Regardless of your discipline, creating a dedicated website is one of the best ways to share your work with the world. Here, we round up all the steps to make a portfolio website that’ll most effectively show off you and your creative work – from curating your projects and designing how it looks, to maintaining it all for the long haul.
A portfolio website is a curated, online space that showcases your best work. It’s one of the most practical and memorable ways to share your work with press, potential collaborators or employers.
Much like your PDF portfolio, a portfolio website can be used when applying for jobs or internships. The idea is that in just one, centralised space, you can quickly communicate who you are, what you do and how people can contact you.
Portfolio websites come in all shapes and sizes, and can vary depending on your discipline. Ultimately, whether you’re a designer, photographer, writer or digital artist, the best portfolio websites are a true reflection of your projects, passions and personality. Why is it useful to have one?
Today, there are loads of ways to showcase your work online, be it through an Instagram account, Tumblr page or Behance profile. And depending on your discipline or practice, showcasing your work on a particular platform (or combination of platforms) might make the most sense for you.
There are a few reasons, however, why it’s worth having a website, too:
Having a portfolio website gives you the opportunity to control and curate the way you want to be seen online, in one dedicated space.
Whereas other online platforms might limit you to certain dimensions or formats, having your own online space gives you the flexibility and freedom to choose everything from the layout and the size of images to the typefaces you use.
Without one, clear destination for your work, potential employers might have to click around on various platforms. Your portfolio website, however, can help people find you faster online by including the right search terms and tags (more on that later).
This way, your website will usually be the first thing to appear in search results when people look you up. Plus, this can minimise confusion if, for example, you have a common name
While there are no set rules, generally speaking, a portfolio website is made up of the following:
Also known as a landing page, this is the first thing a visitor sees when they come to your website
This is where you include personal and contact information, for example:
These help you communicate the story of each project. Project pages typically include anything from images, GIFs or videos, alongside a brief caption describing the contents, contributors and credits.
Many creatives choose to group their project pages into clickable categories. For example, photographers might consider sorting projects by format, like ‘Portraits’, ‘Events’ and ‘Personal’; or if you’re a multidisciplinary creative you could organise these more broadly by medium, such as ‘Graphic Design’, ‘Digital’ and ‘Illustration’