To create a great portfolio, you will need some time, a lot of time. Good design takes work, and getting all your work together takes time too. This is the main reason why many designers like me have a half-baked portfolio. You know, the shoemaker with bad shoes…
This said, you shouldn’t give up, there are ways to speed up the portfolio creation process. Let’s take a look at the tools that can save you a lot of time.
Presenting your work
One of the time-consuming tasks when creating a portfolio site is to prepare all of your projects for display, which can be much harder than it seems. To do it, there are many mock-ups that can be very helpful.
1. Stationery mockup
Give a good overview of the corporate identites you have created with this great mockup that you can easily customize.
2. Brochure mockup
A photorealistic brochure mockup that will help you to present your brochure project in a nice way. Brochures are very hard to photograph properly, so this mockup should make things easier.
3. Poster mockup template
A template with four variants to show off your posters.
4. Responsive web mock-ups
Beautiful devices to display your responsive sites in every device.
5. Trifold brochure mock-up
If you have designed some of those small trifold brochure, this mock-up will let you introduce these projects well.
Building your website
Nowadays building a portfolio site is quite easy, but moving from one system to another is still a daunting task, so make sure you choose well at first.
6. WordPress
WordPress powers something like 20% of the web now, and a part of this is made of designers’ portfolios. If you are looking for a solution that is free, powerful and relatively easy to install, look no further than WordPress.
7. Portfolio systems
Using a portfolio system to create your portfolio should make perfect sense but it’s probably not the best way to go. The first default is that you’ll get your data on external servers, and you’ll have to pay if you want to have your own domain name. If you still want to go with this, you can check out Behance, Cargo Collective or Carbonmade.
8. Website builders
Website builders are a good way to get around the technicalities of building a site. The only downside is that you’ll have to pay to get some pro features. If you don’t know which website builder to choose, give a try to Wix or Squarespace, they are industry leaders for a good reason.
WordPress portfolio templates
If you have chosen to use WordPress for your portfolio, you will need to customize it to make it fit your needs. If you are a coder, you can easily create a custom WordPress theme,
9. Yin & Yang
A beautiful, minimalistic WordPress portfolio theme. It comes with a filterable portfolio, tileable patterns, localisation and video support, among other things.
10. uDesign
The uDesign WordPress theme is probably one of the most comprehensive WordPress themes you’ll find out there. It can be customize with many different layouts for the portfolio pages, homepages, sliders, backgrounds,…
11. King Size
A theme that comes with full-screen pictures in the background and tons of awesome gallery features.
Portfolio icons
Icons can be a good complement to enhance your portfolio’s readability and design. Thanks to some generous designers, you can get many icons for free.
12. Aroma icons
A gorgeous icon set offered by Smashing Magazine. It comes with many formats and technology icons that can prove useful in the design of a portfolio.
13. Soft Media icons set
A minimalist and gorgeous icon set that can be a great tool for your portfolio site. Don’t miss the second set.
14. Quartz icon pack
A very useful icon pack that comes with cool social media icons and Adobe software icons too.
About the Author
Mirko Humbert
Mirko Humbert is the editor-in-chief and main author of Designer Daily and Typography Daily. He is also a graphic designer and the founder of WP Expert.