The purpose of your web portfolio is to give prospective employers, clients and your peers a sense of who you are, what you’ve done as well as convey what you’re capable of doing. So what are the elements of a successful and creative student web portfolio?
1. Make your mission clear
Your website is essentially a place to showcase your work and skills. Your site’s landing page needs to say who you are and explain what you do. Keep this material concise. You should have an additional “About” page that provides more info like your educational background, profile, goals, interests and online resume. What you write on your site will help visitors get a sense of you as a person. Make sure you keep everything short, simple and to the point.
2. Keep it clean and clutter free
Strive to make your site a clutter-free and aesthetically uncomplicated experience for visitors, especially your home or landing page. I suggest using Grids to organize the content on your pages. A grid can create a basic structure, a skeleton for your design. They consist of “invisible” lines upon which your design elements can be placed. Doing so ties design elements together in an overall “system” and supports and aligns your composition—rationally. Also, stick with a family of 1 to 3 fonts and a family of colors and use them consistently through out the site.
3. Make sure it navigates well
Remember, pay attention to the user’s experience of your site. Keep it simple and don’t make visitors “work” to find material. I suggest using a clean, simple, easy to read navigation menu in the head. Optimize your site for phones and tables - Wix has a great tool for this. Also make sure your site works and looks good on all different search engines and across different browsers and to test your site on a variety of smartphones and tablets.
4. Categorize your work
Divide your work into categories like web, illustration, print, branding and personal work so users can easily find what they are looking for. If website visitors want to know more, allow them to click through to additional detail for each piece.
5. Design for your audience
In today’s digital world, a portfolio is arguably more important than a resume. No matter what industry you work in or whether you are a freelance journalist, mathematician, biologist or a recent college grad looking for a job your web portfolio can be a powerful and comprehensive promotional tool.
The design of your portfolio should reflect your work and personality but it’s also important that your portfolio’s design doesn’t take away from or overpower the work that’s being showcased. Use colors, typefaces and design to connect with your target audience: if you are a wedding photographer, feel free to play with whimsical, romantic fonts or if you design for children, be open to using bright, primary colors.
Finally, imagine how and when your audience will interface your website. Will they be viewing it on a desktop, a laptop? Maybe, but most likely they will be viewing it on a phone. Take this into account when you optimize you site.
6. Provide your contact info
The whole purpose of the portfolio is to get more work and connect with people! For this class all you need is a “contact” form, but if you ever decide to “go live” and publish your site make sure to include the area that you live in, but never a specific address.
Allow people who visit your web site to easily interact with you through social media. Connect your existing Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts for the site. These can all act as major drivers and bring new exposure to your site when you add the web address of your portfolio site to your bio on social media platforms, too.