When asking yourself why bothering to build a portfolio is so important, think of Sir Ridley Scott.
Although known today as an established movie director, Scott—in his early days—still had to carry a portfolio and try to convince someone to look at it. His big break came when he rushed into an elevator and showed an influential company superior his portfolio.
Decades later, Sir Ridley Scott has directed over 30 movies and developed a good understanding of how a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And he still has a professional online portfolio.
Although you don’t need to be an expert graphic designer or a creative with several Hollywood blockbusters on your résumé, you do need to know how to sell yourself. To secure a good place in the job market or to plan your future, it’s best to think of your portfolio as a creative tool that tells a story.
Even if your portfolio is only one page on a site, it must showcase your best projects to attract attention and give a good impression to safeguard your future. To tell your story effectively, you’ll need to decide if you want a portfolio website, a digital business card, or a simple QR code.
If you want all 3, then you’ve picked the perfect blog to read. So, allow us to let you in on the secret of how to build a portfolio.
- Why Build a Portfolio
- The Creative Process
- Start Simple
- How to Make a Portfolio
- Build a Portfolio
- Building a Portfolio That Makes a Great 1st Impression
- Creating an Online Portfolio That Stands Out
- How Can a Portfolio Website Employ SEO
- A Digital Portfolio in a QR code?
- Do You Actually Need a Physical Portfolio?
- Keeping Your Portfolio Relevant
Blog Highlights
- How to make a portfolio: We don’t want to bombard you with jargon. For that reason, LogoMaker provides plain English instructions on how to make a portfolio that matches your career path. We also explain how you can carry your portfolio on a business card or even a pen.
- How can a portfolio website employ SEO: Whether you’re new to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or a seasoned veteran, we supply a fail-safe route to incorporating SEO into your portfolio. The result will give your future a boost.
Why Build a Portfolio
If you’ve ever walked into a company’s office on the off chance that you could meet someone who can help your career, you’ll know it’s rather like trying to breach the wall of a castle.
If you’ve been turned away by a secretary or overzealous security guard, you will understand the temptation to avoid face-to-face rejection by submitting an online portfolio. It’s a strategy that appears to offer less risk.
However, if you think using an online portfolio is easier, you may need to think again. Using an online portfolio can be just as challenging as in real-life. Whether you’re trying to showcase the results of a photo shoot or your experience in financial markets, you won’t be alone.
A single online job vacancy on LinkedIn can often garner 1,200 applicants. The job market has always been tough, so why should one of your first strategies be to create a portfolio?
The reason is that with a strong portfolio—and the correct strategies—you can still make a great first impression. To fulfil your goal, you will need to take some time to think out what you need a portfolio to be.
In order to get started, you need to consider:
- Who will be the audience for your portfolio: a professional corporation, companies you want to sell your software tools to, or project managers you will be working with?
- What do you want your portfolio to do for you?
- When will you need your portfolio: all the time or only on select occasions?
- Where will you use your portfolio: at a jobs fair, in a business meeting, or in the confines of an elevator?
- Why do you need a portfolio: to showcase your career history, your investment goals, or to display a collection of skills you have built up through academic work?
When you create a portfolio, you can also think about the themes you want to showcase in both the content and the images you will use. Take the time to plan out your ideas with a pad and pencil or an ideas board.
What Are Your Strategies?
If you’ve determined the purpose and theme of your portfolio, the next thing to consider is the market you’ll be showing your portfolio to.
The portfolio you create will be tailor-made for a specific audience. If you’re looking to move jobs, then dependent on the industry, you’ll need to choose between a serious-looking portfolio or one that is more fun.
The Creative Process
The next step in creating your portfolio is to undertake visual research.
If you’ve decided you want your portfolio to have a professional look and tone, then research who is well-known in your particular field. If they have a portfolio website, take a look at the fonts and colors that have been used.
Also, trust your instincts. Do you feel other professional profiles appeal correctly to the market they are targeting?
In putting together your portfolio, ask yourself:
- Have you given a proper description of what your role or job title is?
- Does it display only your best work: Be sure to remove any examples that don’t show you in the best possible light. Also, don’t mention work you don’t want to do, only that which you are good at and that you thoroughly enjoy doing.
- Is the portfolio showing a wide variety of projects and illustrating that you are not just a one-trick pony?
- Does the structure of your portfolio tell a story and show that you have planned it carefully with a strategy in mind?
Start Simple
Once you have in mind what you want your portfolio to represent, consider a design. We suggest going for consistency in the design of your portfolio. By that, we mean choosing a small selection of colors and fonts to give life to your content. Too many colors and fonts may result in your portfolio having a garish composition.
Why not take some time to research colors and typefaces? Plus, think less is more. If you don’t have previous design experience, then take the time to enjoy the overall process.
Not rushing to create your portfolio will allow you to discover what you feel works and doesn’t work for you. We’d suggest that you begin by creating a contents page for your portfolio to keep your content—and thoughts—in order.
How to Make a Portfolio
With free online graphic design, you can put a portfolio together in just a few clicks. Many free content creation websites offer templates that help you to make a portfolio step by step. One popular online graphic design platform is:
- Canva: This free software is intuitive and comes with templates and tools to produce a portfolio quickly. The downsides of Canva include its limited market appeal. Many of the example images are tailor-made to build cheerful and cute designs. If you are looking for a job or selling products and services to other businesses, you may find Canva’s portfolio offerings limited.
We might also suggest you try LogoMaker’s Website Builder platform, which is a DIY version, to make things quicker and simpler for you.
Build a Portfolio
Before choosing a piece of software to build a portfolio for you, take a moment to:
- Decide what format of portfolio matches your personality: You could choose a leaflet, a website, or a QR code.
- Think about how you can demonstrate your individuality and versatility: Building an online portfolio is a good demonstration of your skills, but consider how much time you want to invest in the process.
- Consider how easily accessible your portfolio will be: Do you want to store your portfolio as a PDF on Google Drive that you can share with a hyperlink, or would a business card adorned with a QR code be quicker and easier to pass on?
Building a Portfolio That Makes a Great 1st Impression
Earlier in our blog, we mentioned including only your best work in your portfolio. Now, we’d like to suggest front-loading your portfolio with the best of your best work.
Our reason for mentioning this is attention spans. With access to short content apps like TikTok, your audience will have gotten used to having a message delivered to them in the shortest possible time.
With the above in mind, be sure that right at the front of your portfolio, you have the following:
- Captivating images
- Strong storytelling
- A structure that makes sense
- Contact hyperlinks right on the 1st page
Quality Not Quantity
A portfolio is a fantastic way to demonstrate your best work. But please remember: Attention spans are shorter, and time may not be a luxury for the person reviewing your portfolio.
Always be quick in explaining your:
- Achievements and awards
- Experiences
- Qualifications
- Skills
Try to inject an essence of your personality into your portfolio, but don’t inject lots of humor if it isn’t suitable for the audience it’s aimed at.
Creating an Online Portfolio That Stands Out
In order to help your online portfolio catch the eyes of your intended audience, we’ve come up with the following 5 tips:
- Trends can go out of fashion very quickly. For that reason, if you’re new to portfolio design—aim for timeless typefaces and colors that won’t go out of date instantly.
- Your portfolio is ultimately all about you. Please don’t construct a portfolio that creates a false impression of who you are and, more importantly, what you can’t deliver.
- Make it all about the work: Showcase your market value by displaying your best images and awesome projects you’ve been a part of.
- Think consistency: Please don’t forget what we mentioned about using a limited color palette. Think minimal rather than Jackson Pollock.
- If you’re looking to offer downloads, then use popular formats such as PDFs and JPGs. Avoid obscure file formats that will cause people trouble when they try to open them.
How Can a Portfolio Website Employ SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be of great benefit to a portfolio site if it’s used correctly. In essence, SEO helps a website be found more easily and much quicker on big search engines such as Google.
If you haven’t used SEO before, here are some quick links to beginner’s guides:
- How to Optimize Your Logo Design for SEO
- SEO for Beginners
- How to Optimize Your Website Content for SEO
If you’re keen to quickly integrate SEO, here are 5 hints that you can research and implement into your online portfolio:
- Constantly check your website’s speed and the time it takes to load up on a computer or smartphone. Slow loading times are a major factor for users leaving your site because they get bored waiting—think attention spans!
- Get into meta: A good meta title and meta description tell Google what your website does, and this helps Google to organize your content in its search rankings so that it reaches the right audience.
- Make sure your online portfolio has a good structure: Earlier, when we talked about a contents page for your portfolio, the same theory goes for online portfolios and websites in general. Organize a list of your content whose order makes sense, such as:
- 1st: Your Homepage
- 2nd: An About Us page
- 3rd: A Contents page
- 4th: Testimonials from your former clients
- 5th: A dedicated Contact page
A Digital Portfolio in a QR code?
An online portfolio can be shrunk down easily into a QR code. We don’t mean the whole website, merely a link that will connect visitors to your site.
The history of QR codes reaches back to 1994 but they are now making their presence felt due to their mobile-friendly design. With a quick photograph, a QR code can connect people to your portfolio site without them having to remember or even type out a long web address.
Want to make a QR code for yourself? Thought so. There are many QR code creators on the internet. Here’s one that you can try: QR Code Generator.
To be able to carry your digital portfolio in your pocket, we recommend having your QR code printed onto a business card.
LogoMaker can help you to design a professional business card in next to no time. As well as your QR code, you can also design a logo—for free—in a matter of minutes using our professional LogoMaker. The logo you come up with can also be printed on your business card to impress potential customers.
Do You Actually Need a Physical Portfolio?
If you’ve decided a portfolio is essential for you to show to potential clients, you’ll want a quality portfolio as an example that you have good attention to detail. However, printing and binding a portfolio can be prohibitively expensive. Also, the design process for a real-life portfolio is time-consuming.
We recommend you first seek to make an impression online. With a good website—that can have a separate portfolio page—you can show your brand to people all over the world. The global market that you apply to will always respect quality web pages that tell them who you are and how well you do it.
Time may still seem like a factor, but web design can be quick and productive with a good website builder. Beautiful templates—included with website builders—can help you create a portfolio that not only attracts clients but also gives an example of your strategic thinking.
What Is a Website Builder?
With an easy-to-use builder, you can create an alluring website from scratch or customize LogoMaker’s pre-designed templates.
A good portfolio page will display your creative streak and your knack for design features. This action will strengthen your personal brand. Plus, the use of a portfolio online can also be shown to clients more creatively with the use of merchandise.
As well as a QR code on a business card, you can also gift merchandise such as:
- Holiday greeting cards for businesses in your market
- Postcards with eye-catching images
- Quality notebooks for clients
All of the above items can contain QR codes that will take clients directly to your portfolio page. LogoMaker can also supply longer-lasting items such as coffee mugs, pens, and die-cut stickers that are cut to the exact shape of your design, such as your logo or a company symbol.
Keeping Your Portfolio Relevant
Your portfolio gives an up-to-date account of your work history and an example of what you can do. It should also be updated regularly to ensure it does not go out of date but continues to attract attention.
For example, as you add new and better work to your portfolio, be sure to remove older work that may now look out of date. Your portfolio should always appear both relevant and fresh.
Stay Current
Don’t forget to update your contact details if your email or phone number changes. If you update your website, consider having a dedicated contact number and email that are specifically just for your portfolio. Dual sim smartphones now give you the opportunity to have both a personal and business contact number.
Think Continuous Improvement
Upgrading your portfolio’s User Experience (UX) is an ongoing project within itself. Always be sure to review your portfolio and take into account what it may be lacking. Research other creative portfolios to see what new trends have developed and if they suit the impression you would like to give.
Be sure that you are happy with your portfolio and that it will leave a lasting impression on clients.
Hard Work Equals High Returns
The saying goes that it’s better to work smarter, not harder. However, in order to work smarter, you must first work harder to understand the process of putting together a creative project. When creating a portfolio with which to promote your brand, be professional and work towards a project that will satisfy you and your potential clients.
Conclusion
Whether your portfolio is on a site or on a business card, it’s a project that will evolve with your career. By avoiding the drive for perfectionism, you can get started using an account for an online tool such as LogoMaker that can also create quick and free logo designs for your business.
Why not get started today? Grab yourself another cappuccino, talk to us now, and get yourself a free account.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What does build a portfolio mean?
It means to compile your knowledge in an easy-to-understand structure. Think of your personal history and the career experience you have woven into it. Ask how you can blend both your personal life and your career history to entice employers and clients to take an interest in your portfolio.
What should a portfolio include?
Its contents should include examples of how you apply your knowledge to the projects you’ve faced in your career. If you have a limited career history, include examples of your college or university work. Choose examples of your work that match the type of job or opportunity you are looking for.
Is a financial portfolio different from a creative portfolio?
Yes, it’s very different. Our article is about constructing a portfolio to show prospective employers. A financial portfolio will contain elements such as individual stocks, foreign stocks, growth stocks, exchange-traded funds, asset allocation, and other assets, along with risk tolerance. A financial portfolio is an insight into your investment goals and not something you would show employers.
