Your design portfolio represents a window for the world to view your work and judge your talent, skills, and experience.
Whether you are a graphic designer, a product designer, an illustrator, a web designer, or a multimedia artist, design portfolios are the prism through which designers are constantly evaluated by new clients and potential employers.
A great design portfolio can propel you towards success, open up new opportunities, and get you just the kind of work you want. However, failing at putting your best foot forward with your design portfolio can lead to rejection and spell doom.
Given that it can make or break your career, creating your design portfolio in itself becomes the most important design exercise of your career.
With online design portfolio websites becoming the default medium of presenting your work to the world, it's important to make sure that you understand the dos and don'ts of a successful design portfolio website.
A winning graphic design portfolio website showcases your work, tells your story, inspires confidence, and opens doors for collaborations.
We have carefully selected 15 of the Best Design Portfolio Websites built on Pixpa for your inspiration. We have also listed 20 pro tips in this article to create an awesome graphic design portfolio.
With these professional tips and a little bit of ingenuity, you will be well on your way to creating a portfolio that will attract and impress potential employers, clients, or collaborators.
Here is an extensive collection of the best design portfolio website templates for your reference.
Best Design Portfolio Websites For Inspiration
John Panek
John Panek is a graphic designer based in New York. The homepage is a collection of projects John has worked on, such as Budweiser and Bud Light. These projects showcase designs that could be utilized for brand promotions.
There is also a collection of brand logos that John has worked on. Check out this portfolio to make a mark in brand design.
Arrowood Design Agency
Arrowood Design is a full-service, client-focused design firm founded by Lisa Arrowood and specializes in residential projects.
The homepage gives a glimpse into the kind of work Lisa specializes in. A couple of owls sitting on a branch are painted on a living room wall.
Lisa leverages color and a harmonious mix of modern and antique to create classic spaces that feel inspired but natural. It’s a perfect example of having a digital presence as an interior designer.
Danny More
Danny Moore is a web designer and has kept his portfolio simple. As soon as you land on the website, a barrage of web design and branding projects is waiting for you to be seen.
The menu section is hidden and expands to showcase his homepage, contact page, and work samples.
Diedre-Ann
Diedre-Ann is a product designer based in Boston. The first section of the homepage presents a huge text-only description of Diedre, giving a clear understanding to the visitors about the designer.
The homepage further presents detailed case studies on big projects like LinkedIn and SXSW. Diedre also makes scanning the portfolio easy for potential employers by adding the resume and social links to the menu.
Kellie Challis
Kellie Challis is a freelance graphic designer based on the Gold Coast and specializes in branding, signage, and everything print, with experience in UX and digital design.
The portfolio gives a quick overview of the clients Kellie has worked with for graphic design projects. Anyone looking to build a clean graphic design portfolio should check this out.
Gregory Curley
Gregory Curley is a graphic designer based in Orange County. The portfolio is attractive because it showcases a wide range of categories in which Gregory has expertise and has worked on extensively.
It includes advertising, packaging, illustration, brand promotion, logos, product design, posters, publication design, web design, point of sale, technical drawing, and banners.
Elizabeth O'meara
The visual design of the website is minimalist and uses a pastel palette that complements Elizabeth’s portfolio.
Fake Honey Pictures
Fake Honey Pictures is a film and photography initiative that creates visual stories around the world.
Their online portfolio website features visually stunning videos, short documentaries displayed in a grid-layout-based multimedia gallery, and fine art projects created for global brands, organizations, and major international media outlets.
Brendan Dowling
Creative Director, Brendan Dowling, takes a simple approach to present his design portfolio. Brendan showcases a selection of his best projects directly in the vertical menu of his design portfolio website.
This makes it easy for site visitors to access his work and highlights the range of clients and projects he has worked on.
Made Architects
Made Architects is a multi-disciplinary design firm with architecture, interior design, and furniture design projects. Made's online portfolio website showcases their awards and achievements on the home page.
They have a projects section which has case studies on selected projects. Made's about page is structured nicely with their vision, team, awards, and exhibitions, establishing their experience.
Brandon Perez
Brandon Perez's graphic design online portfolio does a great job of showing his diverse range upfront on the home page.
Brandon uses an eye-catching green and greyscale colour combination with strong typography to create a high recall value.
The website layout is kept simple yet smart with fantastic use of a small grid on the home page.
Matthew Park
Matthew Park's web designer portfolio website presents his digital artworks, web design projects, and UI/UX projects through vertical scrolling galleries with large images and captions for each work.
Michael Collins
After pursuing his master's degree in Film at UCLA, Michael went on to make a career in design. He believes in asking the right questions and combining the actionable insights with imagination and openness before starting a big project. Through his work, Michael has led the design of award-winning products.
If you are showcasing design, its best to photograph it in a real setting and present vivid imagery of the product actually being used.
Jim Stahn
Jim Stahn says, "I love building satisfying graphic design experiences, and am passionate about reaching out to new people and finding imaginative ways to communicate ideas." His online portfolio gives a clear view of his work and design style.
Jena Locastro
Based in New York, Jena has been passionate about logos, typography, and branding. Her design portfolio website is minimalistic, with lots of white space and a simple color scheme.
A. Darvishi
Designer and Creative Director, A. Darvishi has worked with several design firms and esteemed clients, offering his skills and talents in Graphic Design, Advertising, Pre-Press, Photography, and Interior Design.
His online portfolio website is detailed, and his work is thoughtfully put together.
It's important to see how other designers are putting together their online portfolio websites - to learn from them before you start creating your design portfolio website.
We hope that the examples above gave you insights, inspiration, and ideas on how to create your own portfolio website.
How to Create an Awesome Graphic Design Portfolio Website?
Here are our 19 pro tips to create an awesome graphic design portfolio website for yourself
- Have a Clear Purpose
- Curate Your Work
- Showcase Your Versatility
- Invest in a Proper Design Portfolio Website
- Choose the Right Platform
- Keep It Simple
- Create Your Brand
- Write About the Process Behind Your Work
- Show Results and Case Studies
- Don’t Beat Around the Bush
- Inject It With Your Personality
- Add a Downloadable Resume
- Clearly Include Your Contact Info
- Make Sure Your Online Portfolio Website Is Responsive
- Add a Blog
- Get Reviews From Your Peers
- Review and Refresh Your Design Portfolio Often
- Create a Print Portfolio
- Promote Your Portfolio Website
1. Have a Clear Purpose
Start by deciding on the purpose of your portfolio. If you are looking for a job, focus on the work you want to do more of and showcase similar projects upfront.
Polish your resume and clearly lay out your skill sets and strong points along with your expertise in various design applications, so that employers can judge whether you are a good fit for their requirements.
If you are a freelancer seeking clients, showcase your successful case studies and emphasize how you have helped clients achieve success.
Including a few client testimonials is also useful. If your online graphic design portfolio is mainly to build your brand, you have a lot more freedom to showcase experiments and personal work that you have done, along with commercial work.
2. Curate Your Work
At its core, creating a great graphic design portfolio is all about presenting your best work and keeping it simple. Put your best designs upfront.
Make sure that your portfolio does not exceed 20 projects (better still, a super-sharp selection of 10 projects). Once your final selection is ready, review it to make sure that it's cohesive and represents you well.
Pro Tip: The first project that you showcase in your portfolio is the key - this would be seen by most people and be referenced in interviews or client meetings.
3. Showcase Your Versatility
While choosing your strongest projects, you also need to make sure that you are presenting the full breadth of your work. This can be a tight-rope walk, and if it comes to choosing a project based on quality vs. a range of work, choose quality.
Remember that you are as good as the lowest quality work you put out, so make sure that you curate only your best works.
4. Invest in a Proper Graphic Design Portfolio Website
Putting a bunch of your work on free platforms such as Bechance, Coroflot, or DeviantArt undercuts the very purpose of creating your own portfolio website, which is to stand out and make an impression.
These free platforms reduce your work to just another link amongst millions of others, with the same shared experience. When showcasing your design portfolio, you need to be professional and come off as someone who is serious and successful at work.
With your own portfolio website, you create your brand and control the experience of how your work is viewed and how you are perceived by potential clients and employers. Invest in a real portfolio website and connect your custom domain name with it. It's a worthwhile investment that would pay off many times.
5. Choose the Right Platform for Your Online Graphic Design Portfolio Website
There are a ton of website builders now that make it simple enough to create and manage your own graphic design portfolio website.
WordPress is the most prominent of these, but if you do not have programming skills or would rather not invest your time/money in creating a custom-built website, it makes a lot more sense to choose one of the hosted website builders for designers.
Even within the hosted website builders, some platforms enable any business to create any kind of website, and not just designers.
Choosing a platform that focuses on building online portfolio websites would give you a lot more options in terms of showcasing images, videos, gallery layouts, themes, etc. that are well-suited for online portfolios.
The key to finding the right builder for you is to narrow down precisely what you want your site to do. We have put together a list of the best website builders that could help you pick the one you like best.
Pixpa is an online website builder tailor-made for graphic designers to create their portfolio website easily and showcase their work with style and simplicity.
6. Keep it Simple
The best graphic designer portfolios are all about showcasing work in an easy and intuitive interface. Follow best practices and choose a clean, minimal design that highlights your graphic design works as the centerpieces of the viewing experience.
One of the big mistakes that many designers make is to “over-do” the design of their portfolio. Your portfolio website design should not overshadow or take away attention from your graphic design portfolio.
Rather, it should serve as a backdrop that highlights your work and makes it easy for visitors to explore your online portfolio.
7. Create Your Brand
As a graphic designer, you would be working on creating, enhancing, and evolving the brand equity of your clients through various creative mediums and projects.
What better way to prove it than to create your own brand to present your graphic design portfolio?
Creating your own logo is the first step to establishing your personal brand. Follow this through with a consistent visual language for your portfolio website, resume, and even your business card.
Your brand identity should not only look nice but also be a statement on the kind of designer you are.
Pro Tip: Do not include low-quality work in your portfolio, even if it was done for a big brand name. Higher-quality work done for a smaller client would do the job better. Clients are assessing your talent, skill, and not the brands you've worked with. Having big brands in your portfolio helps, though :).
8. Write About the Process Behind Your Work
Graphic designer portfolios should be more than just a visual collection of your work. Add authenticity and context to your work by sharing your thought process behind the project.
Write about:
- What was the starting point of the design process?
- What were the challenges and requirements of the project brief?
- How the final design solution fulfilled those requirements.
A successful graphic design project is not just about beautiful visuals. It's also how the creative process led to finding a successful design solution to a real-world problem. Share these insights in your portfolio projects.
9. Show Results and Case Studies
Clients and employers are always more interested in real-world results. Showcase how your designs translated into the real world by including action photographs of your design in action - the brand design rollout on various collaterals, a printed brochure, and a shot of the storefront.
Make sure you photograph your completed work being used in the real world - that’s the best kind of design portfolio you can create.
10. Don’t Beat Around the Bush
There’s plenty of research that states that a website visitor just takes 2-3 seconds to make their impression.
Don’t waste away this tiny window where you need to grab the attention by showing lengthy animated flash intros or a heavy website that’s slow to load.
Put your best foot forward and make sure you communicate effectively right from the word go.
11. Inject It With Your Personality
Add an “About Me” page to tell your story. This is where you talk about yourself, your interests and inspirations, and how you started in your field. Your “About Me” page should give an idea of the kind of person you are to work with.
Given the choice to choose between two people with the same skills and experience, clients typically hire the person that they “like” better. Make sure that you win that choice.
12. Add a Downloadable Resume
Create a proper resume page that details your education, experience, projects, and clients you have worked with. Make it chronological with the latest events coming on top.
Your resume is all about your work and qualifications - be truthful, but pick the right details, do not cram it with irrelevant or avoidable information.
Add a link to your downloadable resume or create a resume website, which you add as part of your portfolio website while you're looking for a new role.
13. Clearly Include Your Contact Info
You have done all the hard work, created a great portfolio, and got visitors to your website. The last thing you want to do is to make it difficult for potential clients, employers, or collaborators to reach you.
Your first option is to add a Contact Form or a Contact Us page to your website portfolio. You can sync this form to your site and allow any visitor to submit a form to get in touch.
This is a great way to filter requests and find out if customers need to ask for a quote or schedule a meeting with you.
Then, make your contact information available as clearly as possible on your website. Every lead that you get from your website is a potentially big one, so make sure that the email address or phone number you are providing is actively used by you.
14. Make Sure Your Online Portfolio Website Is Responsive
Over half of the total internet browsing now happens on mobile devices. Make sure that your portfolio website is fully responsive and optimized to display your work beautifully on mobile devices. The mobile experience of your website should load fast and leverage the basics of a touch screen interaction.
15. Add a Blog
Add a blog to your website to let people know what you're working on and share behind-the-scenes experiences of your life as a designer.
Write about ongoing projects and experiments that you pursue in your free time. Make your personality shine through and let people know about you as a person.
16. Get Reviews From Your Peers
It's important to get objective feedback from others before you lock down on your portfolio website. Your peers will see mistakes, gaps, and opportunities that you would most probably miss or overlook.
The constructive feedback you would get from your peers would help you re-examine your portfolio website from a fresh perspective.
17. Review and Refresh Your Design Portfolio Often
You need to put in place a constant and consistent process of reviewing and refreshing your portfolio website periodically.
The review should not just be about adding new work, but also be ruthless in deleting old work as well that you feel is no longer representative of your best work.
Make sure that you do not end up with a bloated portfolio over time. Keep refining it as you add new works.
18. Create a Print Portfolio
While your online portfolio website is probably going to be your first point of interaction with people, it helps to have a classy, sophisticated, and impressive print portfolio in hand when you are meeting someone face-to-face.
19. Promote Your Portfolio Website
Your work does not end after creating a great portfolio website. In fact, that is just the beginning of the process of marketing yourself.
Get active on social media platforms, start posting your work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and Facebook with links back to your website. Create your profile and share portfolio works on Dribble, Behance, and other such platforms.
Use social media to expose your portfolio to as many people as you can and start building traffic for your website.
While you are in the process of creating your graphic design portfolio website, it's important to focus on the end result that you are striving to achieve.
Your portfolio is not a vanity showcase, but a carefully constructed engine to drive your career growth and bring you more opportunities.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you create a design portfolio?
The first step to creating a beautiful, professional design portfolio is to find the right portfolio website builder. Having an online portfolio website is better than a physical portfolio because it is much more accessible and shareable. Portfolio websites make it easier for you to promote and market yourself as a designer.
What should a design portfolio contain?
Your design portfolio should contain your best-curated work as well as your resume. Choose pieces that show a wide range of skills and expertise. Also, make sure your portfolio website has marketing and SEO tools that help you expand your reach and promote yourself better.
What makes a great design portfolio?
A great design portfolio should have a clear purpose. Don’t just fill your portfolio with random pieces, but add content that tells something about you and provides value to the overall portfolio. Try to create a brand identity for yourself through your design portfolio.
To ensure you make the most of your portfolio, our guide on how to create a model portfolio will provide you with invaluable insights and strategies to showcase your skills, attract clients, and advance your professional journey.
What is the definition of a design portfolio?
A design portfolio is a curated collection of a designer’s best work that shows their skills, methods, expertise, and versatility. Design portfolios are important for every designer in order to get jobs and clients.
