Break it up into smaller pieces.
Whether you’re a university student or industry professional, the goal is to showcase your skills and experience. Before getting wrapped up in the aesthetic, you have to have a strong foundation. This means identifying the intentions of your portfolio.
- Who is your main audience? What are they searching for?
- What are the goals of your portfolio?
- How can you align your content to meet the needs of your viewers while showcasing your personal interests? This is where you will start taking inventory of previous projects, accomplishments, and acquired skills.
Find relevant resources.
There are quite a few routes to go in presenting your work. To name a few:
- LinkedIn
- You do not have to built a site from scratch, you’ll simply have a public profile
- It will guide you through relevant professional information to be documented (if you haven’t made a CV/resume yet, this is a good place to start)
- Provides a social media platform to connect with other professionals
- WordPress
- Choose from prebuilt themes or design your own layout
- More creative freedom with visual presentation
- Best for digital media or liberal arts majors presenting visual portfolios
- Google Sites
- Simple formatting, similar to a Word document
- More limited website structure, will focus on content over aesthetic
- Convenient for presenting general written information (resume, experience, writing, social media links)
Take Inventory.
Start with making a document listing out any relevant information and a folder including any digital work you’ve created. For the sections below, you can also copy/paste this and simply brainstorm under each for a few minutes at a time.
Portfolio sections can include:
- Graphic design
- Illustration
- Photography
- Videography
- Writing
- Event planning
- Podcasts
- Public testimonials
- Resume
- Social media platforms
CV sections can include:
- Biography
- Education
- Technical skills
- Select projects (reference portfolio sections above)
- Work experience
- Public engagement activities
- Conferences/presentations
- Publications
- Research experience
- Teaching experience
The fun part: telling your story.
This is where you put all of your content together. First and foremost, the goal of a portfolio is to walk the audience through what you’re passionate about. It is not only about the final product! It is about your process. Remember those essays that you had to write reflecting on personal experiences in your general education courses during freshman year? That is what writing individual pages on your portfolio project should mirror (thesis, supporting points with evidence, conclusion).
Be concise: each project has an overarching goal, an audience, and resources. Although your portfolio serves your personal goals, it also has to capture the viewer’s attention and keep it.
If you struggle to start writing, simply put a pen to paper and jot down anything you can think of relevant to the materials I’ve provided. Let it be sloppy, I promise it will not be the final copy. Determining the content for your portfolio is a fun and creative process where you get to learn about yourself. The content you decide on should reflect work you want to do in your future career or degree path.
Once you have determined relevant sections, revised your writing, and organized media accordingly, now you can build and personalize your portfolio website! Here are a few ways to organize it:
Format 1: Single Scroll
All of your content will be on one page (introduction, contact, projects, resume, etc). This is meant to be for shorter portfolios and should not have many run-on sentences so as to keep the audiences attention. It is best for showcasing your work quickly in a brief conversation or meeting.
Format 2: Individual Pages
This format is meant to offer more depth to individual projects and explain the project process. Your homepage would include your biography and contact information. Your main menu would hold all the pages relevant to different portfolio sections mentioned earlier. These can be organized based on genre.
My menu includes the following: home, client sites (web development projects), portfolio (graphic design and illustration), articles (publications and personal writing), resume (basically my CV), and social platforms (YouTube, Medium, SoundCloud, etc).
I won’t go into detail about webpage design in this article because that is an entirely different conversation with many other resources readily available online. For now, keep it simple and think of it like building a document for a class project with main headers, general descriptions, and supporting media.
I’m done with my portfolio. Now what?
Technically, a portfolio will always be a work in progress. Once you’ve completed a final draft, send it over to friends, family, or peers to explore the site themselves. Ask them to pay attention to any issues in writing flow, visual distractions, or questions about why you explained something a certain way. This is technically called user testing and allows you to make corrections that you otherwise wouldn’t recognize on your own (since you’ve likely been staring at your portfolio for hours or days).
Have fun with it! Your portfolio doesn’t have to be perfect. It is a representation of your passions and goals; more than anything, it serves a functional purpose and not simply an aesthetic one. It shows that you can take the time to reflect on your goals and execute a project. Since I built my portfolio site, having it available has opened so many doors for me.
In case you don’t know:
What do I mean by “take inventory”?
Everybody, regardless of background, has something to bring to the table. Sometimes people will attend college for four years and still be unsure of what they gained besides a degree. Understanding your transferrable skills is the first step to marketing yourself in the real world. There are many portfolio formats available, including but not limited to: digital, visual, physical, written, quantitative, collaborative, etc. To name a few places you could “take inventory” from:
- Coursework: essays or group projects relevant to your career
- Work documentation: formal processes you created/engaged in that contributed to a project
- Management skills: collaboration with peers/organizations to hold events, project development
- Daily schedule: what are tasks you did every day? (specific software used, thought processes required, or communication skills)
Taking inventory requires having a panoramic lens of your everyday tasks. It may feel like you’re not doing much, yet time flies by, project goals are achieved, and we forget to write any of it down! You’ve likely done a lot more than you give yourself credit for.
Different portfolios have different goals.
Consider a couple types of portfolios below:
- Professional: will likely be viewed by future employers, should showcase most relevant skills and projects immediately, keep (unrelated) personal details to a minimum
- Recreational: can include a broader range of interests if it’s not limited to a job interview, can showcase content shared on social media platforms, random personal writing, art project progress; the sky is the limit!
If you want both, consider creating a subdomain for personal content unrelated to professional projects.
What’s a CV?
CV stands for curriculum vitae and is a document summarizing your career, education, and qualifications. A CV will look different based on whether you’re in academia or industry. Plan accordingly! If you’ve had a lot of academic publications, but you’re transferring to the tech industry, it’s better to state the transferrable skills and not the accolades behind them.
Furthermore, your CV should be much more formal if you’re, for instance, applying for an office manager role. Whereas a graphic designer would probably have a CV with subtle graphics to showcase their creative style. For example, I’m a web designer and student researcher, so I try to show some personality with a pop of color and unique icons while still keeping it professional.
Why is having a CV beneficial if I already have a resume?
A CV is a more extensive version of your resume. It offers a roadmap to employers of your previous experience in work, education, and any relevant skill sets. It takes time and commitment to write and format a CV, but once you have it completed, it only requires the occasional update every semester/quarter. It also feels good to look back on everything you’ve achieved!