so let me ask you guys this question what is a graphic design portfolio maybe it's somewhere to
archive your work or maybe it's a place to show off your work well actually the real answer to
both of these questions is no in today's video i think you're going to change your mind about
exactly what a graphic design portfolio is or should be and how to use it to get more jobs
more success and more clients in 2022 and that's one of the biggest problems that most designers
don't remember the main objective of a design portfolio it is there to gain steady clients
and steady workflow you want to convert clicks into clients essentially and yes i've spoken
about this in other videos but today i'm going to give you the biggest secret and the biggest key to
getting things right in a design portfolio sure we're graphic designers we're visual people and
so we want to showcase and show off our skills and the things we create cool animations and graphics
and so on and sure these are okay to have in your portfolio actually they're a good thing to have
in your portfolio but they shouldn't be the main focus in your design portfolio you need to show
how you can add value to a potential client and how you can solve their problems problem solving
is exactly why people come to you they want to hire you to solve them a problem in their business
they need something designed visually for their brand or their business and that's why they're
coming to you and you need to understand that you are a problem solver first and foremost a
potential client wants someone who can solve their problems without creating any new problems so they
don't want to hire somebody who's incompetent someone who's going to waste time which is also
their money they want to hire somebody who knows what they're doing who understands their problems
and can solve their problems so if that's the main reason why people come to you and to your
design portfolio you want to obviously show that you can solve problems in an easy to access way
and hence that's where your design portfolio comes into play so what are some of the things
we can do in our portfolio to show or demonstrate we can solve problems to potential clients in each
project you should outline the problems that the client had so that might be the brand's logo was
outdated and it needed kind of revamping for the modern era you can do this visually in your
portfolio or just for the paragraph of text just outlining the synopsis of the project as a whole
and then of course show your design process from idea concept sketch to actual design and
how it kind of addressed those problems and how it resolved these problems also it's really good to
explain or to talk about the hurdles that you might have encountered in the project and how you
used your skills and your experience to overcome those hurdles because pretty much every single
project or every single thing in business will have hurdles to overcome or jump over for that
matter and also it's really good to use technical terms and terminology that showcase or just
show how much of a professional you are and how competent you are as a graphic designer so we're
talking about things like layout resolution bleeds just things that graphic designers
know about and talk about so yeah this is all well and good and it is you know a good start
and it is off in the right direction but if a potential client comes onto your portfolio website
and they click off in an instant without actually being able to you know observe all of these
problem solving skills that you might have then it's pretty much useless isn't it some things that
cause your clients potential clients to click off are just messy unorganized portfolios misguided
designs or project workflows all portfolios are just uninspiring as a graphic designer you should
know that any designs you make need to first hook the attention of the audience or the viewer
and then you deliver the message once you've got their attention the graphic design portfolio is
not really that much different you want to you know grab their attention get them hooked in and
then sell them yourself or your skills and your services and also like any graphic design project
you need to know your target audience you need to know the person or the kind of people
you are targeting with your designs so you need to ask yourself what kind of clients are you looking
for what kind of people are you looking to attract is it going to be low budget start-up businesses
or is it going to be the higher end are you going to be mainly targeting clients in the 50s 60s or
clients in their 20s and 30s these are the kind of questions you need to ask because you need to
tailor your portfolio to that kind of person and of course your niche sector will come into this
as well so if you're someone who works on coding or ui design your portfolio is going to look very
different to someone who's an illustrator for example the portfolio you have is something that
should be very scannable meaning that someone should come on to it and can just quickly
look through and just gather the information they need in two to three minutes at the very max
so you really do not want convoluted confusing you know very very complicated kind of layouts
you want someone to come on there with these look around with ease and then contact you with
ease the keyword there being ease of course and also you do want to add a personal touch to your
portfolio and also an about page but what do you actually put in this about page there are some
designers who take this too personally and they start talking about their hobbies their interests
or maybe their religion whatever you should leave that out of your portfolio instead talk about your
strengths as a designer talk about the tools that you use and talk about the kind of projects you
reminisce about and you enjoyed working on in the past and then of course you want to get an opinion
on your design portfolio from you know some people that you respect and you value as designers
but also i would say that you should get someone who's a non-designer to someone you know who has
nothing to do graphic design whatsoever and get them to you know log on to your portfolio
scroll around and ask them what they think of your portfolio in blunt honest terms and this is the
part that you really want to listen to this is the do's and don'ts when it comes to designing your
portfolio do showcase a small amount of work without introducing too many projects that will
become confusing and overwhelming to any potential clients do show off any css skills that you might
have you know so you can have the animation the flashy things going on in your portfolio
don't feel like you need to fill every single bit of blank space with something
remember less is more and they want to be able to travel around your portfolio with ease
don't include old or outdated work from your past do use a strict color and style theme throughout
the entire design portfolio do talk about difficult times that you experienced in a project
and how you overcame them don't password protect certain design projects because this is just going
to hinder the accessibility and usability for anybody coming onto your portfolio do not make the
navigation overly complicated for anybody coming onto your site do have an about page and also have
a contact page so you can convert those clicks into customers do make it obvious what kind of
designer you are so a brand designer logo designer illustrator photographer and so on do not make
endless scrolling page style design portfolios and by this i mean where you keep scrolling down and
down and down and down and down you want things in separate pages orderly and neatly laid out do
use mock-ups to design your portfolio but remember guys that value is king when you're selling your
services to potential clients the value you can offer them is the most important thing
so do remember to demonstrate the problem solving skills you have and just showcase your skills
in general pretty much your portfolio is not a way to show off it's a way to
show that you can solve problems to whoever needs a problem being solved but anyway i hope that
made sense and i hope that you got something from today's video but if you want to learn more about
graphic design just click the video on screen and until next time guys design your future today