An online portfolio allows you to show your skills and qualities to a possible employer. Because of this, your portfolio should include necessary work samples and process samples that will allow potential employers to evaluate if you would be a good fit for their company. Your site must speak for you before you are even interviewed. It's also important that your portfolio is relevant and professional and that there are absolutely no grammar or spelling mistakes. Everything mentioned on your resume should have a place in your portfolio because otherwise it is left unrepresented. You can include examples of your "soft skills" and qualities to not only mention, but demonstrate your abilities to do what everyone says they can do: communicate, work in a group, work hard, etc.). Because we are graphic designers, creativity is a major portion of our portfolio as well, but it needs not be to the point of clutter and slow or unruly navigation. I read in this article that it is good to keep font choices and color choices to no more than three. Your portfolio should represent you and showcase your abilities; it should show who you are, what you do and how you think. Your portfolio should be able to stand alone, without a need for your explanation about anything.
Your portfolio should have either the focus of getting hired or the focus of obtaining clients. Before designing your portfolio, if you are aiming to get hired, you should try to get inside prospective boss' head and design for him or her. They have undoubtedly looked through many, many portfolios and will be hoping that yours stands out. So make it stand out! In this article, it mentions that the first thing one employer does is critique your portfolio site. Upon passing that inspection, the work is looked at. Only if the work is good, will the employer visit the about page or blog or any other pages you have included. This article also says that "a potential employer will probably make up their mind within the first half-dozen pieces you show - if you've got the goods, get them to the front of the portfolio so they act as a hook. Certainly when I look through portfolios, if I didn't see what I liked early on I wouldn't bother going much further. And if I did go further and unearthed better work buried deep in the site, I'd inevitably wonder why it wasn't shown early on, leaving questions about the candidate's understanding of their own work." This shows how important it is to get a second opinion about your work. Your portfolio is a very personal thing and chances are you've been working with the pieces for a long time. It never hurts to get a second, third, or fourth opinion as to how good your work is. Then you can take everyone's opinions or suggestions into mind and display what you feel is your best work first. I also don't think it's a good idea to show all of your good work (more than just your very best) on the front and leave only the near-rejects for the inside. Then the employer will doubt your ability to produce good work in quantity. Another tip besides getting right into your work is to explain your work. Answering the questions: "Who was the client? What was the brief? What problem was it solving? How did your work solve their needs?" will give the potential employer more of a feel as to where the project is coming from and a better understanding for you and your problem-solving process. Another tip is to make your portfolio "fast, accessible and simple. If you want to show your interactive creativity, it's best to do it IN the portfolio, not on it." There is an important balance between usability and showing your work creatively. It's important that you base your site off of intuitive concepts. Having large and detailed pictures of your work is extremely important as well.
If you are trying to promote a freelance business through your portfolio, you must consider what people you want as clients want to see in your site. Testimonials, client lists and good writing will do a lot to help you with potential customers. It's also important to explain your services and how your work for other clients has helped them. A good idea would be to include statistics as well to help persuade the prospective client that you are confident of being able to help them...whatever they need and you will produce good results for them. In a business portfolio, it's also not as important that you show all your work, so long as you show the best pieces. It's also important to have an easy contact link because prospective clients will obviously need to contact you.
It's also best to show work that fits with your prospective firm's work, though it would be beneficial to show that you are diverse as well. It's also good to use technology that you know that is also pertinent to the type(s) of design you do. Making a simple site and adding technologies to them is a great way to do this. According to this article, your portfolio should be limited to the best work you have for the target area of design in which you are interested. Conversely, "mixed bag portfolios" can demonstrate that you do several types of work and you do them well, thus it is easier to promote your work because you have more of it (though still try to keep the numbers low).
I think it is important to have a contact section, a portfolio section, and an about or profile section. Including blogs are also becoming popular. It's important to feature your logo (and tagline if you're looking for customers). Personally, I wouldn't want a one-page portfolio because it crams everything in one place and would have a really long page length. Even if you organized by categories going down the page, it would still hardly have the appearance of being organized. In addition, if you are diverse in your abilities, it makes it easier for your potential employer or client to find the specific type(s) of work about which they are curious.
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