
So, that might be something to think about just to show
more details of your specific part of the project.
Overall, I really like your portfolio, Zach.
I think you've done a good job with the design of it.
The site itself gets out the way
so that the work can stand out.
I also like the amount of copy you've written
to accompany each project.
I think that has worked out really well.
It's not too long, not too short.
It's kind of a perfect length really
to talk about a project.
My only feedback for you would be
to think about how you're displaying
each of these types of work
because it was a lot of scrolling to get through
all of these presentations and, like I said,
I couldn't see the details on the branding project
that you'd worked on.
Up next, we have Victoria.
Victoria is from Belarus.
She's a UI/UX designer and she's had
over three years experience in the UI/UX design industry
and several years of illustration beforehand.
That's interesting.
She recently moved to the US, and so she's looking for
design opportunities and getting to know
the local market and process better.
So, let's take a look at the portfolio.
First off, this is probably one of the most beautiful
opening pages that I've ever seen in a portfolio.
This full browser height image often doesn't work
in most situations because if it's a SAAS product,
or something you're trying to sell,
a potential customer could reach this site
and then get confused and leave when they can't see
anything to click on, or any text.
But, because it is a portfolio
and when people go on to a design portfolio in particular
they tend to scroll, like, that's just a thing that happens,
so you can get away with it here.
I do like the use of it.
I think you've also done a good job
of this really subtle parallax scrolling as well.
Just like Zach, she's got a great little introduction
right at the top that tells you a bit about her.
It's nice and brief but it also shows
a bit of personality, too.
Victoria's site does show thumbnails of projects
that you click in to, but it is not the usual grid
of like three across, you know, three down,
that you see on most portfolio sites.
So, really commend you for that.
I think this looks great.
Just a quick note, I would say to watch your contrast
on the image behind the text there
because that could be really hard to read on some screens.
Victoria does a really good job of displaying her work
in the portfolio putting it on these mock screens.
I love this one in particular that shows the markup
of all the little details of the design.
That shows that you're thinking about that
and you're thinking about everything being cohesive,
spacing being consistent, and the whole design system
rather than just designing a page on its own,
which obviously as designers
we know that's what we have to do,
but it's nice to demonstrate it sometimes.
In a few of your projects I found myself
really wanting to know more
about the challenges that you faced
and a bit more about the background of working on it,
especially with this one.
This is a very short introductory paragraph,
not even a paragraph it's just a couple sentences really.
Let me get into the project.
So, I would've liked to hear more about
the process of working on this and how you were involved.
I see this photo of this woman was used as the thumbnail
and then it's also used as this background as well
so it makes me wonder were you a part of
the creative direction of the photo shoot or something.
Is that why they're being shown and featured so much?
I don't know.
Something else I would say for you to think about, Victoria,
would be for having navigation
to get easily between projects.
Once you're already in one perhaps I just wanna
click through all your projects and look at them
whereas the only way I can do that right now
is to go back to your homepage, which is beautiful,
let's be honest, and scroll back down and pick a new one.
I think it would make it a better experience
if you made it easier for people
to click through all your projects
because they are very well laid out
and they're very visually pleasing to look at.
And so, I wanted to look at them all.
One last thing for you to think about would be to mention
specifically what kind of work you're looking for.
Maybe by the time you sent this email you've actually landed
a great job that you're really happy with
and so this is not really relevant anymore,
but some little spiel about
what kind of work you're available for
and how they can easily get in touch with you
would be great.
I know you've got this email link in the footer
but it is quite small.
So, yeah, just thinking about making that easily accessible.
Our last portfolio to take a look at in this video
is by Paulo.
Paulo is a third-year at design college and he says
he's still interested in many different areas of design,
which I know how that goes.
That's pretty much, you don't wanna rule anything out
when you're still learning about it.
He's right now working with visual identity,
UI, web, 3D modeling, illustration,
lots of different things, and that he is trying to pick up
freelance small jobs that appear alongside his studies.
So, Paulo linked me to a Behance portfolio
but I saw that he also does have a website there
so I am just going to talk about both of them
because they connect.
The thing about Behance is that it looks pretty empty
when you only have four projects in it, which Paulo has.
That's not to say that you should have
more projects in your portfolio.
I really actually admire the fact that
you only have four projects when you're in design school
because I think the temptation when you're a student
is to just to put in every single thing,
every single brief that you work on
because you're just excited to have something done
and you're going for quantity because perhaps you feel like
the quality isn't there yet.
Well, at least that's how I felt
when I was still in design school.
So, I like that you've been very selective
with which projects you're showing in your portfolio
and you've chosen these four.
But, on Behance, it does look a little bit empty,
especially when you look at it on a bigger screen.
Last two portfolios we looked at
didn't actually have a whole lot of projects in them either,
so that just goes to show that you don't need
a ton of projects to make a good portfolio.
But, I would just recommend that you put these projects
on your own site where you can have more control over
how you display them and how you present them to people
rather than Behance where it can
just look a little bit empty.
Like I said, Paulo does have a site.
This, again, is really nice opening page.
I couldn't read most of it because I don't speak Portuguese
but, hey, it sounds like there's a good amount
of information there, you know.
So, I got excited when I saw his projects
but it turns out that these projects actually just link back
to the Behance, so I think you're halfway there, Paulo.
I'd like to recommend that you take the information
that you give within your projects on Behance
and bring it over to your own site
because let's take a look at these here.
They're actually really well laid out.
I like this little detail
of showing the structure of this logo that you made
and the different colors.
Perhaps this one could do with some more of
the application of the branding.
That's always a good way to display it.
I really liked the detail of this project in particular.
I thought you did a great job of showing some
behind-the-scenes of the logo process
and the brand guidelines that you put in place for it
because that's really important to think about
when you're doing visual identities.
And, in this one, you showed it
represented on business cards and things, so that's great.
I would recommend you do that
for all of the branding that you do.
Just show it represented on some items
and show how it could be used.
So, yes, I think you should translate
all of this great presentation layout stuff you've done
for your projects in Behance
and get them onto your own site.
I think this would be a much better place
for people to experience your work.
That's not to say you shouldn't have a Behance as well
because I know some people do find work that way
and it's where some companies might head
to look for a freelancer.
So, it's worth having the profile
but I would recommend that you make your website
your main point of contact and the main thing
that you link people to as your portfolio.
Well, that's all the portfolios that we have time for today
but, if you like this series,
please make sure you give this video a thumbs up
and, like I said, this is the link where you can go
and submit your own portfolio for review
in a future episode if you're interested.
If you want some practice critiquing
I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on these portfolios
down below in the comments.
Be constructive.
Remember, critiques should always be constructive.
And, yeah, tell me what you think about them.
Thank you for watching this video, and to everyone
who has submitted portfolios to review so far
there is way more than I can keep up making videos for
but it's really fun to go through and see your work,
so keep on submitting them.
Coming up very soon I'm going to have a very special way
that we can have some one-on-one portfolio critique time,
so stay tuned for that.
I'll be telling you more about that next week
and I'm really excited to share it with you.
But, for now, thanks for watching
and I will see you next time, bye.