Time to Update Your Portfolio

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

I’m learning that there are quite a few online portfolio sites (many free) where you can upload images from individual projects and direct people to it. Most of these focus on graphic and web design, but allow high quality, slick uploads of images, and allow organization by project. The downside is a danger of getting lost among a crowd of other equally compelling images.

However, in the spirit of being able to control your own online presence, I would say that these sites are great augments to your own portfolio held on your own website, but you should still have a place that you own where you can direct a potential hirer directly to see your finished work.

Please visit this post, where I discuss a physical portfolio and how to organize it, and this one, about keeping visual records.

How are your physical portfolios looking? Is it time to update the images with more recent projects? Maybe the slower time over the holidays (if that exists) is a good time to set aside a couple of hours for that task.

Here are a couple of ideas for Digital Portfolios

  • Consider creating a slide show for your website with your best images rotating through.
  • Make a short film of yourself showing your physical portfolio and talking about it, intercut with portfolio images. Bring the images to life with stories as if in an interview (but keep it brief). Post it to YouTube and your social media. Remember to include your contact information at the head and the tail. Just as with video resumes, keep it brief and include [only] one clear call to action, such as “Visit my website at …”
  • Clean up your images and add text if needed, with a graphics program such as Canva.com. That is my favorite graphic design site, although there are others. I’ve used it to create many labelled images for this blog and elsewhere. I just now made a quick compilation of images. Then I can use that on other sites, such as my LinkedIn and possibly my IMDb page.
Here’s a collage of images. Hmm…perhaps I could put my short resume on the back
  • My daughter has recommended carrd.co which is one online place to make a free “one page” website. I rather like Template #68 as a great way to show a very clean and neat sequence of images – but it is definitely worth exploring.

Need help with your portfolio choices or organization? Contact me.