Updated: Jan 10, 2024 By: Dessign Team
Are you a graphic designer who needs an online portfolio or needs to update your current portfolio but needs some inspiration? If you are struggling to create your online graphic design portfolio, all you need is to get some inspiration from others and get started to create your own.
It's easier than ever for any graphic designer to create a beautiful and fully responsive portfolio website to showcase your artwork. Your portfolio should showcase your best work to potential clients or employers so they can see your talent and process.
With your online portfolio, you can showcase your sketches, logos, illustrations, and mockups for anyone to better understand your style and design process. Your online portfolio is just like your resume but in a creative way showing the skillset you can offer to your potential clients.
So if you want to create a spectacular design portfolio to appeal to any creative agency, art directors and creative directors just get inspired by the best graphic design portfolio examples and write down what you like and dislike about each one, and then use that to create your own that fits your personality and skill set.
What is Graphic Design Portfolio?
A graphic design portfolio is one of the most important visual aspects of your achievement to potential clients or art directors looking for the next big talent to hire. For any graphic designer, an online portfolio is more important than a resume as it represents your talent from the visual aspect of what you had achieved, your style, and your personal growth.
It represents who you are as an artist and what kind of style you will deliver to your clients. It's very important for any designer to have online presents as they will add more artwork to their collection and can share their design with the community to grow and learn as a designer.
Best 10+ Graphic Design Portfolios for Your Inspiration
Below are some of the best examples of what a graphic design portfolio should look like and what it needs to have in order to be eye-catching: Motion graphics, original illustrations, storyboarding, branding, typography, color theory, and designs with examples of sketches from beginning to end product.
1. Alex Trochut
Alex's graphic design and branding portfolio have a beautiful and interactive grid-based portfolio layout if you like nice animations and aesthetic scrolling effects this would be a great example to get inspired from. The homepage is made up of one featured project on the left and grid-based projects on the right with categories and tiles under the feature images.
Once you click on any portfolio image it opens a new page with detail about the client, year, and county of origin, nice detail you can incorporate into your own portfolio website.
The logo is on the top left corner and the main navigation with social icons is on the top right, there is a very cool mouse effect where a circle follows the mouse movement giving a unique experience. This is a great graphic design portfolio example for anyone who loves the grid-based layout with nice animation effects.
2. Lauren Hom
Lauren Hom is a hand lettering artist with a knack for marketing who loves helping creatives and brands get more eyes on their work! A beautiful design portfolio website with a portrait photo of Lauren with a short description of what she does. Also, a great addition is adding clients you have worked with as you can see she worked with Google, Hallmark, Youtube, Adobe, Time, etc..
Under the main image and client, you will get to see her beautiful lettering illustrations in a grid style, once you click on any of her lettering work, it will open on a new page with a detailed description of the work and also more work examples so you get to know how each piece of work was done.
Lauren also has a blog section where she writes about her work or gives you marketing or illustration tutorials, great way to get found on Google and also teaches others extra exposure to your work. For any graphic designer having a blog is a must to reach more audience and get more connections.
3. Aries Moross
Aries is an award-winning graphic designer with a beautiful and colorful portfolio. If this is your type of design style then take a look a the portfolio for inspiration.
Aries's work is divided into several types of work from portraits, collaborations, geometric, and editorial to talks and interviews. If your graphic design portfolio has more mediums then look at Moress portfolio of how it's layout out with an easy-to-navigate fully responsive menu.
Aries is renowned for her hand-drawn typography. Moress work with type started in 2006 when they were designing flyers for indie club nights in London, and has since gone on to illustrate campaigns for brands such as Google, Nike, Disney, and Kiehl’s.
4. Ylimay
Ylimay is an art director and brand designer with a very unique portfolio full of interactive elements to showcase her unique style. Once you enter her website you will see animated text in the middle with her brand logo in the upper left corner and navigation in the right corner.
The large arrow will make you scroll down to see her artwork, with a very cool mouseover effect where you mouse over a tile and it shows up an image, you can browse her illustrations, set design, branding, and personal projects. Once you click on any of her artwork it will take you to a new page with a detailed description of how it was made and for whom.
Once again this is a very professional portfolio you can take inspiration from, Ylimay's design work is truly amazing to appreciate.
5. Craig Black
Craig Black specializes in bespoke artwork, installations, and live performance art, he believes in creating exciting and engaging visuals whilst maintaining originality across all of his work.
Craig shows his amazing portfolio in grid style layout with two columns of different sized, it's easy to navigate and get a quick glance at his amazing design work. Once you click on any of the images, a new page will show the detailed work of each individual project with a description and a video which is very cool and unique.
Craig has won admirers on a global scale thanks to his signature expression, ‘Acrylic Fusion', an incredibly versatile analog process of hand pouring layers of acrylic paint to create a unique and mesmerizing effect, loved by brands, galleries, and art collectors alike.
6. Chris Tammar
Chris's exciting images on this graphic designer website example give the site a unique visual look at his strategy and execution for each client. Once you click on any of his projects a new web page will open with very detailed information and visually present to see how his artwork was designed and created.
This is a very modern and unique portfolio website with a focus on great peace of artwork to show on your portfolio, sometimes showing just enough great design branding and creation will impress your potential clients or art director.
7. Maria Marie
Maria has a beautiful and well-designed portfolio website, with an amazing color scheme and fully responsive navigation. Very clean and modern-looking portfolio website is for anyone looking for inspiration, on art & creative direction, branding, photography, and patterns.
The beautiful overall website makes you just want to see more as you scroll down the page, the about section is very professional with a large portrait of Maria with an about me description where you can learn what makes her unique.
Also, the typography of the website is spectacular in every way, for any graphic designer looking to create their own portfolio website, typography is one of the most important aspects of your web aesthetic.
8. Stephanie Bruckler
Stefanie Bruckler is an Austrian Designer and Art Director working independently in New York City.
She specializes in branding, editorial design, and art direction. With a keen eye for detail, her work is known for its thoughtfulness and warmth.
Her portfolio is one of the best examples of what a professional and modern graphic design website should look like, very modern layout with amazing typography and layout. Large beautiful images of her work, with detailed descriptions of how it was made and for whom. We encourage you to navigate through her site to see how smoothly everything is in the layout and fits together as one.
With agency and client experiences across a range of industries including fashion, beauty, hospitality, luxury, and publishing, she has had the opportunity to work with brands such as Tiffany&Co., Bergdorf Goodman, Maison Margiela, Airbnb, and Nike.
9. Ben Eli
Ben is a multidisciplinary designer whose practice spans graphic design, art direction, and creativity, with a love of rules, typography, and breaking rules. Very clean and easy-to-navigate portfolio site, with unique animation and smooth effects to give it a nice twist to the user experience.
Ben shows seven of his best pieces of work, just enough to understand his style and detail of work, you will get to know his skills and the process of his work just by clicking on one of his artworks. You will get the full detail of information on how the piece was made, for whom, and what the process was like.
Clean, simple, and straight to the point beautiful and professional-looking portfolio to take inspiration from, Ben did an amazing job putting his site together for any potential client or art director to admire.
10. Ana Bea
Ana Beatriz Fernandes is a multidisciplinary designer based in London. If you looking for a super unique graphic design portfolio example to admire and take inspiration from, then Ana's portfolio website is top of the list.
With cool text and images animation in different sizes and shapes this portfolio is truly unique in every way. We encourage you to spend some time clicking on her artwork and see how everything works together with fully responsive navigation to how she presents her work to her viewers.
From brief to solution to the process she shows you how each of her projects started and how it ended with a detailed description of each one you get to understand her process of work and thinking from user experience to user interface on how the journey works in her presentation.
11. Valentina
Valentina is an Italian graphic designer based in Barcelona. She specializes in editorial design, art direction, and brand identity. Her web portfolio is very unique and creative to showcases her professional-looking artwork. If you looking for inspiration on a truly amazing and creative website we encourage you to take a look at Valentina's site.
With a unique layout of her site with horizontal and vertical aspects of aesthetics you can tell she is very creative when it comes to design. This is not a simple grid-based website but visually creative with amazing animated effects even the mouse icon is different to fit the overall website design.
Also if you like dark black-looking portfolio sites this will be a true inspiration for you to take into consideration when laying out your personal design site.
Best tips and techniques for creating a graphic design portfolio
1. Include only your best artwork
As you can see from the expert's graphic design portfolio in the above examples, most designers only include their best work. Even if you have a few pieces of work, don't put the work you are not proud of, only show the ones that are meaningful to you and you can talk about it.
I see some designers only having five of the best work they did and it was enough to tell what their style is and how professional their skills are. So at the end of the day it's all about quality vs quantity of work, be smart and spend time polishing your best work and removing the average work from your portfolio.
2. Create and explain case studies – Describe the creative process
From my past experience with over 20+ years in the design field, I can tell that your clients or art directors want to see your process of thinking and how you work from brief to solution to process and how you come up with the ideas to create the final product.
I never meet an art director who only wanted to see the final product as they have no idea how you come up with it or how your thinking process works. So make sure to describe the user experience process you use in full detail so even the potential client has an idea of what it takes to create the final piece of branding, website, or typography.
3. Don't forget your resume and contact info
I know this should be not even a question of what to include in your graphic design portfolio but some creatives forget the most important and never add their resume and contact info. I know your portfolio is your resume but if you looking to get a job in the creative field the HR department will need to add your resume and contact info to their system.
If you are missing that information they will not consider you as they don't have time to search for your info to contact you or check your resume if one is missing so be smart and add your resume to your about or contact pages, and make sure your resume is as creative as your personality and fits your overall design style.
4. Show your personality and style
As you can see from our best graphic design portfolio examples, each portfolio is different and the style and personality are totally unique to each designer.
If for example you take the portfolio of Maria Marie and compare it to the portfolio of Ana Bea the two designers are so different in their work and personality. If you ask each of them to design one artwork and then show you will have no problem telling which artwork belongs to which designer because of the style and personality they design.
So your style and personality should be so unique and creative that I can recognize your artwork and only want to work with you specifically rather than someone else.
Graphic Design Portfolio Ideas
1. Redesign the existing website
One of the best design ideas you can do if you don't have enough portfolio pieces to showcase on your personal site is to take any websites you like and totally re-design. If you are a true coffee drinker take for example Strarbuck and redesign their website with a new and updated user experience and user interface.
Maybe there is something you don't like about your favorite website, one thing that you would do differently if you were assigned to re-design the website. What would you do differently and how?
You can easily show the before and after photos of how you took your favorite website and added your personal style and then show it on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, you never know it could go Viral.
2. Create graphic design materials for a made-up company
Think about a company you would like to own and operate how would you design the branding, logos, typography, and website? From brief to solution show your process of thinking.
If someone gives you 100K to come up with the company and do all the branding for it, how would you begin, sketch it on paper, then on to the computer, and then into the print and final stages?
Once you are done with this practice, you will have a logo, business cards, posters, and website to add to your portfolio with a great description and process of how you did it and what challenges you faced, and how you come up to final conclusion of solving those problems.
3. Redesign a logo for a brand you love
Everyone has their favorite brand, and every brand has a unique logo, now take that logo and re-design it. Make 3-5 logo variations and then ask your friends to pick 3 and then work on those 3 to make it even better. So now you have 5-10 different brand variation logos you can showcase on your site.
Talk about the challenges and how the process was to create that logo. Imagine this brand you love actually contacted you and ask for a new logo. What would be your first process of execution? What questions would you ask? How would you start designing that logo? On paper or on the computer?
This will make show your process of thinking and this is what your potential clients or art director are looking for in the process of you coming up with ideas and challenging and pushing yourself to design the ultimate experience.
4. Take part in a design challenge
One of the best ways to get some exposure and challenge yourself is to take part in a design challenge. Every designer should do this because even if you don't win the challenge you are still a winner because you will have something to show on your portfolio and you can use it as potential client work.
You were assigned a detailed brief of what a client wants, an example would be a new logo with the business cart. They gave you detail of their current log or not and give you a detailed description of what they wanted to be. Now you as a designer have to come up with a creative way to deliver what they want it.
Websites like 99Designs have many opportunities for new or experienced graphic designers in all kinds of categories to challenge themselves and see how they can be better and learn from it. I also took part in a few challenges of redesigning a website, and a few logos it's not easy as the competition is hard, but at the end of the day, you will have more artwork to show for.
Always improve your graphic design portfolio with new examples
Your graphic design portfolio is never done as you challenge yourself with new opportunities your portfolio goes with you. Each year you should remove old work and replace it with new ones as you get better and better so does your portfolio.
Your design will grow each year if you challenge yourself with new opportunities, as long as you don't stay in the same place neither will your portfolio.
The best graphic designers in the world always seek new challenges and enter new competitions in order to stay on top. Learn new skillset, if you only design websites, or logos, try doing some 3D characters it will challenge you but this is the only way a designer grows.
Personal background and recommendations
My recommendation to any graphic designer is to always learn new things and grow to new challenges. After graduating college in 2003 with a Master of Arts in Computer Graphics and 3D Animation I always stay on top of technology and design. It's not easy to follow every new trend but it will make you better as a person and more creative as a designer.
Once you stop learning your design stops growing, everything changes so fast that to be a truly great designer you have to learn, teach and improve your skills and also communication skills so you can encourage new designers to be more curious about what design means and where it's going and how we can stay on top of it.
