What separates a portfolio that gets you interviews from one that gets ignored? After analyzing dozens of portfolios with over 50 design students, some clear patterns emerged.
Your portfolio is often the first impression you make as a designer. But if you’re just starting out, it can feel overwhelming to figure out what to include, how to present it, and what even makes a “good” portfolio in the first place.
As someone who teaches interaction design and has worked with design for over a decade, I’ve noticed patterns in what works and what doesn’t in portfolios. Whether you’re aiming to become a UX researcher who can demonstrate methodological thinking or a UI designer who wants to highlight your visual design skills, these fundamentals of portfolio design can help you present your work with clarity and confidence.
In this guide, I’ll share practical tips for designing compelling and successful portfolios, based on experience and critical discussions with 50+ master’s students in interaction design.
Design Portfolio Workshop with Design Students
This week, my colleagues and I at Chalmers University held a design exercise workshop with over 50 master’s students in the Interaction Design master’s program, to examine and learn about modern design portfolios. As the job market for designers becomes increasingly competitive, we want to help the students prepare for their future careers. A part of that effort is to ensure that the projects they work on not only develop their creative abilities and critical thinking skills, but are also industry-relevant, and support the transition from academic studies to working life.
The goal of this design exercise was to teach students what a design portfolio is, what they can look like, how case studies are presented, how to balance “beautiful versus useful” design features, and to inspire them and provide knowledge for developing their own portfolios. The outcome was a set of key takeaways on what makes a portfolio good and interesting, and that offers a good user experience, which the students and others (you, the reader) could use as guidelines for designing their own portfolios.
First, the students spent a few hours in small groups finding, exploring, viewing, and analyzing design portfolios and discussing within their groups which ones they preferred and why. This first part was designed to expose the students to a wide variety of portfolios to learn from.
Then, each group presented a few of their favorite portfolios to the others during a design crit session, led and facilitated by teachers, but where all students were encouraged to participate and share their opinions actively.
These were the exercise instructions given to the students:
- Aim: Explore existing portfolios to gain inspiration and understanding for designing your own portfolio.
- Learning objectives:
- Articulate what makes a portfolio compelling and stand out.
- Recognize diverse approaches to presenting design work.
- Build a reference library of inspiring examples to inform your own portfolio design.
- Identify design patterns and interactive UI elements in professional portfolios
- Design aspects to consider:
- Visual design and aesthetics
- Case study presentation
- Content organization and storytelling
- Interaction patterns and animations
- Navigation structure
- Personality and voice
- Technical implementation
- Anything else remarkable!
Do this exercise yourself
If you want to do this exercise yourself, see the list below for where you can find design portfolios for inspiration. Then, analyze each portfolio with the design aspects and learning objectives described above. For each portfolio, reflect on what you like about it, why it’s compelling or stands out, what’s special about it, and what might not work so well. You can also think about which aspects of the design you’d want to take as inspiration for your own portfolio.
Where to find design portfolio inspiration
- Wall of Portfolios
- Cofolios
- Product Design Portfolios
- Google (look at Reddit threads)
5 Key Guidelines for a good design portfolio
In the critical discussion session, we reflected on and discussed the portfolios presented. What was interesting or enjoyable in them, what could be improved, and what different opinions were there?
Quick Tip: Before adding any animation or interaction to your portfolio, ask yourself: “Does this help tell my story or showcase a skill?” If the answer is no, leave it out.
1. Know Your Audience and Goals
When designing your portfolio, consider your audience and your career goals.
2. Tailor Your Case Studies to Your Role
The content and structure of case studies in portfolios vary depending on what type of designer you are and what kind of design work you’d like to do. For example, ‘UX Researchers’ often include more methodologically detailed textual descriptions in their case studies, while visual ‘UI Designers’ rely on presenting more images of polished and high-fidelity mockups and prototypes.
3. Create Visual Coherence
Good portfolios have a coherent overall theme, color palette, “vibe”, or personality. You can achieve this by choosing and sticking to a consistent color palette, avoiding too many fonts, and defining the personality you want to present.
4. Be Intentional with Interactions
Don’t add lots of animations and interactions just because, since it can get messy and cluttered. Everything added should have a purpose.
5. Balance Beauty with Clarity
Many of the students expressed a preference for:
- Beautiful and content-focused portfolios that weren’t too “messy”
- A careful balance between attention-grabbing elements (e.g., animations and moving graphics) and content
- Using pictures first to grab attention, followed by text.
Examples of Effective Portfolios
These were some of the students’ favorite portfolios for inspiration.
- Diana.Lu – Interaction Designer. Key features: Horizontal scroll, hand-drawn animated sketches, and a distinct mobile version. The hand-drawn elements add personality and showcase sketching skills, while the horizontal scroll creates a memorable cinematic browsing experience without overwhelming the user.
- Robin Noguier – Designer. Key features: Animated and interesting case study scrolling, video summary for each case study, and alternating color themes for case studies. The animated scrolling captures attention, and the changing color themes are attention-grabbing.
- Emily Nagy – Product designer. Key features: Unique, unconventional, and engaging landing page and case-study presentation, and the portfolio is a design project itself. The landing page is artistic and creative, showcasing the designer’s personality and skills.
- Courtney Tam – Design Student. Key features: Engaging heading animation, content-focused presentation of case studies, and detailed case studies. The dark mode theme with yellow highlights, combined with the content-focused case study presentation, was refreshing after being overwhelmed by the animations from many other portfolios.
- Jesse Paul Warren – Civic Product Designer. Key Features: Straight to the point, content-focused design. Highly detailed description of design case studies. This content-focused and minimal design seems serious and trustworthy, letting the design projects speak for themselves. The serious tone fits well with the type of design projects Jesse works with (democracy).
- Henry Heffernan – Software Engineer. Key Features: The entire portfolio is a highly interactive, explorative, 3D-rendered retro scene with consistency maintained. He also includes a childhood photo. The 3D retro setting is unique, highly memorable and shows off his skills in 3D rendering. The childhood photo adds a personal touch.
Your portfolio is a living document that evolves as your skills and career direction change. By thoughtfully considering your audience, maintaining visual coherence, and being intentional about every element you add, you create a portfolio that clearly communicates your strengths and potential.
As you build or refine your portfolio, keep returning to these questions: Does this serve my career goals? Does it help tell my story and show my personality? Does every element have a purpose? Your answers will guide you toward a portfolio design that represents you as a designer.
Ready to start? Explore the portfolios above, do the exercise yourself, and begin building your reference library of portfolio inspiration.