Published in · 5 min read · Feb 19, 2023
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As a brand designer, having a portfolio is important for success in your career, especially if you’re a junior designer looking to start out in design. A portfolio is a document or website which showcases your best projects/case studies. Projects here could be from real clients or fictional ones.
When I started taking design seriously (November 2021), I decided to work on a PDF portfolio for myself. At the beginning of this year (2023), I decided it was time for a portfolio refresh. I had done a lot more work in the past 2 years, plus I had gotten better than what was in my old portfolio. I also intend to apply to some new design roles and position myself for incoming opportunities.
I spent 2 weeks researching how to structure my new portfolio and designing a new one in Illustrator. Here’s a breakdown of how I did.
For quick scanning, here’s a TLDR summary.
- Set up your document dimensions (Recommended — 1386x768)
- Create a clean cover page and introduction.
- Showcase your work in sections.
- Add a thank you note and contact info for follow-up.
- Review the entire document for consistency.
Let dive into the details.
1. Set up your document dimensions
It's important to pick appropriate page dimensions because your portfolio will be viewed on different screens, from laptops to tablets, and even smartphones.
I decided to use the standard desktop screen size of 1386x768 pixels for the artboards which work well on landscape view on most devices. I also created 25 artboards for a start, to accommodate all the pages I’ll be working on.
2. Start with a clean cover page and introduction
I designed my cover page to contain my name and the branch of design I’m into. I also decided to add the month and date to show that it’s an updated portfolio.
My intro page highlights 3 major things about myself.
- What I do.
- My design experience and
- What I do outside design).
This together with a clean portrait of myself formed a pretty nice intro page. Feel free to also add some humour to your intro page. I added that I love mangoes :)
3. Break your portfolio into sections and showcase your work
I decided to break my portfolio into sections of work I’m interested in as a brand designer which are.
- Brand identities and systems
- Layouts and Publications
- Marketing graphics
- Motion design and
- Logo collection and marks.
Each of these sections has a description of what each project is about, the project deliverables, images of the project and links to view the full case study where necessary.
For a running theme, I decided to present my projects using a grid-like structure. This helped me to easily organise all the images.
If your project also had an impact on the brand you worked on, either on the business’ numbers, customer acquisition, audience turnout etc. I suggest you share these as well. This helps to show that your designs are not just ‘pretty’ but also help achieve business goals and objectives.
4. Add a thank you note and your contact information
This is the last section of your portfolio, so you’ll want to thank the recruiter (or whoever is going through your portfolio) for their time and nudge them to contact you for the next step.
I decided to showcase my contact info in form of a phone contact card, with clickable links to my email, resume and social media pages. I felt this was a more interactive way of displaying information at a glance to potential recruiters.
5. Review the document for any errors and check for consistency
When you’re done displaying all your work, take time to scan through all the pages to ensure consistency with how presented each project and the headers/footers on each page. Ideally, you should consider this before you start designing.
It’s important to have a running theme across your portfolio to show your level of professionalism. Feel free to also show your personal brand with your colours, tone of voice etc. Also, do a spell check on the document by pressing Ctrl + I for Windows users (or Command + I for Mac users)
6. Add clickable links using Adobe Acrobat (Bonus Tip)
When you’re done with your portfolio in Illustrator, you can insert clickable links using Adobe Acrobat’s Edit PDF Feature. This helps to make your document interactive, allowing employers easily access more of your work, case studies, resume or even contact you faster.
And that’s how to design your brand design portfolio in Adobe Illustrator. I suggest you work on building your own PDF Portfolio and get prepared to take advantage of design opportunities as they come by. In case you have more questions on this topic, I made a video a while back on YouTube which has 6k+ views where I explain more about building your portfolio in Illustrator.
