A strong portfolio is essential in order to become a success in the web development business. Fact.
Your portfolio is a client/companies first impression of you, your sales pitch. Fact.
Your probably havent thought thoroughly about exactly what makes up your portfolio and the impression it gives an audience…..Fact.
Its a common mistake amongst developers and designers to overlook the impression a website design and its content gives on an audience. On any site, you can often find elements which arent as thought out as they could have been – yet you overlook them; they are insignificant. On a portfolio however, these mistakes could be costing you clients and money.
Dressing your site up with all manner of features, fronting a crazy design and slapping your work in the middle of it all is extremely common. As its been said a thousand times – simplicity is the key. Why not strive for something better, something as good as this from ElectricPulp…
Design:
This is the ulimate first impression. The page loads and your potential clients instantly draw a subconsious conclusion about you. A design loaded with effects, filters and gradients might look fabulous but does it really fit the purpose? Have you just shown a potential employer, that yes you can design – but you cant design to fit a purpose. Suddenly you can see your photoshop magic may well be working against you.
A portfolio should be simple, easy to navigate, let the content speak for itself – whilst maintaining a little “wow” factor, a sparkle of inspiration. If you’ve got tons of effects on your page they often get mixed together and go un-noticed. Restricting yourself to maybe one or two effects will make them stand out against a plainer backdrop. This will show a potential user, yes you can stick to task and yes you can get creative.
However obvious it may seem – keep the navigation simple and extremely visable. These 2 examples use color contrasts to stand out.
So how could you limit yourself? Heres a few ideas…
- Javascript slide bar.
- A lightbox plugin.
- Use colour contrasts to guide the user around the page.
- A few images (that you have taken) – this underlines your creative mind.
- Alex Cohaniuc and Daniel Pospisil – Both extemely clear sections and structure.
- Frozen Toast – to the point, yet attractive. The lovely feel to this is entirely built through the colors in the thumbnails of previous work (letting the work do the talking). Similarly this site is ‘created’ by the previous work.
- http://www.kinoz.com/ – just check it out. Structured + creative = excellent. Unless you can really deliver, this is a hard one to attempt.
Just sit down and think “keep it simple – keep it special“.
To summarise, the motto to design your portfolio from should be “functional first“. It should never leave a user wondering where something is- you should cover all the bases. How do you make it different from every other portfolio? Thats where you drop in a few touches of your creativity, to bring it to life.
Content:
So you’ve nailed a nice, simple yet elegant design for your portolio, in order to let the content shine by its own merit. This is where the problem lies for most developers – organising your content. Just because your doing something more creative with your CV/Portfolio it doesnt mean you should ignore the basic structural guides applied on other mediums.
For me as a prospective employer, a web design portfolio should not re-write traditional practices; it should apply creativity to the guidelines and structures that are commonly used.
In essence what is being said here is – remember to keep a solid structure of content. Keep areas of your portfolio in clearly organised sections, whilst always having a clear navigation to find what content you need. It has been said that you should never click more than 5 times on a website to find the information you want. For a portfolio I think this number should be 2-3. With potentially hundreds of applicants to look through a prospective employer wants information fast – if they can’t find it, your not considered. This should be motivation enough for you to establish a clear heirachy of content.
Contact details – This is so important for a portfolio. I personally like it when contact details are accessible or visable on every page. This gives potential users no reason not to contact you. In the world of business time is money – if your wasting their time, you wont get the work. Obvious contact details, in the header signifies the importance of them (see image below).
Summary:
I’ve highlighted a few ways in which you can improve your portfolio websites, to make them more functional and accessible but not run of the mill. Planning is the greatest prevention. Clearly plan your portfolio, invest time planning and revising everything from the impression you want to give, down to the organisation of work, through to the colours of links. Heavy planning may seem a lot of work, but it’ll ensure you cover as many bases as possible.
To finish, never underestimate your portfolio. Its your most important document as a web developer – so therefore deserves respect enough for good planning and well thought out execution.