Portfolio website examples

Ideas

Portfolio ideas worth stealing

The portfolios that work tend to make the same decisions well. Seven worth borrowing before you build yours.

• 1

  Cut the navigation to three things

  Portfolio, About, Contact is enough for most creative professionals. Every extra menu item is a decision you are handing to someone who came to look at your work. Start narrow, you can always add later.

• 2

  Sort the work by the job, not the shoot

  An art buyer arrives with a brief. Group your work the way they think about hiring, advertising, editorial, commercial, and they land on the relevant set in one click.

• 3

  Show fewer pieces than you want to

  Ten strong projects beat forty mixed ones, because people judge you on the weakest thing they see. Cut anything you would not want to be hired to do again.

• 4

  Lead with one strong image, not a menu

  The first thing on the page should be work, not a welcome line or a row of buttons. One full-bleed image that represents your best gives a visitor a reason to keep scrolling before they have read a word.

• 5

  Make it readable in one scroll

  When the link goes to someone who will spend under a minute on it, a single well-ordered page often beats a multi-page site. Less to click, nothing to miss.

• 6

  Put contact one click from everywhere

  The person ready to hire you should not have to hunt. A contact link in the main navigation, and again at the foot of the work, catches them at both the moments they decide.

• 7

  Own the domain

  A portfolio on your own domain reads as a professional who is here to stay, not a profile on someone else platform. It is also the version you keep if you ever change tools.