A graphic design portfolio is a professional, well-designed presentation of people’s work to the world. When a portfolio is made well, it is not just about showcasing your projects but a lot. It also creates an experience for the people, whether a new client, employer or design peer, that easily communicates your visual language, goal and point of view. A sound portfolio serves as an extension of the work and creativity identity of the person, allowing people to shape the story they want to convey from beginning to end.
A graphic design portfolio is an essential element a customer needs to see when selecting a graphic designer. That means a portfolio is essential for proving a person’s skills as a designer. Additionally, a graphic design portfolio, much like a resume, offers essential contact details. Today, you can see most portfolio designs are graphic designer websites. That means they’re not only a way to communicate with your customers. But they also help graphic designers create communities and share their work with the targeted audience worldwide.
Moreover, a graphic design portfolio is the visual representation of all you have achieved so far and also shows what you hope to accomplish in future. Today, the world is full of competition, so you have to stand out. To push your graphic portfolio to stand out among others to the front, it is beneficial to know what to add and what to not. For the inspiration and ideas for creating your excellent graphic design portfolio, here we have listed some of the graphic design portfolio examples which might be helpful for you:
Emily Zhao is a renowned Shanghai-based visual designer who mainly concentrates on branding and visual identity. Emily’s portfolio showcases outstanding work, spanning books, web design, and posters. And her site speaks simplicity and elegance through a muted color palette and an elegant pairing of typography. Zhao built the site as a part of the Wix Playground Academy.
Tiffany Cruz is a New York-based designer concentrating on illustrations, motion and branding. Her task involved animated stickers, social media ads, and graphics. Tiffany, a self-described “paranormal fanatic,” has a number of interactive fortune-telling cards in her portfolio, each of which can be turned over to reveal a new project.
Mazali is a famous freelance graphic designer in Spain who focuses on logo design, branding, and icon design. The hero section of her portfolio catches everybody’s attention right away with an animated reel of important, appealing projects. The fonts and images of Hermes portfolio reveal themselves through a mix of animated effects. Moreover, Hermes graphic design portfolio black and white and white high contrast theme and well-managed time animations appear in a more delightful and engaging browning experience.
Studio Linear is also a female-owned famous boutique creative agency based in Maine, US. They work with an impressive roster of customers in the lifestyle, food and averages, and music industries. Linera’s notable customers for the summer cruise festival were Lizzy Kain, NOISE, and DJ Khalid. In with the work, Studio graphic design agency portfolio site is an artistic and expressive spirit with attractive imagery, bold typography, and a sense of motion created as people scroll through the site.
It is home to Valentina Brasilia, an Italian editorial and graphic designer based in Barcelona, Spain. She has listed her portfolio of every project in a vertical orientation, like books placed on a bookshelf, and in horizontal orientation on mobile.
The bottom part of the Odds graphic homepages uses a two-column grid and stick scroll, keeping only one-half of the screen scrollable, and the rest stays in their place. There is also a custom cursor made available that gives a unique touch.
Yilmaz Zavala is a popular female art director, brand designer, and florist stylist based in New York. Zaval’s portfolio conveys an experimental and playful personality with bright colors and appealing imagery. Here the graphic design portfolio is placed in a magazine-like fashion, with unique layouts and editorial-style photos conveying visual stories about lifestyle, fashion, and music.
Xinran Peng is a New York based type and graphic designer. Peng’s graphic design portfolio is divided into type types, i.e. one for commercial work and another for her projects and experimental results. Her graphic design portfolio’s homepage characterizes a full-screen scroll and an anchor menu for quick navigation through the different projects.
Ben Eli is a graphic designer based in London who is fully engaged with the youth culture organization Livity. Ben offers entertaining ways to unite groups by taking inspiration from popular and LGBTQ+ culture, language, and the internet.
Ben’s portfolio offers a youthful, hip atmosphere thanks to elements like a gradient background, a few emojis, and a personalized pink Care Bear cursor. The images are displayed on the project pages using a full-screen scroll, and an expanding footer provides more information about the work.
Shane Griffin runs Grif Studio, a digital artist and director based in New York. Griffin’s studio concentrates on animation and design for movies, music videos, and high-profile campaigns. Moreover, Its customers, from music artists are Wiz Khalifa to popular brands like Apple, Givenchy, and Nike.
The Grif Studio has a simple, straightforward, and yet appealing layout, with each project’s page adapting to the work that is shown. Like a gallery-like feel for an art installation project. The portfolio characterizes captivating high-resolution imagery, animated videos, and visuals.
Dewen Yang is an art director at the Mother advertising company in New York. His work focuses on motion design and marketing, and he has worked with companies like Lego and other musicians. The portfolio is packed with movies and animated graphics, which creates a lively and fascinating website to explore.
Multidisciplinary designer Ana Bea Fernandes is located in London and Lisbon. She is a senior designer with the London-based architecture firm Freehaus. Her portfolio has colorful thumbnails arranged in creative forms, giving off a joyful and lighthearted vibe. The portfolio also features her projects, which range from hand-painted cards and tiles to community relations initiatives in Peru, in addition to her commercial work.
Andrada Haş is a self-made graphic design portfolio(designer) from Romania who concentrates on branding, art direction, illustration, and print design. Her portfolio has a split-screen design for both the homepage and project pages. Each project shows full-width images and illustrations, accompanied by written information about the design procedure.
Alina Rybacka is a freelance graphic portfolio designer and art director from Poland with an experience in architecture. Ryback describes her work as a mixture of visual creativity with engineering skills. Furthermore, it is conveyed in the clean grid of her award-winning portfolio, with visual importance offered by the two unique typography. Also, the solid shapes across each page of Alina’s portfolio are placed artfully.
A design company named Susy Digital specializes in dealing with start-up customers. They offer strategy, design, development, and content services. This graphic design portfolio keeps the person in their digital work by communicating a clear and professional tone.
Joasia Fidler-Wieruszewska is an art director, illustrator and graphic designer from Berlin, Germany. Her portfolio is a fascinating showcase of vibrant colors, full-width illustrations and appealing imagery. Likewise, This graphic design portfolio is engaging and attractive because of the use of animated images and different scrolling effects. This portfolio desktop version has a right and left-hand navigation that changes colors as your scroll and merges into a top navigation bar in the smartphone’s version.
Heather Shaw’s graphic design portfolio website consists of samples of website designs, hooks, branding, and many more. It is an excellent graphic design portfolio for the ones working in various media who wants to present a cohesive portfolio.
Heather Shaw’s portfolio is super clean and quick to navigate. It demonstrates a wide variety of skills and approaches to solve your customer’s problems, but it is only visually consistent. Heather also uses fonts effectively to convey each project and encourage further involvement in the projects and works.
Gleb’s graphic design portfolio mixes product design, graphic design and user experience to create something visually appealing and entirely new. This Kuznetsov portfolio has more than 50 eye-catching images. But these images are split into seven easy for people to understand projects.
For the designer, who wants to showcase long-term or complex projects, it’s the best graphic design portfolio example for those designers.
Animation, clean design and bright graphics make this an appealing and popular audience graphic design portfolio. This portfolio is great for designers who lean into the art of design. It also works well for designers who take on site-specific and experimental projects for themselves.
Its aesthetic design is unique, and the image-focused site quickly communicates the style.
Some of Mohamed’s specialties are print design, posters, branding, and typography. Moreover, the graphic design portfolio concentrates on a small selection of successful designs. This Behance portfolio of graphic design work. This makes it a fantastic option for graphic artists who desire an internet presence without creating their own website.
It demonstrates a constant vision and passion for visual communication at the same time. Additionally, the printed design work is nicely photographed. Although the designer might have substituted a digital file, the images better convey the finished, polished design.
Ryu Creative is a popular boutique-style marketing agency from Los Angeles. The female-owned company has successfully assisted various companies and Social branding, Creative design, and PR.
Although RyuCreative’s approach to their portfolio site is different, potential clients won’t be turned off by it because it is well-organized. The homepage’s randomly dispersed photos, which draw visitors with their originality, are the first thing visitors will notice. The next step for anyone would be to browse or click on one of the navigating items, both of which would give more information about what RyuCreative does.
Tips for building a graphic design portfolio effectively
These above-mentioned graphic design portfolios might have inspired you and given you some ideas for your next portfolio design. Below are the tips about building a graphic design portfolio effectively on your own.
Highlight your best work
A strong graphic design portfolio demonstrates your best and most praised work. This should be the project you’re confident with, that features work with notable customers and has offered sound results. Your graphic design portfolio should also represent the kind of work you can create for your customers.
Leave out anything you’re not proud of instead of including everything you’ve ever created. Include incredible pictures that portray your work in the greatest possible way as well. A decent rule of thumb includes 10 to 20 items demonstrating your abilities and unique design philosophy.
Explain your work in typography, but don’t make it lengthy
Without knowing the context of a design, it can be challenging to understand it. Customers might benefit from a short and sweet written introduction or an explanation of particular steps in your design process.
The objectives of your project, the portion of it that you worked on, any tools you used, and anyone with whom you interacted is some background information you can include. Making sure that these explanations are brief will ensure that the focus is mostly on your designs.
Build case studies
Consider expanding upon a few projects as case studies. Case studies offer depth look at how an individual took a design portfolio from beginning to end. People can also include any work in progress in their graphic design portfolio, like sketches or other designs you are considering.
You can also describe in detail how you arrived at particular design decisions, what challenges you faced, and how you overcame them. Finally, you might include testimonials from users or managers that detail their experience working with you on that project. Three to five case studies are usually a reasonable quantity to use.
Include your contact information and resume
It is common for graphic design portfolios to consist of the designer’s resume, whether mentioned on-site or presented as a PDF download. For companies, it can also be a list of customers they’ve worked with in the past. Here you can attract relevant work experiences, exhibits, awards, or membership in industry associations.
If a potential user or customer likes your work, they might want to contact you, so there must be precise info details. This can be an email address, social media profile or a simple contact form on your graphic design portfolio site.
Ensure that your individuality is visible
Potential customers and users want to watch your work and get a sense of who you are.
Let your personality come through on your graphic design portfolio website, whether it’s in how your portfolio is presented or the language you choose to introduce yourself and your work. Some developers will include passion projects or personal projects that offer to tell a story about who they are in their portfolios.
Conclusion
A graphic design portfolio serves as a visual representation of all your past successes as well as your future goals. Since there is a lot of competition, you must stand out. Knowing what to add and what to leave will help your portfolio stand out.
You can also take inspiration from illustAC, as it has explained how you can get your portfolio to shine in today’s world of competitions. Also, it offers high-quality clipart and illustrations for cost-free and premium images for you all. Reading these above-mentioned things, you will surely find a way to make your graphic design portfolio more outstanding.
illustAC has given various ideas on these topics about finding the right source of inspiration for your next projects. You can also download the illustrations and vectors from illustAC by being a premium member of the illsutAC, and you will enjoy various facilities.
The numerous facilities to enjoy being a premium user of the illustAC are unlimited downloads of illustrations, and cliparts, shouldn’t wait for downloads, can zip various images, no attribution is required, and so on.
Over seven million people have chosen illustAC for its excellent service in offering high-quality images. Also, we hope reading this article was a lot more helpful for you to create a more effective graphic design portfolio. We have also listed some of the cliparts, illustrations offered by illustAC if you want are curious.
