What’s the best way to contact you - and can your potential new art director or boss find it? Show your work as projects.”Īn online portfolio is essential for attracting potential clients and launching a design career. Avoid putting one poster here and two logos there. The ‘wow’ factor in your online portfolio is created through layers in your work that tell a story. “If your portfolio looks and feels bare, that’s because it is,” he explains. For best results, definitely do not include more than 15 projects or case studies. “It’s far stronger to have five quality projects showing five design pieces within it, than 20 average projects with 10+ design pieces within them,” says Ram. 5 Graphic Design Portfolio Mistakes to Avoid: 1. You can use this top-five list to audit your existing online portfolio or to guide you as you develop a new portfolio of your best design work. To help you prove that you exist – and do it well – Ram assembled a compilation of common graphic design portfolio mistakes that lots of rookie designers make - and how you can avoid them.

Ram explains that your online portfolio should be, “a refined and considered selection of your best work, customized to speak to the area of design you are applying for.” In essence, your portfolio site is “proof that you exist as a designer.”

There are common mistakes he’s witnessed across most of them. Ram has seen hundreds of designer portfolios that range in work from logo design to interactive design. Ram Castillo literally wrote the book on getting a job as a designer, and in his CreativeLive class, Create a Knockout Design Portfolio he talks about how essential online portfolios are, and, perhaps most importantly, details exactly what you need to do to assemble a good one. But as a graphic designer how do you know what a “good” portfolio even is? A sub-par presentation of your work closes them (even if you have stunning graphic design work to show off) - and may lock them for good. As a visual artist or graphic designer, your graphic design portfolio opens doors.

Self taught graphic designer portfolio