Steps For Creating The Perfect Graphic Design Portfolio

Whenever you’re applying for a graphic design contract, and you are asked to send samples of your past works, what do you do? How do you respond to this kind of request? Can you present them with links to your Behance or Dribble profiles? These two are platforms where your clients can browse through and discover other designers to award their contracts. Or probably you present them a bunch of graphic design images attached to an email? Of course, this will portray you as an amateur. In this article, we discuss Steps For Creating The Perfect Graphic Design Portfolio.

And yes, you need to sit down and ask yourself, is that a professional way of showcasing your past works? Graphics design is basically an art of both skills and creativity. If you do not know, your method of presenting your past works to your prospective clients will make a significant contribution to your level of professionalism.

Let’s face the truth. If you really want to be known as a professional, you should begin to act like a real professional. And yes, the process of becoming a professional starts with your portfolio.

Having a graphic design portfolio as a graphics designer will go a long way in convincing your prospective clients about your skills, knowledge, experience, and level of professionalism.

In this piece, we’ll be taking a look at why you need a perfect graphic design portfolio and the steps to create it using WordPress as a case study. Let’s gets started:

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Why You Need a Perfect Graphics Design Portfolio?

There is no point waiting to be a famous graphics designer like David Carson or Paul Rand before you begin to think of having your own portfolio. From the day you start your career, you should make it a point of duty to create a perfect portfolio.

In fact, as reported by a study, 56% of recruiters discover that those job applications that include personal websites are more attractive than job applications without a website.

That said, you can also make use of your portfolio website to promote your graphic design business while also establishing a brand to create your own identity.

Apart from that, portfolios will provide prospective clients with the opportunity to discover your work, get recognition, build trust, and lots more.

Now, we’ll proceed to highlight 5 golden tips to create a perfect graphics design portfolio.

Creating a Perfect Graphics Design Portfolio: 5 Golden Tips

Curate Your Best Works

A graphic design portfolio is an avenue to showcase the best of your work. You need to understand that it’s not a place where you only list all your past projects, but you should feature only the best ones.

With a portfolio, your prospective clients will be able to judge your creativity, skills, and level of expertise. This implies that you should be extremely careful when displaying your past projects in your portfolio.

Endeavor to select your portfolio carefully. Select only the best of your projects that serve as a perfect replica of your skills and styles. One of the ways to showcase your level of professionalism is to include a minimalist design.

Instead of images, links, or lengthy descriptions, you should minimize the content of your portfolio. You can do this by adding brief descriptions that perfectly captures the summary of each of the projects.

Add Galleries and Sliders

One of the exciting things about creating a portfolio website with WordPress is that it provides you with the opportunity to add more content to your portfolio website with WordPress plugins, for example a WordPress slider plugin like Slider Revolution.

Usually, this helps to improve the functionality of your website. No matter the kind of WordPress theme you have selected for your portfolio, there is still an avenue to include stylish image galleries as well as slideshows with the help of plugins like Slider.

Show How You Work

Another great way to grab the attention of prospective clients and customers is to stand out from the crowd by streamlining your workflow on your graphic design portfolio website.

When you show how you work on your portfolio website, you tend to build a level of trust and confidence in your work. Of course, there isn’t any better way of revealing your professionalism and confidence than showing how you work.

With just a section of your portfolio website, you can take your clients through the process of creating different designs. From prototyping to mockups and so forth, you can build more trust and confidence in the eyes of your clients.

More so, briefly explain your approach to each project that comes your way and show how you arrive at delivering the best results.

Do Not Overlook the Power of Testimonials

As a graphics designer, your portfolio website isn’t only meant to show your skills but also to prove your worth. This implies that showing proof of satisfaction from your past clients is also another way to convince prospective clients that you are as accurate as what you claim to be.

Including the best of your testimonials and feedback to your portfolio website could serve as a doorway to previous work and various kinds of clients you’ve come across in the past.

If you are using a WordPress website and it doesn’t have a section for testimonials, you can always make use of a slider plugin to create a section where you can feature testimonials from past clients.

Customize Your Portfolio Website

When you use WordPress to create your portfolio website, you should endeavour to customize it with a page builder. Most beginners often believe that WordPress themes don’t have a customizable feature as compared with hand-crafted themes.

This is entirely wrong. WordPress offers an opportunity to customize your portfolio website themes according to your preferences without even having to write code.

This can simply be done with the use of a Page Builder plugin. These plugins will allow you to build a unique layout, portfolio, and landing pages according to your individual preferences.

A really neat thing you can do is use WordPress booking plugins to make it easier for your potential clients to contact you and book a time convenient for both of you.

Final Note

There you have it! Perhaps 5 golden tips for creating a perfect graphics design portfolio using WordPress as a case study. However, as you are creating your own portfolio website, you take into consideration what a portfolio is and isn’t.

Remember, it isn’t a museum where you display all your past projects but an avenue to showcase your skills, talents, and abilities through your best works only. We hope these Steps For Creating The Perfect Graphic Design Portfolio, has been helpful and be sure to checkout Designcuts for some amazing design resources for presenting your work to prospective clients.

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Author Bio
This article was contributed by Varsha Deshkar from inkydeals