(techno music)
- Hello everyone and welcome to another video
in my Portfolio Review Series.
This is a series where you send in your portfolios to me
and just as the name suggests,
I review them on camera giving you feedback
based on what you're hoping for,
what your goals are next in your design career.
I love doing the series because I think
it's really good for us as designers
to look around at other people's portfolios
and see how they're presenting their work.
And I think it's really useful to get an outsiders opinion
on your portfolio, as well.
Because, obviously it's your work,
you're very close to it,
and so hopefully I can help out.
Not only the designers that I'm going
to be reviewing portfolios of today
but you watching maybe there's advice
you can take away an apply to your own portfolio.
I've got three portfolios to go through and review today
and this episode is sponsored by Webflow.
They're a website building tool
which is great for building portfolios
and they're actually what I'm using to build out
my own portfolio at the moment.
I'll tell you more about why later on,
but for now, let's get into reviewing these portfolios.
First up today we've got Marina.
Marina is from Seattle and she has been
a freelance web designer and worked
for this developer for the last few years.
She says that she's self-taught,
which I think is pretty cool.
And that her next step is looking
to shift from doing free lancing full time
to working in like, a more consistent role,
either as a contractor or a permanent employee.
She says that she'd prefer to work
for a mission based company.
Especially one that uses Web Press
because that's where her skills are.
Fair enough, and that she would love something
that can give her a bit of variety.
So, let's take a look at Marina's portfolio.
So here is a look at Marina's website.
And right from the very start
I knew I was gonna love her site.
Because this header is just beautiful.
What she's created here with all these overlapping boxes.
There's a little Get In Touch button there
and it has a nice animation on it, the photo.
I think she's created a lot of depth with this design.
Which I think is, yeah, beautiful.
And I love how she's applied this
not only to the header space
but also to other components of her site.
So, here in the portfolio section
we've got again, some subtle movement
and some overlapping going on.
It creates a really nice aesthetic
and I really think it's a good demonstration
of her skills as a web designer.
I'm also a huge fan of Marina's use of typography
in her portfolio.
So for her, well like logo, I guess we'll call it,
the way her name is written at the top.
She's got this very geometric sans serif font.
But she's paired it with this serif font
and she's used it like here, quite large
and italic within a small like body copy underneath.
I think she's done some really nice font pairing here.
And that, the way she uses the typography on the page
is very thoughtful and obviously shows
that she's got a lot of skill in that area.
And I note those two things off the top
because even though your design portfolio
is meant to be a place to house
like all of the work that you've done on other projects,
the portfolio itself can actually be a really
good example of your design skills
if you put a lot of effort into it.
And I think Marina's is a great example
of doing just that.
So on this one page here we've got a header
that introduces her.
We've got a testimonial quote.
Which I think is a really nice touch
to have at the very top.
And something that I loved about this quote,
not only is it, you know, a good nice,
short and sweet quote from a client
but you can click on this Lazarus Naturals right here,
and it goes to the project that they worked on together.
Which I think is great.
It gives more credibility to that testimonial quote.
It means that we can dig in deeper and see
what this project was like and what they worked on together.
Anyway, back to the home page for now.
So we've got the testimonial quote
then we've got this we have this portfolio section,
where she's got six projects.
She's also laid out her resume her on the page,
which I think is a nice touch.
Often, you'll wanna have your resume available for download,
but I think just having it right here,
especially if you're looking for a job,
like either as she said, as a full time employee
or as a contractor.
Then the resume is gonna be something
that they're gonna wanna see.
So make it easy for them.
I don't know about this top skills section.
For development, for like coding,
then showing what languages you use
is really important to know what you're,
like proficient in.
I don't think the tools you use to create your designs
really matters and honestly,
it's easy enough to learn anything that you need to.
For example, if Marina was to apply at an agency
where they mostly used Figma for design,
she would be able to pick that up really easily.
So I just don't think it's necessary
to show the iPhones of the design tools
that you use in your portfolio.
Continuing down here we've got a place
where we can download Marina's resume.
And then we're ending on another testimonial quote,
which is again, a really nice touch.
And then we have her contact form.
So this is a great homepage for Marina.
A lot of times with portfolios we see
just a block of projects and you have to dig deeper
for this other information like the contact form
and the resume and some more information
about the designer themselves.
So Marina's put that all on her homepage
so I can just scroll through it,
which I like.
Let's jump in and take a look at some of Marina's projects.
Important thing to realize is that the first project
in you portfolio is probably gonna be the one
that people click on first.
Unless something else in particular catches their eye.
So always make sure that, that is your favorite one.
That if they only looked at one,
that's what you'd be all right with them seeing.
So on Marina's project pages she has an image
at the top here again using this overlapping style
that she's used on the homepage.
I like this here, this Project Details.
A little summary of, yeah, what went on.
So when we're looking at each project we're seeing
a bit of information about it.
And I love the way that Marina's done these persona cards.
It's again, another chance for her to showcase
her graphic design and layout skills.
So she could've just written all this
in a block of text in a paragraph on the page
but this obviously a much more visually pleasing
and nice to look at.
And again, a good demonstration of her skills.
Marina does a great job of showing her process
in her projects.
And so she's got the site map her.
Then moving down to the wire frames
and visual identity system.
I feel like we can really get a sense of her process
by looking through these and by reading these little blocks
of text here too.
And then she's got the final website.
I felt like in this North Atlantic Books one,
this section here about Improving the Book Categorization,
Categorization, that's a hard word to say,
this just looked overwhelming to me, to be honest.
And in the caption it seems like this
was what you did to improve
an organization structure they had before.
But honestly, unless what you're applying for
is some sort of like, I don't know, role
where that would be a main skill.
I don't know if that's highly necessary to show.
I know this must've been a big project
and must've had like a lot of work gone into
the categorizing of all of this.
But I just think it falls flat in you portfolio
and think that this project as a whole,
would be stronger without it.
Because I found this bit a little bit confusing.
It does say in the Project Details,
and again when you're reading a bit of this case study
as well, that Marina was involved
with more of the copy-editing side,
and like content creation.
So that's great but I think
that in your portfolio you really wanna play up
the details of the project that are what you wanna do
moving forward, right?
So, like I said, if information, architecture,
and copy and content is something
that you really wanna be doing in your job,
great, keep them in.
But if not, then I would recommend cutting those out
so that we can have more of a focus on the design process.
Which is what it seems from your email,
that you're more interested in focusing on.
At the very end of this project, as well,
there's this little bit here that says
that the optimization work and the webbery design
that she did it played a key role in doubling
the monthly site revenue which is huge.
And I wanted to make a bigger deal of this, Marina.
If you have results from your projects
that you can share, because I know sometimes
not every client or company like, wants to share
those with you.
But if you get something and you can say,
hey, work I did had this huge impact,
then you should make a big deal of it.
I think this could've been mentioned perhaps
in the Project Details section.
Have a little thing about results,
maybe with a little graph of what happened.
And what your impact was.
Because that shows that you care about those results
and the bottom line, essentially.
Not just making things look nice, obviously.
So, that's great.
Well done, Marina.
And just like, shout about that some more, I guess.
All in all, I think Marina's done a great job
with her portfolio.
Because not only does she show her process here,
in talking about the projects,
but she's also put a lot of work and personality
into the design of the portfolio itself.
So it's gonna make her stand apart
from a portfolio that is more just like a grid of projects.
Next up, we have Kevin.
Kevin is from L.A. and he's been designing since 2012.
Says he does branding design.
Graduated from University in 2017.
So a recent grad.
That's awesome and is looking to work in either
in house or a studio or an agency.
So not too picky.
Which is good when you've just graduated.
Let's take a look at Kevin's portfolio.
So Kevin's portfolio is one of these ones
that is just a grid of projects.
And that's okay.
That's what mine used to be as well.
But I do think that if you compare it to Marina's,
and the personality that we can see just in this
header space here and you know,
the design consideration, as well,
it does stand out a lot more.
So that's something that I would advise you to do, Kevin.
Is put some more design thought
into your homepage in particular.
Having a grid like this
for like a portfolio page is absolutely fine.
But, yeah, I think you could make a better impression
and a bigger splash when visitors first arrive
on your site.
It is good that even though you don't have
an About Paragraph or anything,
you do say Graphic Designer under your name here.
You'd be surprised at how many people don't say that
and then I'm left wondering what I'm suppose to be judging.
Kevin's site's made up of a couple of pages.
We've got this homepage here.
Which is his portfolio grid.
We've got an About Page.
We've got this Connect Page which is like a Contact Form.
And I was a little bit confused about this section here
called Other Work.
Felt like these were projects that you thought perhaps,
you thought weren't worthy of a whole like,
block in your portfolio.
And if that's the case then I would advise you
to not include this work at all.
Just completely remove this page.
I know you wanna show more work.
Especially when you're just starting out.
You said you just graduated last year.
It does feel often like it's quantity
over quality sometimes.
That you just wanna show you've done a lot of stuff.
But I think that your portfolio's only as good
as your weakest piece.
And if these pieces are not strong enough
to warrant being a project in your portfolio,
then they don't warrant being on there at all.
Let's take a look at Kevin's first project here.
So it's for Round-A-Bout Ice Cream Sandwiches.
I do like that in his introduction to the project
he's got the results at the top.
That's what I was talking about in Marina's.
She had the results down at the bottom.
It's great to have the result right up here
at the top of the page.
Created a fun environment for anyone to come in.
I would be interested to see if
that was like a client response or something, as well.
That would be good to include.
I can tell from his portfolio that Kevin
has a real talent for mockups like this looks great here,
this signage, I wondered if it was real to start with.
And so Kevin has tried to show a bit of his process
in this project.
See here, with his Logo Process.
But, what I wanna see here, Kevin,
is what the final one was and perhaps some of the reasons
why these ones were decided against.
So I can tell from the top.
I assume anyway, that this is the final logo.
But we don't actually see that here in the Logo Process.
Kevin's put a lot of effort into his
like product photography, which is great.
This image here in particular is really nice.
And I think it actually serves the project better
than the store front image you've chosen
to put as the project like, thumbnail.
I think that if you put the one
of all of the packaging here,
you'd be able to see the logo that you designed clearer
and it would be a stronger representation of the project.
So the next project in Kevin's portfolio I saw,
was this one here for Best Buy.
And that confused me a little.
Because I'm pretty sure this is not the Best Buy Logo.
Unless it's like a different electronic store
with the same name.
And that made me realize that I'm not sure
if all of the work in this portfolio
is real world projects or if they were student briefs,
or like practice briefs.
It's totally fine for your portfolio to be practice briefs
and for that to be all you have.
Because when you just get starting out
it's really hard to get that experience.
And so, you've kind of gotta have that stuff.
But I think you should make it clear when it is that.
And I would advise against putting in redesigns
of huge companies that everyone knows about.
I think in this case what would've been better for Kevin
to do is if he wanted to design a logo
for an electronics store to come up with his own like,
name and make the brand from there.
Because even though it's not a bad thing
to have practice briefs in your portfolio,
when you put in a redesign of a prominent brand
it really highlights that it wasn't real
and this wasn't a proper, like, design process
with a client going through and giving you feedback.
Something I've noticed that Kevin does
throughout his portfolio is when he designs a brand
he shows it to you in a huge variety of situations.
Which is great, because it's good to be thinking about
how your logo will look on.
You know, like here we've got a letterhead,
a business card, a brochure, packaging a T-shirt.
But what I would recommend for you, Kevin,
is to actually go deep and not wide with your designs.
And so rather than having a large amount of mockups
and things in your portfolio,
spend that extra time on refining the design instead.
With this logo for example, it could've really benefited
from some custom typography.
And so if you only had the logo
and you didn't have all these mockups,
because the logo itself would be better quality,
the project would better serve you in your portfolio.
All right, next up we have Ashley.
Ashley is another recent grad
looking to gain some more freelance clients
and hopefully land a role as a Junior Graphic Designer
in a small to medium sized design firm.
Cool, so let's take a look at Ashley's portfolio
with that in mind.
So we start off with this sentence that like,
describes her and immediately injects a bit of personality
to it like I was talking about.
And then under that we go into our grid of projects.
Then we've got an About Page, a Heading.
Oh that's cute, there's a gif instead of just
a static profile photo.
That's a nice touch.
A bit more about Ashley.
And then a resume as well.
Do you see what I mean about personality?
And that looking at Ashley's site and also Marina's site,
the first one we showed,
I feel like I can get a sense of who they are as people
not just as designers.
More so than I can with Kevin's.
I know we wanna be professional.
And that's great.
But at the end of the day people are hiring you
whether it's a client or whether it's someone
who's hiring for a design team.
They're gonna have to be having to work with you
as a person so don't be afraid of showing
a bit of your personality.
Let's have a look at some of Ashley's work.
So all of Ashley's projects start out with this like,
full page screen with a paragraph about it.
And I find I like this because it means
I'm almost forced to read it before I scroll on
and just get distracted by the pictures.
So I like that.
And then the rest of Ashley's portfolio
seems to mostly to be made up of images.
Oh know, I'm wrong, there's a little bit of text here
in the in between.
I think your portfolio, Ashley, could benefit
from maybe some more structure
to the way that you organize the project part itself.
Showing like, what the intention was.
What the deliverables were, that sort of thing.
I think that could be a good addition to make.
I also feel like I wanna see a lot more of the process
behind each of your projects, Ashley.
Like in this one here, you've got a picture of a sketchbook
which is great, but I feel like
this doesn't really tell me much about your process
other than the fact that you did do a sketch this one time.
So walking through like the journey you went on
to create this design, any big decisions
you had to make like for any turning points for it.
Like when you decided that it would be wood, for example.
With this burn out, did you try other materials first?
I don't know, that could be really interesting to show.
Just like with Kevin's portfolio,
I find myself not being totally sure
which of these projects are real world clients
and which were your student work.
This one here seems like it might be a real world project.
It's a really nice logo.
I would say to watch your images
because you've got this theme
that puts the images full width.
This one's looking a little pixelated on my Retina Screen
and if it's a designer who is hiring you
they're probably gonna be looking at your portfolio
on a Retina Screen.
So, I just want your images to like
look their best, you know?
This one here in Ashley's portfolio,
I'm pretty sure is a real world project.
It would be nice to see here a testimonial.
You talk about designing a template
so that they could then like, us it to lay out
the brochures themselves.
So perhaps a testimonial from someone on the team
saying, talking about how easy it was to use
or perhaps zooming in on some of the details
and explaining how you set up the file,
make it easy for them to use.
Or like what design decisions you made,
you know for this ease of use idea.
That would've been really good to see.
Just a bit more of the process and your thinking behind it.
Because while I do wanna see that you have typography skills
and that you have layout skills,
the design skills needed, I also wanna see
that you're thinking like a designer as well.
And that you've got like, a clear process that you follow.
I think for being a recent grad, Ashley,
you've done a great job of selecting
which projects to put in your portfolio.
You've gone for a nice range.
Which is gonna be important for an agency.
And when you're just starting out,
especially showing a range is good.
You'll wanna specialize, like later on in your career.
But yeah, you've done a good job of picking a good range
of projects and the ones that are your favorite
Ashley, as well.
I hope that even if you're not one of the people
whose portfolios I picked to review today
you got some value out of hearing my feedback.
Main things to watch out for really are showing
your personality and making sure
that within your projects you're giving enough detail
about the results, about the process,
about, you know, what the client wanted,
what the brief was.
I know that as a designer it can be really frustrating
sometimes working on your portfolio.
Because you've got all these ideas and this vision for it.
And you know what it needs to do.
But you can't actually like, bring it to life
and make it happen very easily.
And that's why I'm really excited to have Webflow
as a sponsor for this video.
Because they are a visual code tool.
So they're perfect for helping designers
like bring an idea to life.
Without having code knowledge.
If you use Webflow for your portfolio
you can do a lot of custom stuff
without actually knowing how to code.
So if that's been something that's frustrating you
about your own portfolio and you're watch this,
hearing me talk about personality and feeling
that you need to make some changes,
then I would highly recommend you check Webflow out.
What I'm doing for my portfolio
is making use of their CMS Collections feature.
They'll have a Collection of projects
and you can have whatever fields and categories you want
as part of each of the things within your CMS Collection.
So whether that's like the scope of work,
the results, a good case study, a bit about your process,
whatever you wanna have in there,
you can set up through the CMS in Webflow.
It means that it's super customizable.
And you can present whatever information
that you want to about your design projects.
And there, it's also really easy to add to as well.
So you only have to set this up once
and then when you wanna add a project to your portfolio
you just have to come in an basically fill out the fields.
So if you wanna give Webflow a try for your portfolio
you can do that for free.
There'll be a link in the description.
And it's also on screen right now.
And something I'll recommend,
is that you go and watch some of their
Webflow University videos.
It's like a series of free training.
And I watched a lot of them when I was getting started
with it and it really helped.
So dive in, try it out and I'd love to take a look
at whatever you come up with.
And I hope that some of the tips that I gave in this video
can be helpful as well, when you're building your portfolio.
All right, thank you for watching.
Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it.
And if you wanna see more in the series,
and I will see you in the next video.
Bye.
(techno music)