Portfolio creation for a graphic designer
Building your portfolio is one of the most difficult yet important tricks. Then comes the art of showcasing your talent by displaying your portfolio online. Here are some great tips and tricks.
If you are a brand new graphic designer just out of graphic design school or still in college then you need to build up your portfolio and showcase them. A portfolio is the face of a freelance graphic designer to the client. Your client does not care about your qualifications on paper. Clients are only interested about what you can produce for them.
Find clients from amongst your contacts
As a fresh freelancer it is very difficult to get the first break as a designer. Nobody wants to hire a fresher just out of college. So instead of running around to various business houses and big names you could do a little brainstorming. Sit down with a pen and paper and make a list of people whom you know and who owns small or medium sized businesses. Then you have to approach them with some dummy work that you have prepared for them as a freelance consultant. Since they know you most probably they will give you some small work. One great way to publicize your work is to put your name, contact number and website address in the finished product that you deliver. For example if you are making a website for them then always remember to include a “Designed by : Your name, Your Company” tag at the footer. This gives your free publicity and a live portfolio item.
Start working for your own self
If you do not find relatives and friends then start by helping yourself. Build a great business card, a website or some great promotional material yourself. This will benefit you in two ways. Firstly it will help you to circulate your name by distributing those material and secondly people who receive those material will get the opportunity to judge your quality of work from your own promotional materials.
What to showcase in your portfolio
Your portfolio must and should always contain your own work. Never involve in any kind of plagiarism. Plagiarism do not go a long way in creating a goodwill for you. One day or the other you are bound to get discovered if you copy others’ work. So refrain from copying. Try to select very good quality and high resolution work from amongst your works. Even if you have created some artwork as a student be brave enough to showcase it if its of good quality and resolution. Be your own judge. Select your own bests and build up your profile!
Where to put up your portfolio
For putting up your portfolio there are two options. Firstly there are some sites that showcase your portfolio for free. You could try putting them up there. Secondly there is always an option to build your own website to showcase your portfolio. I would suggest you to do both. If your are building your portfolio on other website which is not owned by you, always remember to put a backlink to your own website. It serves two purposes. Firstly you can increase the search engine ranking by putting a backlink and secondly people who visit that site gets to see your detailed portfolio which you could be hosting on your own website. Well on your own website remember to have various sections for various categories of portfolio items. Don’t ever mix a logo section with a website section. The possible sections could be logo design, website design, banner design, flyer design, landing / sales page design, T shirt design, wordpress theme design, twitter icon design, avatar design etc.
Here are 10 FREE killer tips that will help you
- Display : How to display your work is as important as doing a good quality work. Packaging of a product means a lot so does the display of your work.
- Proper selection of samples : Don’t throw a thousand designs to your prospects. It will overwhelm them with choices. Rather select very few great design samples that you have made. Remember once again that quality speaks more than quality.
- Order : Your design works should be ordered in such a way as if its telling a story. Every design should add to the meaning of the other.
- Variety counts : Be sure to put diverse design works that you have created. This shows that you are versatile as a designer
- Project Description : Be sure to write short description about each work. How they were done and what tools were used to do them. What aspects were kept in mind while designing them. Be to the point and very professional in your description.
- Optimization : Remember to optimize your designs so that they take less time in loading. Its no point creating a extraordinary that take ages to load. So better keep the file sizes down. After doing each job spend some time on optimization.
- Coding best practices : If you are doing some coding work for your client remember to use structured code. Any HTML or CSS work has to be approved by the W3C website. It will go a long way in building your credibility as a graphic designer.
- Printing it : If you are offering your portfolio in print to some client then be sure to get a nice looking and professional folder. Its better if it’s a plastic folder that is spill resistant lest your client spills his coffee cup on it.
- Client specific : If you are offering your portfolio for getting a particular job then keep in mind what job it is meant for. Remember to highlight those design aspects in your portfolio which will increase your chances of landing into that job. If you are bidding for a website project highlight those works accordingly and so forth.
- Let your work speak for itself : The last point is self suggestive. You should not brag about your work anywhere. Let it speak for itself. Offer to show the designs in such sizes that’s most appealing and such that the finer details can be appreciated by the viewer.
