We spoke with dozens of hiring managers and recruiters while building our Design Career Bootcamps, and they all confirmed that a strong, well-thought-out portfolio site can be just as important as the projects that comprise it! But if you’ve never created your own portfolio website before, how do you structure it so that it will wow any potential employers?

In this article, we’ll share a few of the lessons we learned while talking to industry professionals so you can build a unique portfolio site that showcases your work beautifully, is easy to navigate, and impresses employers.

Choose the Right Projects to Include

First things first — before you build your actual portfolio website, you need to have enough portfolio projects to populate your site! When you’re deciding what projects to work on, spend some time thinking about what types of design interest you most as well as what sort of role you’d like and what industries you want to work in. Whenever possible, focus on building projects that match most closely to the type of career you want to build.

Unless you’re truly hoping to be a design generalist, you should try to focus on building up deep expertise in one or two areas of design and showcasing those projects most prominently in your portfolio for relevant jobs, while also showing a few projects that demonstrate your breadth of abilities.

Logically this makes sense – someone recruiting for a web designer role wants to see that you have the most expertise in web design, while also being able to incorporate other elements of design into your work! If a recruiter lands on your portfolio homepage and sees projects that match the role you applied for, you’ll be much more likely to land an interview than someone who shows one example of ten different types of projects.

Show Real World Work

Recruiters love to see real work in portfolios. Theoretical projects are great and will generally make up the bulk of your portfolio if you’re early in your career, but being able to showcase a project you’ve built yourself and then launched into the world or delivered to a client is a great way to stand out from your competition. Here are a few ways you can get real world work in your portfolio early in your career.

• Real Clients: Finding real clients might seem daunting, especially if you don’t think your work quality is high enough to get paid for your services. If that’s the case, you can consider offering your services pro bono to local businesses or nonprofits you find online. While it’s not something you want to get into a habit of doing, offering your services for free early in your career is a great way to get real client experience, which ultimately should help you get more interviews!
• Side Projects: If you have ideas for side hustles or web projects you’re interested in working on, we highly recommend doing so! A real world side project, like an online course, an ecommerce business, or a newsletter, shows that you have a desire to utilize your design skills outside of your 9-5 and have a love for solving problems and building things.
• Theoretical Projects: If you have ideas for cool design projects you want to work on, that’s also totally fine. Just be sure that your project ideas are solving real problems and that you follow the proper design process when working on them. It can be tempting to dive straight into Sketch or Illustrator, but employers want to see your entire process, from research all the way to user testing and iterating on their feedback.

Having real work in your portfolio (whether it’s a side project, client work, or a project you came up with to solve a real problem) shows that you’re able to work within the type of constraints that you’ll experience in any job. If you want to work on real client projects or want some help coming up with ideas for projects that solve real problems, you can check out our Portfolio Starter Kit which includes over 30 projects as well as real client projects you can work on with nonprofits and startups!

Present Case Studies, Not Just Visuals

When you’re putting your projects onto your portfolio site, it can be tempting to only showcase the final polished designs. If you visit a social sharing design site like Dribbble, you’ll be overwhelmed by thousands of colorful and vibrant designs.

There’s a lot of great design work on sites like this, but even more work that was created just for the sake of creating something pretty, with no thought around the context for the design. However, recruiters want to see more – they want to see your process, your problem-solving abilities, and how you actually arrived at the final design deliverables.

Remember to present projects as case studies on your portfolio site. In general, this means that you should start by outlining the project, including the problem you were trying to solve and what your approach was. Then show the final deliverables mocked up to make the viewer want to keep reading. Then dive into your process, showing early concepts and wireframes, outlining any challenges you faced with an explanation for how you solved those challenges. Finish with the final work nicely mocked up into relevant digital or print locations.

Check out this site and this site for examples of agencies that perfectly showcase their process and beautiful visuals side by side.

Now, Let’s Build Your Portfolio Website

Your portfolio website is your best chance to make a lasting impression on potential employers and clients. Before diving into the build of your actual site, be sure to create or polish your personal brand identity. Do you have a personal logo? Do you have consistent typography across your website that matches your personality? A strong personal brand that is consistent across your portfolio site and resume can make your site more memorable and help to differentiate you from other junior designers.

Start by looking at the portfolio sites of famous designers to understand how experienced creatives showcase their own brand. Look at their personal logos as well as their use of consistent color and typography across their websites. Take note of elements that you like and start to jot down any ideas you have for your own branding.

A few sites to look at are Krop, Dribbble, Behance, and Twitter. Then go through a normal design process that you’d follow for any branding project, from moodboarding and ideating to sketching and diving into Illustrator to refine.

Next, it’s time to actually start to build your site. If you’ve got coding skills, coding your own site from scratch is a great idea, but in general, we’d suggest using a platform like Squarespace or Format, which feature dozens of amazing portfolio templates. Once you’ve created an account, follow these tips to build your portfolio:

Your Homepage

Make a strong and distinctive first impression! Most recruiters and employers will spend 5-10 seconds looking at your portfolio before deciding whether to seriously consider you. The homepage of your portfolio site should clearly showcase who you are and what your specialties and abilities are. It should also be visually appealing and clearly show that you are someone this person should take note of.

Next, make sure any work that focuses on your target role or industry is showcased front and center on your site. Remember, first impressions are important so ensure that you showcase your best and most relevant work on your homepage! Showcase a portion of the final designs to entice them to click through to the full case study.

Make it easy to navigate. Any recruiters navigating your site likely only have a minute or two before they have to make a decision about you. Have a persistent navigation bar that makes it easy for them to get to any page of the site. Have a clear order to your layout. Be sure projects are grouped by type. Make it as easy as possible for a recruiter to get an idea of your strengths and review relevant projects.

Your About Page

Have a clear and unique About page that showcases your background, strengths, current role, and previous employers. Let your personality shine through and try to make it as memorable as your work itself. After all, employers are hiring you for your skills but also want to hire someone who will add a unique dynamic to the team and will bring new ideas to the table.

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Make it incredibly easy for visitors to contact you, via a simple Contact page or form, as well as links to your other social channels. If a potential employer or client stumbles on your site but can’t get in touch with you, then all of your efforts to craft a memorable site go to waste.

Your Projects

Like we mentioned earlier, showcase your top projects as comprehensive case studies. Your goal should be for any potential visitor to completely understand all of your design decisions and have a clear view of how your final designs solve the original problem stated at the beginning of the page.

They should also be able to understand what your role on the project was and with whom you validated your designs.

Your Personality

Recruiters look through dozens, if not hundreds and sometimes it can take more to stand out than a few well-thought out projects. So whenever possible, don’t be afraid to make your portfolio site memorable and even a bit quirky or out of the box. You could add a blog where you write about your interests and opinions on current design trends (or link to your Medium page if you have one). You can also showcase interesting passions or side projects that have nothing to do with the job you’re applying for. Whenever possible, add color or hover state animations to your nav bar or footer.

Don’t be afraid to get creative with your portfolio site. As long as your work is easy to review, your site is easily navigable, and you go into the appropriate amount of depth on each project, showing your personality is totally fine!

Congrats! You now have a fully built out portfolio site that is structured to showcase your work as well as possible while also speaking to your personality and unique value prop. Your portfolio site is a living showcase of your design career, so remember to keep it updated with your newest work and ideas. If you want help building up portfolio projects and creating an amazing portfolio site that will land you a job, you can check out our Design Career Bootcamps or Portfolio Starter Kit.

The post How to Structure Your Portfolio Site to Land a Design Job appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

If you were to be transported back to New York City in 1909, you’d be able to witness the creation of the first United States university with programs in Graphic Design, Advertising, Fashion Design, and more. The school, later named the Parsons School of Design, was created by Frank Parsons, who was one of the first teachers at the New School of Art.

He believed that art and design would soon become deeply connected to the evolution of modern business and industry, and the curriculum he built was focused on teaching students the fundamentals of modern design.

Jump 10 years into the future and take a leap across the Atlantic Ocean to the former Weimar Republic in Germany, and you’d be at the forefront of modern European Design education. Bauhaus was created in 1919 with the intention of bringing all fields of art together and was most influenced by the idea of Modernism.

Modernism was characterized by a focus on simplified forms, rationality, functionality, and the idea that mass production and industry could be reconciled with artistic sensibilities.

These two schools lay the groundwork for the explosion in modern design education. Hundreds, if not thousands, of design and art institutes sprung up throughout the 20th century, making access to modern design education accessible to students around the world.

However, until recent decades, quality design education was available only for students at these institutions. Even if you wanted to teach yourself to be a modern designer, you’d be forced to rely exclusively on textbooks and other written literature, unless you were lucky enough to know a designer who could teach you directly.

And even then, finding work was difficult for anyone without a traditional education or personal connections in the creative industry.

But with the advent of computing, all of that changed. As personal computers became more affordable and the internet sprung to life, access to design education was suddenly available to the masses!

And if you have a computer and stable internet connection today, you can become a designer without a traditional design education, something never before possible.

Here are a few of the best ways to learn the principles of design, hone your skills, and become a working designer without spending $200k on a design education.

Learn the Fundamentals First

Before you download Photoshop or any other design programs, learn the fundamentals! Students in design schools spend 4 years learning the fundamentals of good design. You can learn all the Photoshop techniques in the world but if you don’t understand the concepts underlying modern design, it will be difficult for you to progress beyond a certain level.

Not only will learning the basics help you as you start to work on real projects, but it will also help you figure out what aspects of design you’re most interested in.

• Watch online courses on design fundamentals on Coursera and Skillshare
• Read books about Typography, Design Principles, and the History of Design
• Immerse yourself in popular design sites like Tutsplus, Sitepoint, 52 Weeks of UX, and UXADAY

As you learn about design fundamentals, you might start to naturally gravitate towards certain areas of the field. If you find the fundamentals of fonts and typefaces particularly interesting, you might want to focus your studies on typography.

If you’re particularly drawn to the idea of elegant user experiences and are constantly studying the layout of websites, you might want to focus your future studies on User Experience and User Interface design.

Get the Design Tools You Need and Work on Some Projects

Once you start to understand the basic concepts that underlie modern design, you can start getting familiar with the tools designers use everyday. You don’t need to become an expert, but understanding how tools like Photoshop and Sketch work will make things much easier once you start going through a more structured curriculum.

First, get trials of Adobe and Sketch’s product suite. Here’s a quick primer on the main programs used by designers around the world:

• Photoshop – one of the most powerful image-editing, retouching, and and composition programs in the world and a must have for any aspiring designer
• InDesign – the best tool for creating professional layouts and a godsend when creating multi-page documents or publications
• Illustrator – a vector design tool you’ll need to create digital artwork from scratch
• Sketch – a quickly spreading tool in the design community that makes web and app design simpler than ever before

Next, start playing around with your new tools by working on some projects that excite you.

HOW Design has a great list of some starter projects or you can schedule a quick chat with some of the design mentors on RookieUp, a community of creative professionals who have years of experience helping aspiring designers improve their work and build careers in the design industry.

Decide on an Educational Path

Finally, the most important part of all – figuring out an educational track that works for you. There are practically infinite resources available online to learn design, which means that no matter what your preferred learning style is, there’s a perfect path out there for you.

One note is that, despite most e-learning tools being largely impersonal, studies show that an element of 1-on-1 teaching in your education can significantly improve your ability to improve quickly, so having periodic personalized coaching sessions with real designers is very important as you learn design.

In-person Bootcamps

In recent years, bootcamps have exploded onto the education scene and for good reason. These programs are intensive three month training grounds where you’ll learn directly from real designers and constantly be working on projects with other aspiring creatives like yourself.

These programs are fairly pricey and require you to live in a sizable city, but if you can afford it, they’re a great way to get a condensed design education in a short period of time. And once you complete the course, most bootcamps have career placement teams to help you find junior design jobs! Check out bootcamps like:

• General Assembly is probably the largest global bootcamp company, with campuses around the world
• Shillington is a design education school that has been operating for over 20 years and has campuses in NYC, Europe, and Australia

Digital Bootcamps

Since not everyone lives in a major city, many bootcamps are now digital. These courses let you work from the comfort of your desk and combine live webinar lessons with periodic 1-on-1 mentor sessions throughout the course.

• Springboard is a great online bootcamp with courses in UX Design
• Bloc is mostly focused on coding bootcamps but starting to test out Design bootcamps as well

Check out sites like Course Report to find bootcamps that are perfect for you, both online and in-person!

Self-Learning

Bootcamps aren’t right for everyone. Some people might prefer not to spend $15-20k on a course when they can get a similar education for <$100. Luckily, there are a ton of great (and cheap) online courses for learning design that let you work at your own pace. These options are also ideal for people who don’t want to quit their jobs or move across the country to attend a full-time bootcamp.

• Coursera has a massive number of Design courses that are literally the same courses taught at major universities
• Skillshare and Udemy are two e-learning marketplaces that offer thousands of design courses covering every possible topic
• Treehouse is a fantastic platform that lets you choose a skill and will then guide you through the fundamentals via simple video lessons and interactive projects
• YouTube is perhaps the deepest trove of resources available anywhere, and it’s all free! There are thousands of incredible teachers who produce thousands of videos designed for new designers. Find a designer you like, like Roberto Blake, and follow their videos

Again, 1-on-1 learning is really important when learning design. Periodically chatting with an experienced designer is crucial to reduce frustration, get answers to your questions, receive critique on your work, and ensure you’re on the right path.

Since most self-learning platforms are built without personalization in mind, check out platforms like RookieUp throughout your self-learning journey. RookieUp lets you set up 30 and 60 minute mentor sessions with creative professionals whenever you need to chat with someone who knows what you’re going through.

Alternately, you can attend some design meetups in your city, which are a great way to meet other creatives who might be interested in mentoring you!

I’d recommend chatting with a designer before you get started on a more intense curriculum, when you finish projects and want feedback, and when you’re starting to look for your first job or freelancing gig.

Hopefully after reading this, you’re convinced that a design education is more accessible now than ever before in history. Whereas you used to need to attend a design school to become a designer, you can now learn design and find a job as long as you have a computer and a drive to learn!

So get out there and make your creative dreams a reality.

The post How to Become a Designer Without Going to School appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.