Portfolio

Creating Your Portfolio

Portfolios are a visible catalogue of your design work. They help you with networking, visibility and business building—and they are required for internships and jobs! Industry expects that you will have your portfolio stored on a personal website. Storing your portfolio on a personal website:

  • Helps recruiters find you much more easily and boosts your chances of landing a job.

  • Showcases a variety of skills in an organized way.

  • Allows your audience to select which projects they are interested in learning about.

  • Is a great way to catalog your work, in the event your hard drive dies

Please note: Graphic design portfolios often contain interaction design projects and vice versa, so there are many similarities between the two portfolios. The main difference is the "project check list" that identifies which parts of the design process the employers most commonly like to see in your portfolio. Additionally, graphic design portfolios often look for a variety of categories including, branding, video editing and social media skills these days. IxD portfolios tend to focus more on mobile, web and product design projects.



Pro tips on how to create your IxD portfolio, presented by career advisor Ann Marie Leahy.
DOWNLOAD (PDF) the presentation

Pro Tip: Apply in October and November for summer internships.

3 Reasons To Create A Portfolio Now

  1. Required: Jobs, internships and transfer schools will require samples of your work— also know as a portfolio.


  1. Networking: Portfolios are a visible catalogue of your design work. They help you with networking, visibility and business building.


  1. Documentation: Having a personal website is a great way to catalog your work.

PRO TIPS:

  • Portfolios Take Time: Portfolios and websites demand a great deal of time and energy to create. It is important to think about your portfolio from the very beginning of your educational experience, so you are not scrambling for content at the last minute.

  • Plan Ahead: Knowing that potential employers will see your work may help you think about classroom assignments differently.

10 Portfolio Mistakes To Avoid

  1. Too Much Work: It’s far stronger to have 5 quality projects than 20 projects.


  1. Not Enough Work: If you only have two projects, it is not really enough to get a sense of your skills or interests.


  1. No Clear Hierarchy: aka scannability: Employers have limited time and want to do a quick scan of your work. Make sure they can scan through the highlights of the projects quickly and easily. Keep your project descriptions brief and to the point.


  1. No Clean Design: Avoid having typos and widows. Bad grammar and poor layout distract from project content.


  1. Text As Images: Employers can tell when you just upload a PDF of your work in your site. It is best to take the time to layout the content within the webpage.


  1. Contact details Are Hard To Find: What’s the best way to contact you — and can your potential new art director or boss find it?


  1. It’s Not Mobile Responsive: Enough said.


  1. Password Protection: This is a huge turn off to have password protection on your projects. Only password protect your projects if legally necessary.


  1. Poor Font Choice: Don’t choose fonts that are too busy or too small and difficult to read.


  1. Over Designed: Make sure that the design of the website does not overpower the design of the work you are going to showcase.


Pick a [project / collection / design] that speaks to the customer you want to work for/attract.

Show them that you understand their market, customer and aesthetic, and visually show them that you are the right designer for the job.

Choosing A Website Domain Name

A domain name is what people type into their browser to find you on the internet. Best practice is to use your first and last name. Your name is your brand, and that is what you are selling, you want to have name recognition. Using registered or unregistered business names can be confusing to recruiters. Save your business name for the day you actually open a business with multiple employees.

How to Register Your Domain Name

Some hosting sites provide these OR you can purchase a domain name at sites like:


Choosing A Hosting Service

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. You can find a list of common web hosting services on the following page.


Cargo (https://2.cargocollective.com)

IxD Bachelor students are given a code to access Cargo in Studio 1 and in the Portfolio class if they wish to use this site.


Square Space (https://www.squarespace.com)

$16/month 50% off 1 year with student email.


Adobe Portfolio (https://www.myportfolio.com)

Free with creative cloud or $9.99./month (integrates with Behance)


Wordpress (www.wordpress.com)

Premium Plan is $8/month with a free domain name for one year.


Uxfol (https://uxfol.io)

Premium Plan is $9/month.


Format (https://www.format.com)

Plans start at $15/month


Webflow (https://webflow.com)

Sign up with your student email, and you will get 90% off an annual CMS site plan.


CLICK TO VIEW IxD ALUM PORTFOLIO EXAMPLES

Example 1 || Example 2 || Example 3

IxD Portfolio Checklist

  • Summary: A brief summary of the project/problem you were asked to solve

  • Time Frame: Did you work on this for a day, a week, a semester?

  • Process + Tools: The process and tools you used to solve that problem.

  • Inspiration: If possible, share our inspiration/mood board.

  • Material/font/color choices: What did you choose these and why?

  • Consumer profile: Was this designed for men or women, children or adults etc.

  • Problems/Solutions: mistakes are great when you can share what you learned from them

  • Sketches: Show your sketches of how you arrived at your design ideas.

  • Final Work: Of course you want to show off your finished design. You may also choose to show some iterations but be sure to state which the final version is and why.