12Mar/100
Things to Consider When Creating Your Online Portfolio
Nearly every creative person I know has or wants an online portfolio to showcase their work. Web designers, photographers, painters, set designers, writers, event planners...almost everyone is using the Internet to display their work .
I'm taking a course that is meant to help students define and market themselves, and today's class brought up a lot of great things to think about when creating an online portfolio. These are taken largely from notes I took during class, so it is a combination of stuff the teacher said or wrote on the screen and my own thoughts as I went.
Things to consider when creating your online portfolio:
- Your interface should not interfere with your work. There is a reason that art galleries have simple, plain white walls. People aren't there to check out the gallery's stunning vintage wallpaper and fancy woodwork; they are there to check out the art on display. Visitors to your portfolio aren't there listen to your background music or to watch a three-minute Flash intro. They want to see your work, so let them!
- It should be easy to update. The number one way to keep a closet organized is to make sure everything is easy to take out and easy to put away. If you have to move the stand-up fan and then the tool box and lift up the guitar before you can put your folded blanket away, you're just going to put the blanket on top of the fan. Whatever is easiest almost always wins in the end. The same rule applies to your portfolio for the same reason. If it isn't easy to update, you probably won't do it often and you probably won't spend enough time making sure it looks right.
- Be aware that most visitors spend a surprisingly brief amount of time at your site. Either make your navigation load and display quickly so that visitors can browse as much of your content as fast as possible, or make sure your content is engaging enough that they will willingly linger around your site.
- Know how professional you need to be. Who do you want to hire you? Your portfolio design needs to speak the language of the industries that you want to attract. A portfolio for a web designer who builds sites for rock bands will probably have a much different feeling than a designer who builds sites for law firms. What kind of client are you interested in? Research and compare portfolios of people doing the kind of work you want to be doing.
- Be as truthful as possible in communicating your skills and what you've contributed to projects. There really is nothing to gain from lying. Clients are going to know if you can't do something and it will piss them off if you waste their time and money (and your own). There's nothing wrong with saying something was a collaborative effort; tell them specifically what you contributed and sometimes it will be a match and sometimes it won't be. Also, if you worked on something that a client chose not to go with, it's perfectly fine to show it. Your value comes in the work you did and your ability to explain your choices, not necessarily what a client chose in the end.
- Start Now. While you should always be striving for perfection, you should never wait for it. (Here's a secret: Perfection doesn't actually exist.) If you're challenging yourself, learning and growing, then you will always be thinking of another way you can improve your work. You will probably constantly look back at your previous work and hate it because you can think of a dozen ways it could be better. That's how it should be. Don't let the desire for perfection immobilize you. Know when it is good enough and put it out there. Redesigns/revisions/etc can and always will happen.
- Show the human element. This is meant literally. Create an about section. Write up a short bio. Give a brief history of the company. Put up a picture. Introduce yourself in some way. There are a million ways to do it, but there needs to be a human at the other end of that portfolio. The work is the most important part, but clients don't want to work with a complete stranger.
Any other thoughts or suggestions?