As designers we overthink our portfolios. We spend months together to craft a perfect portfolio only to know that perfect doesn't exist.
Over the years by teaching a number of designers, I have learnt a few lessons around showcasing credibility and giving the necessary visibility. Here are a few important ones:
Getting anchored to the core tenets of the portfolio, you will move much faster. Portfolio is to show your starting point, end point, process in between and hard decisions made. Basically it must tell a story of your journey from point a to point b. There is no right and wrong in this path. Don't be bogged down by pixels and perfections.
A decade ago I realised I have two types of portfolios: a learning portfolio (what I pay for) and a professional portfolio (what I am paid for).
The learning portfolio gives me grace of a student. The portfolio is filled with my goof ups and mistakes. I tend to show my learnings better via my mistakes than my success.
Professional portfolio is usually team effort and it showcases my specific expertise in my area. Not able to pinpoint exactly what I did and the impact it created will miss the specificity of my journey within the larger journey.
A good portfolio is a great visual aid for a narrative. So make it absolutely visual. It must show the artefacts. It helps the listener absorb more as our optic nerve is thicker than all other nerves.
Show the abundance of work and then pick the top 3 or 5 projects. Just showing 3 projects does not tell your story.
I carry a thumb drive and it has all my 250+ projects in one place organised by year, domain and clients. I allow the listener to pick the project they are excited about. If they struggle for a moment, I give them a choice to listen to my picks. Delivering a portfolio is also an experience. Make it stick.
This is where you get hit badly in a corporate setup where you work on one monolith for years together. Break it down into pieces and showcase different parts of the story and the complexities.
Respect your NDA (if you have one). Tell the story from your eyes and no visuals to support. I have almost 50+ projects in this genre and that makes my storytelling sparkle.
Last but not the least, have a good website that speaks for you in the rooms that you are not present. If I were to build my portfolio now, I would use Framer to do it all. Figma to Framer is seamless and it takes very little time/money to create a stunning site.
oh btw, my dear friends Madhuri Maram and Arjun are doing a weekend framer workshop to help you get skilled in just a weekend. They also have a Framer discovery available for free. If this excites you, put an end to your portfolio overthinking in just a weekend. Links in the comment section.
Your portfolio is a representation of your work. If you sucked with effort/work then naturally your portfolio will suck. If your work is in abundance, making a portfolio is a piece of cake.