Why a Good Web Design Portfolio is Must for Web Designers?

A web design portfolio is one of the most important keys to landing new clients. In the web design profession, ability outweighs education. This is not to undermine education but to stress the point that actions carry much more weight than book learning. A web design portfolio is somewhat of a history book on the designer as well because it should display the best works over the person’s entire professional span. How important is a web design portfolio? Well, you can be certain that any possible client will want to see yours. What are some tips for building an effective portfolio? Let’s look at a few of them.

The best way to display your talent is with a portfolio website. It will display the best projects you worked on and delivered. Be certain to adhere to all of the accepted practices in website design because your portfolio site is also on display. Web design is a profession where usually no two projects are alike and every additional one comes with new challenges. Try to categorize your website to focus on functionality/business purpose groups and it will help to show that you can take on any new challenge.

Explain the context of each project in your portfolio. Although pictures say much more than words, you shouldn’t avoid using them. A picture cannot explain the challenges you as a designer faced while working on a particular project. For example, sometimes a client will insist on some feature that you know is not a good practice. In spite of all attempts to convince the client to not use this feature, you are overruled (after all, it’s the customer’s decision). Let’s say that it is an animated gif that the client insists on but otherwise the design is top-notch. In your portfolio, it just takes a few words to explain that the client wanted this animated gif graphic. Maybe the client’s logo was created by another design company and could be better but the client insists on using it. It only takes a few tactful words to identify that the logo was a client creation.

Minimize the exotic functionality so that the viewer can focus on the work. In other words, there is no requirement that you have to use Flash, Java, or Ajax in order to impress. A business visiting your portfolio website and considering your web design services is searching for someone to solve its business problem. The exotic web design features distract from the real message of your portfolio. Then there is the other extreme where a potential client wants some of your exotic features but has no idea of the extra labor and cost that would be involved. In the latter case, you might drive them away when you quote them the cost to add these exotic features.

Free or low paying work is a great way to build your web design portfolio with realistic projects. It’s always tough for any beginner in the design industry because of a lack of experience. Of course you may have done design projects in school but these rarely count as realistic examples. Companies are reluctant to hire inexperienced web designers so one of your best responses to this is to volunteer your design services or take on a low-paying project. However, you still want to provide a high level of quality because this project will end up in your portfolio. Another way to fill your portfolio with quality design work is to create designs and logos for a fictitious company and tell your audience that these are your original creations.

Man and Van Richmond says:

April 6, 2010 at 3:38 pm

Portfolio is very important in designer because this will the one that will show how good he is in web designing.

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