How To Set Up An Online Portfolio For Free

Why a portfolio is important for your career

A portfolio helps you get your work noticed

Whether you're a graphic designer, product designer, web developer, writer, illustrator, or are working within another surface area of creativity, you demand a way to become your piece of work out there. A portfolio website gives your work visibility, putting it in forepart of the people you want to see it.

Different the static black and white of a traditional resume, an online portfolio brings your work to life. In total color, it makes engaging with your artistic output an active and immediate experience.

Potential clients and employers get to run across correct away your accomplishments and what makes y'all unique. A personal portfolio shows them who you are as a artistic professional, the thinking behind your work, and if you lot're the right person for a particular job or project.

Matthew Munger's portfolio takes inspiration from the classic macOS interface, differentiating his portfolio from others. — Matthew P Munger'due south portfolio

A portfolio communicates who you are

Most of us wouldn't prove upwards to a job interview with an unordered stack of printouts of our piece of work for a potential employer to have to sift through. Instead, we would take it bound and put together in a professional-looking booklet.

An online portfolio functions in a similar style. In a user-friendly blueprint, information technology collects the projects that represent the best of what you do. It shows that you're responsible and that you take your job seriously.

A personal portfolio also gives y'all brownie. Anyone, like a potential employer or prospective client, may type your name into a search engine and find y'all in a brusque amount of fourth dimension. Having zero presence on the net doesn't look good, no matter how accomplished you lot are.

No affair if y'all're a spider web designer, graphic designer, front-terminate developer, or another occupation, you are more than a bulleted listing of achievements. A portfolio site provides depth and particular. In your ain words, it tells the story of projects y'all're proud of and offers a glimpse into the thinking and personality of the person behind them.

An online portfolio provides a direct and centralized space to notice you. You don't have to transport out gigantic email attachments. Clicking on a link is all it takes to land on examples of your work and to larn more than about you.

What you should include in a portfolio website

When edifice your ain portfolio, don't feel like you demand to include anything and everything you lot've ever created. Curate your best work and showcase the types of projects you'd like to do more of. Equally you create your portfolio, be certain to:

Have a strategy backside the projects you feature in your website blueprint.
Know what skills you desire to communicate.
Recognize the type of clients y'all'd like to attain.
Demonstrate your personal style and aesthetic.

Put together an online portfolio that captures the essence of your identity as a creative professional, tailored to the audience of potential employers and clients you want to reach. Think of your homepage as a cohesive torso of work. Each project prototype, every cake of writing, and all of the other elements come together in harmony to represent what y'all practise.

Every project you've ever worked on was its ain unique journey. From the initial spark of an idea to the final sign-off, in that location were individual challenges, issues that needed to be solved, and feedback that you had to answer to. Include big and brilliant examples of your work and go farther than but providing a few tidy lines of text virtually each project. Tell their stories. Write case studies. Include examples of prototyping or mockups yous created. Depict the steps that they took and how your role ultimately helped your clients to accomplish their goals.

Almost artistic projects involve collaboration. People want to know what it'southward going to be like working with you and how your skills and talents can help them. By telling these stories, they go a glimpse into your creative procedure and know what to expect if they hire you.

How to create a free portfolio website

ane. Showtime from scratch or begin with a template

You've selected the projects you want to include, written content, and figured out all of the features you want to exist a office of your web design. Webflow helps you put the pieces together in creating your own online portfolio with no-lawmaking, from the most minimalist to the more than elaborate and eye-catching designs. Take the first step with either a blank sheet or one of Webfow's many templates.

With an intuitive interface and drag-and-driblet functionality, you can customize and personalize your online portfolio to reflect who you are. Instead of getting stuck with a layout that you lot can't change, y'all go the freedom to add together in your ain colour scheme, pick out the right typography, and adapt the design elements in any mode that you lot want. Fifty-fifty if you don't have any design skills, you tin craft a functional and visually appealing web design. If you already have design feel, y'all'll find a host of tools to make your task easier.

From the unproblematic to the nigh complex of web pattern elements, Webflow gives y'all the controls to add them to a layout. Create a flexbox or CSS, integrate dynamic effects similar parallax scrolling, and build sophisticated animations through Webflow's visual interface all without entering a single line of lawmaking.

Yes, your piece of work should exist the main focal point, and a pattern should provide the framework for experiencing information technology. But crafting a compelling user experience and flexing your creativity goes far in distinguishing yourself from everyone else. Peculiarly if you lot're a web developer, mobile app designer, or create other digital products, the way that your online portfolio looks and functions is a direct reflection of your own abilities. Put as much effort into your own pattern portfolio as you put into what you create for your clients.

2. Abound your personal brand

Branding isn't but for big companies. Whether you're a retail giant or a freelancer, branding shows your value and how you lot're different from the competition. Branding takes your personality, knowledge, and talents and distills them into something that's easy to define.

Your online portfolio website is an extension of your own personal brand. It'southward your take chances to speak of who you are equally a creative and what you take to offering that'due south different from others working in your field. Allow the truth of your own expertise and skills guide your personal make. Authenticity is key.

The tone that you use to talk well-nigh you lot and your work, the photos you include of yourself, the illustrations that back-trail your portfolio, and the work itself are all a part of your personal make. Recognizing what this is requires self-awareness. Be real with yourself about who you are and what you create.

Without an element of personal branding, it's hard to accept a portfolio that stands out from the multitudes of others out there. Leave people with something that they'll recall and want to come back to.

Having a strong personal brand lets you connect with clients looking for someone similar you. Let's say you're a quirky designer who specializes in hand-fatigued illustrations. Someone will know right abroad if you're the right person for a job with just a quick look through your website. Personal branding lets you express your personality and your ain aesthetic to appeal to those clients you're best suited to work with. Or, if you're a skillful writer yous can concenter visitors to your website by blogging and utilizing Webflow's great SEO features.

Aileen Shin's clean portfolio showcases a few projects with large, quality visuals. — Aileen Shin'south portfolio

3. Showcase the work you're proud of

Putting together a portfolio is more than than only throwing together a agglomeration of unrelated projects you don't intendance well-nigh. It's your opportunity to bear witness people the work that matters virtually to yous. Focus on what you love to do so you lot can practice more of information technology.

We've all worked on projects that weren't quite right for us or don't fit in with the larger body of work we've created. It's okay to go out those out. Brand sure that what you're showing people has consistency and reflects who yous are as a creative right now.

4. Publish your portfolio easily

Webflow makes it possible to go live with just a click of the Publish push. From either the designer or editor, publishing your website tin can happen in an instant. Publish to your own custom domain name or to Webflow's — either manner, it's a elementary process.

5. Keep your portfolio updated

Once you have a portfolio up and running, don't just forget almost it.

Your creative output changes over time. What was once your best work might non compare to what y'all're doing now. Each project builds on what came before it.

Most creatives never stop deepening their knowledge and expanding their skills. Let your portfolio evolve as you do.

Keeping your portfolio current shouldn't require a deep swoop into a design in gild to make changes. When yous build your online portfolio with Webflow, you become the power of Webflow's content direction arrangement (CMS). Featured projects tin be built as a office of a CMS collection. The result is a templated block of content that simply needs new text and images to change it upwards. Updating your portfolio, editing its content, and editing the design are all easy through Webflow.

This makes information technology easy to update the blueprint and content of your portfolio as web design trends evolve. Behance, Dribbble, Webflow Showcase are all slap-up places to cheque out to go along up with what's pop in pattern.

Alex Lingeman's portfolio hero clearly outlines his focus on detail, functionality and productivity. — Alex Lingeman's portfolio

Define your specialization and market your portfolio

Marketing yourself means knowing your niche. Define your area of specialization so that you can appeal to those clients you lot'd like to work with.

Maybe you lot're a author specializing in the health manufacture or a web programmer who works comfortably in tech and the startup earth. Stand out from the crowd of generalists by having a focus. Let all that you feature on your personal portfolio reflect your niche.

Of course, y'all may take a few different types of clients you lot've worked with, and it'south perfectly fine to include those in your trunk of work. Whatever the project, make sure information technology fits with your goals and shows off what you're capable of.

Have a presence on social media like LinkedIn and Facebook and share your portfolio with your followers. Accept out paid ads. Email contacts at your favorite companies a link to your portfolio. Link to it in job applications. Promote your portfolio to those who fall into your expanse of specialization.

A portfolio is a valuable tool in promoting your creative services. Take a focus and get it in forepart of the most eyes that you lot can.

Learn how to build a portfolio in Webflow in 21 days.