Preparing and Talking About Your Graphic Design Portfolio
As a graphic designer a portfolio is essential. While it’s great to have an online one, it’s also a good idea to have a physical one too to take along to meetings and interviews.
Putting together and showing this kind of portfolio of your graphic design work is quite a skill, and the best way to do it gets debated constantly by designers around the world. There is no right way of doing it – there will always be differences in what employers or clients expect, or would like to see. Some simple logic and advice will help you though, and I’m going to share what I have learned both from experience and from reading other articles.
Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in May of 2009.
So, to get started it’s worth mentioning that your portfolio, and the way you talk about it, is an opportunity for you to shine and to demonstrate that:
- you are creative
- you can apply good thought processes
- you have a range of skills
- you are ambitious and enthusiastic
Your Audience
As designers, when we start a design project one of the first questions we always ask is who the audience will be. You should be applying the same thinking when putting together your portfolio – who will be looking at it? What are their needs and expectations?
Depending on your situation, your target audience is likely to be one of the following:
- A potential employer
- A potential client
If you are looking for a job in the design industry remember potential employers will most likely be designers themselves. This means they will have a keen eye for the look of your work and will want to understand your contribution to each project.
If you are looking for work from potential clients they, on the other hand, will be more focussed on whether you have experience in the type of work they need to produce, and whether your design style is to their taste.
Adapt where you can
Try to adapt your portfolio and presentation style to fit each audience. This means a bit more work each time but will make it more engaging for them. It will also lead to more success for you by demonstrating you understand their business.
Do some research
When you have a meeting set up to show your work, do some research. What sort of company are they? If they are a potential employer what kind of work do they produce? Are they really creative or more corporate? If they are a potential client what sort of design work have they had produced before? What kind of industry are they in and who are their customers? Luckily today most businesses have websites, so all this should be relatively easy.
Choosing projects
Limit the number
If you can, try and keep it to about 6-10 good size projects. People don’t want to go through everything you have done and will probably make up their minds about you during the first 3 you show. Obviously if you don’t have much to show for any of them (e.g an individual logo) you could consider showing more projects.
Select your best
I can’t stress this one enough and you will hear the same thing from other people in the industry: Only select your best work and work you want to talk about. If you don’t love it or can’t talk about it endlessly, over and over, it will show and they won’t be interested. I know myself it’s tempting to fill out your portfolio with work that isn’t your best but shows other skills or types of client. But it won’t be long before you struggle to talk about them engagingly, and you will come across as not enjoying your work.
What order to show them in?
The first and last projects in your portfolio will stick in people’s minds the most. So, you should select carefully which projects to put in these positions. In addition, the last project can be the best place for a project you really like talking about or has samples that people can look at. This is because it can often end up staying open on the desk while you continue the meeting.
The projects you show in the middle of your portfolio should then be ordered in a way that demonstrates variety in skills and style. Keep them interested by mixing things up and being dramatic. If there are samples to pass around for one project, consider following it with a project that doesn’t. Don’t, for example, put all your logo or brochure projects back to back if you can help it.
Show creativity
One of the things potential employers will often look for is how you got to the finished design. They may be interested in sketch books, loosely bound sheets of ideas, mood boards or unused concepts. Put a few of them in your portfolio but not for every project. They are there to demonstrate your ability to think and and sketch before you jumped on a Mac to create the work.
You should also aim to include at least one or two mockups or printed samples. This will stop your portfolio from looking like just a collection of flat printouts of your work, and therefore a more memorable experience.
Put in what you want to get out
What does this mean? Well one important thing to remember is that you should only put types of work in your portfolio that you want to get more of. If you’ve done a lot of one type of work but you’re now really tired of it, don’t put it in your portfolio even if you think it’s good work. Chances are, you will only get more of it.
Presentation is key
The standard of presentation in your portfolio must be the highest you can achieve. Employers and clients alike will be judging how much attention you pay to these details as well as the actual work. But don’t dress it up – the quality of your work and your presentation is much more important than a fancy or tricksy portfolio.
Explaining the Work
OK, so we have covered putting your portfolio together, but you also need to learn how to talk about it.
It’s not easy
The art of talking about your work is not something that comes naturally to designers – I know I didn’t find it easy in the beginning. But it’s a good skill to learn, and learn as early as you can. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes and look upon each meeting as an opportunity to develop this skill. Not only will this make it easier to talk about your portfolio, it will also make you better at presenting concepts and design work, both to your colleagues and to clients.
The simple rule here is engagement. Your aim should be to arouse interest in your work, not give a speech or lecture. Remember, showing your portfolio to people is also about them, not just you.
When you come to each project, talk about it briefly to introduce it but don’t talk at length. See how they react, let them ask questions or let them simply look. If they are looking at you rather than the work, talk some more about the project – tell them what interested you about it. Look for signs that it’s time to move on to the next project.
To help you get used to talking about your work, try it on other people whenever you get a chance. If they are non-designers it will help even more, as you will practice not using designer lingo to describe each project.
Show your value
Employers want to see how you could be useful in their organisation, and when showing your portfolio they will often ask what your involvement was on a project. Whatever you are tempted to say, I advise this: Be honest, give yourself credit, but be clear about your skills.
A potential client will be wanting to find out if you have the skills they currently need. Focus less on talking up the design aesthetics of your work, and more on explaining the value of your services to the client of each project. Were they pleased with the work? Did they achieve their business goals?
Know yourself
You should take some time to understand your strengths and weaknesses (and yes, we all have weaknesses) before showing your work. If you can’t see them yourself ask another designer for an honest opinion (and be prepared for the answers!). You may not get asked about these specifically in a meeting, but you should be prepared to discuss them anyway.
The reason I mention this is that showing you understand your limits and where you are most effective is far better than trying to prove you are simply amazing. Employers and clients are interested in how they can use you best – they know no-one is good at everything and are not looking for that.
If you are particularly strong in one area though, make sure every piece of work in your portfolio shows that without you even having to say it. They will remember you better that way.
Summary
Hopefully this article will give you a good starting guide to your portfolio. Remember, it is a skill to be learned during your career rather than mastered beforehand – every time you show your work it will give you extra experience and feedback that helps you improve.
If you are interested in reading further, here is a collection of a few articles which you may also find useful:
- How to get your first graphic design job
- 15 graphic design interview tips
- Innovative one page resume and portfolio
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By Mark Bowley
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this is perfect. thanks a bunch.
great article… FIRST :P
try again next :(
Nice article :)
nice read….
Very Nice, Thank you so much Mark!
This was very helpful…thanks a lot.
good advices
Well nice explanation, but 1 stange thing. I am learning for webdesigner on school atm and they tell me always to not but all by best work in your portfolio.
because then your employe will always want you to design as good as the projects you have showed him in your portfolio, and we will not always be like that (bad days/no inspiration all that kind of things)
Trust me, you need not worry about that. Just land the job first. Thats the key!!!
I find that a strange thing to be told – how can you expect to get work if you don’t show what you’re capable of?
Employers will always push you to produce your best work for them, but they know not every project can be a portfolio piece.
Sorryn, kid. But your design school is garbage if they’re telling you to leave out your best.
Always your best pieces of work first and one great piece at the end. Why? Because if the interview is cut short they’ll only see your average work and all your great pieces of work will be useless.
Crazy that someone has advised you to not put your best work in. I guarantee you that the candidate that puts their greatest work in their portfolio would get the job over the person would thinks “I’d best not, in case they think I’m creative all the time.” It’s such a competitive industry!
First get the job, later worry about meeting the quality standard… all designers have creative blockout, you willl need to learn how to deal with it.
Forget advises from mediocrity and laziness.
It is easier to create great work for better jobs than rubbish ones so the better the job you can get in the first place, the better your work will become.
Never sell yourself short and never apply for jobs you know you are fully/over qualified for else you will get bored and will not progress beyond your current level.
mitchell…this is the one time i would ignore your teacher’s advice.. hes telling you not to show your true potential.. isnt that counter intuitive?
thanks!
Very good points to take note.
Cheers need to get a good portoflio up and running.
Something I have been meaning to do.
So well written. This is very poignant and current. I pretty much agree with everything here. One thing I’ll add is that if you’re on an interview and the person begins by asking you to talk about yourself DON’T tell them about where you grew up and how many siblings you have. DO use the opportunity to give a concise overview of your best assets. Say something like…”I graduated in 2005 with a BFA in Graphic Design. I was on the President’s List and maintained a 4.0 gpa. In my senior year I landed an internship at BBDO etc.”
Also, as the post says, don’t put any projects in your portfolio that you don’t want to work on in the future.
Great additional comments – I just figure “so what, who cares, what’s in it for me?” is what everyone is asking themselves (especially when someone is interviewing you).
Thanks Jonathan. I agree with your comments.
Merci pour les conseils
This is a very helpful article, but choose pieces of work that you are enthusiastic about and can talk someone through the piece and your choices, i found this really helped when in an interview process, it focuses the attention on your work rather than yourself.
But isn’t focusing on yourself and your capabilities just as important? Hmm.
Great post! Like the incorporation of the need to be able to talk about your portfolio and the projects inside of it. Let them ask questions about the project, that can help you decide what aspects of the project to discuss, what’s salient to the employer you’re talking to and also what is not.
Cheers!
Great Article. I am moving within the next few weeks and this advice has been a great help for me to re-evaluate my portfolio choices and wording.
Thanks again.
Good article Mark, you know what would be great?
Pick a young talented designer, take a look to his portfolio and write a case studio on how to improve his portfolio.
Im sure here will be lot of volunteers, me included (though Im not so young :P)
Cheers.
Sergio
I am continually amazed by the great tutorials and articles on the site. These are absolutely top-notch tips. Thanks for the article!
great . i have never think about i have A potential employer and A potential client ….i just wait ..wait .wait….oh my god..
brilliant article…very informative and precise…just what i needed..thanx
two of the links at the end of this article however have bad links, these are
1. How to get your first graphic design job
2. Innovative one page resume and portfolio
hope that you can sort out the broken link, so that i can take full advantage of this article….
thankyou once again
Um.
This article is tripe.
Who is going to look at it? Its a freaking portfolio, who do you think will look at it!?
Select your best work? Well who would have thought that selling yourself was the idea of a portfolio?
Explain your work? This is actually the biggie that all the “designers” on the interwebs would struggle with due to lack of formal training. However if you are a designer and not a hack then this is should be fine.
Basically really horrible article aimed at 14 year olds who have no idea what they are doing.
Hope you did not get paid for that.
Josh, while these things may seem obvious to you, there are many people grateful and in need of this kind of guidance. This includes people who have had formal training and even some of those with industry experience.
I’m sure some colleges teach this kind of thing better than others, and yes good design instincts will help, but in my opinion there’s not enough of this kind of guidance around for designers.
Thanks for this article, it’s awesome! I’m in the process of changing jobs, and it’s good to be reminded now and then what is most important about portfolios…
Josh, I understand if you must feel that this is unnecessary, but what you might think as a stupid article, many more would feel that it’s handy, especially those who’s only starting out now! And not everyone gets these tips while studying (I had to teach myself most of the stuff that I know now)
“Also, as the post says, don’t put any projects in your portfolio that you don’t want to work on in the future.”
Great advice.
this very good article, thank you very much.
great article, something I definitely need to practice!
I like your tip of connecting the design to how they achieved business goals. it’s important to speak in the same language as the potential client, not designer’s lingo. what questions can you ask to find what a potential client values?
What a helpful post really will be coming back to this time and time again. Thanks!
Lot’s of interesting content on your blog. Happy I found you!
great!
i’m about to make my first portfolio and i’m gonna talk about it in front of some business men. this gives me very helpful ideas of what i should do.
thanks :)
Josh,
You are fired! Antisocial behaviour.
And you drink too much coffee. *gigles*
This is really cool, fun and easy to use. Hope next tutorial will be fun & easy for us.
Thanks.. perfect
As I’ve recently starting doing graphic design I want to put together a proper portfolio to show my work so this is really helpful, thank you
Very well written and helpful for beginners like me.
1st work is very hard to get. Still trying and haven’t got one and without anything in portfolio no one even consider considering you.
Hope these tips will help me get something.
This is completely awesome, it helps everyone to do their best…
- This article it’s very nice and some tips i had not observed before, must help me a lot. About talk of my work it’s a very big problem, but just practicing i’ll take the right way. So thanks man, you are doing a great job.