Tips To Make Your Portfolio Look Irresistible
To hire or not to hire – that is the question. A disturbing question quite obviously. If you happen to be a designer or a developer, I hope you are quite aware of the fact that it is your Portfolio that plays a crucial role in deciding whether a client wants to hire you or not.
Now the problem with portfolio is that designers, even veteran designers, do not care much for its aesthetic appeal. What I mean to say is that they would not mind spending countless hours on clients’ project to get things right and to achieve pinnacles of perfection, but when it comes to designing their portfolio, they seem to lose all their creativity. They feel that as they are not going to get paid for designing their portfolio and therefore, it does not make any sense to spend their valuable time on it.
But a great portfolio always pays you off. So, rather than wasting your time dilly dallying, here in this article, we are going to share some tips that you may like to incorporate in the portfolio to make it look irresistible –
Show Real Work, people are Not Interested in your College Project
Some designers feel that it is cool to feature their ‘College Works’ in their portfolio section just to make it look funky. Look man, this is not your college and therefore, it is completely unacceptable on your part to feature such amateurish web templates on the portfolio section. Be a Man and show your creative side by featuring some of your finest and coolest work.
However, I can understand that you might be a new kid around the block and do not have a long list of clients under your belt; in that case, you have to use your website as a showcase of your creativity and skills. If you can make some compromise on the pricing front, I can assume that clients would less concentrate on the missing experience factor.
Do Not Brag that You are Young Designer
You are young. Cool! But that has nothing to do with the designing project. I have landed on countless number of sites where I have seen young designers bragging ‘Hi, I am Tom, a 24 years old designer from blah blah blah’. It may sound cool to your ears, but clients may wonder what they are supposed to do with your age. Have you ever come across a website where a 50 year old designer is bragging about his/her age?
I hope that you simply do not expect that clients would give two hoots about your age unless they have a secret plan to propose to you. What client cares for are creative, professional touches in the design and this has nothing to do with your age. The only way your age can influence their decision is if you are under 18. So, next time, you think of using your age as the ‘USP’ of your designing career, you should think twice.
Please grow up. Nobody is interested in knowing who you are, how popular you were among girls in your college days or how good looking you are. Just tell us how good you are at PhotoShop and you are good to go. No need to grind away with any more details.
Get Your Grammar Right
Yeah this one is quite annoying. If you cannot frame a single line in proper grammar in the portfolio, how on earth are you going to design a proper website? However, here I am not talking about the minor grammatical mistakes that we all tend to commit more often than not. I am talking about the major mistakes that pain the eyes.
Just make sure that the body copy does not make you look like a truant schoolchild trying to act like a professional. As you can understand, by making you look like one of those kinds you are certainly not going to impress the prospective clients. Just a small request to you, try to make sure that a normal human being with average intelligence can understand what you have wished to convey through the body copy of the portfolio. However, I can understand that English may not be your first language and in that case, it is quite possible for you to commit some major grammatical mistakes. So in that case, you will be better off if you can manage someone to get your write-up reviewed and edited.
You Lack Self respect
Well, it is good to see that you are humble and do not brag about your success. But my friend, this is a professional field and sometimes, you have to beat your own drum. When you say that ‘I think I can do it’ or something like this – ‘I am not quite good at HTML5 but given an opportunity, I think I can do this’ you make the clients feel that you are not good enough and for that reason, you are not confident about your abilities.
Unless you tell us quite confidently that you are 100% sure of completing the project, chances are that the clients may treat you as a rookie. If you look that you are not quite sure about your ability, clients will always leave you there and look for other candidates.
Nevertheless, I am not saying you have to brag about your accomplishments. Here you have a fine line to tread. Be positive about your abilities and do not hesitate while interacting with the audience.
Do not show your weakness
When you are showing your skills on the portfolio, you have to be sure that you are selling your core skills precisely. Say for example, you are great at CSS 3 but you somehow suck at HTML 5. Then, rather than showcasing your poor HTML 5 skills to win the trust of the clients, you have to make them aware how awesome they can find you at CSS 3.
The portfolio should describe how awesome you are at CSS3 and not how pathetic you are at HTML 5, JavaScript or whatever.
