Pilcrow #22
Cold brew and some portfolio advices
Hey friends!
I hope you had a great week! I’ve just started my holidays (don’t forget to rest!); I’m spending time with the family, taking time for myself, and trying not to be in front of screens all day.
Here are today’s topics:
What I’m working on
Thoughts on keeping your portfolio updated
Interesting works of the week
What I’m working on
This week I spent a few hours rethinking the navigation on my personal website, as I wanted it to reflect better what I’m really doing nowadays. The short answer is a lot of stuff, while the long answer is that I:
design products and systems
build stuff on my own
provide design consulting for small/medium companies
share sneak peeks, early explorations, and concepts
love to explore other fields: 3D (both modelling and rendering), front-end (most recently with React, Next, and TypeScript), and other stuff
has a whole universe around cities, electrical elements, and energy
maybe offer mentoring sessions for junior designers?
The first rework is centered around the header, but I think my homepage can also better highlight the different parts of « Who is Yann? What does he currently building? What did he accomplish? What does his portfolio look like? Etc »
I’m still working on it, but here you can see the different versions of my header:
Thoughts on keeping your portfolio updated
TL;DR: Publish your portfolio, update it regularly with case studies, keep a private simple version, choose a system that suits you, prioritize content and copy over fancy layouts, and enjoy the process!
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You spent the last three months — maybe more, putting together a personal website that you’re proud of, gathering content and creating case studies around the work you did these last years, and finally, dared to hit the Publish button.
Well, first, congratulations! You’re now part of the very selected club of Designers who Managed to Finish Their Portfolio, a warm welcome from your peers!
Now comes the fun part. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the most difficult part, you already did it, but rather the part that relies 100% on:
your capacity to build discipline
your technical choices regarding your portfolio (CMS or not, for example)
how proud you are about your new projects vs. the ones you already have
As your portfolio is now live, people will (hopefully) land on it, browse through it, and watch your case studies. After a few years, you may need to update it to better reflect your actual level through a new selection of projects. And you’ll be tempted to redesign your portfolio, again, instead of just updating it.
While I think that the portfolio is a great exercise (as it requires a lot of discipline, courage, and honesty) in the times we’re actually experiencing, having an updated portfolio is your best chance to quickly find a new job if needed, no matter the reason.
Here are some tips to be better at updating your portfolio:
Have a private and a public portfolio. The public one is the one live on a website (Dribbble, Framer, Behance, Contra, hand-coded, whatever), I think having a simpler one on Notion can really help you, as you’ll be forced to keep things simple, write clearly goals, context, and outcomes without a fancy layout.
As soon as a project is done, write a case study. Yeap, discipline. This makes things so much easier when it comes to having an always up-to-date portfolio.
Choose a system that suits you. If you’re comfortable and quick with code, it’s totally fine to do everything yourself, I’ve been there and it’s great. If you prefer a solution like Framer, that’s fine too. And if you only have time to update a Dribbble/Behance/whatever, no problem at all. But please, do not spend more time than needed to set up a portfolio. Instead, spend time on your case studies, your copy, and how you present yourself.
Have fun!
Interesting works of the week
Vero True Food — Brand Identity + Website
DIRECTOR.CEDIM — Brand Identity
LiveSurface — Website
That’s all, friends — have a great Sunday! 🖤