Why You Should Make A Portfolio Site
A lot of creative slashies aka multi passionate or multi-hyphenates have a bunch of different projects but have no idea how to show off this experience in a cohesive way. Most portfolio sites focus on one skillset or domain.
As someone who’s neurodivergent, I’ve had many hyper fixations over the years and now I have a diverse skill set. I did a whole deep dive into my creative weirdo origin story.
Disclaimer: no worries if you don’t feel like building out something like a website; LinkedIn or a similar platform will work just fine.
Since I’m a web designer, I wanted to build out a portfolio website so that each domain has it’s own page and can easily changed.
At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make this site live but after going through the whole process I decided to go for it.
Where else can I show off my writing, weird graphic design projects and AI projects?
Here are a few reasons why building a visual portfolio or portfolio website might be the right move for you.
Reminder Of How Far You’ve Progressed
Having a benchmark to remember how far you’ve progressed in your skills and work is so important. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in what you’re building or creating right now and the pull of future projects.
Looking back can give you the confidence or reassurance that you actually know what you’re doing. Imposter syndrome, who? :)
Many years ago, I decided to get serious about learning graphic design skills like Photoshop. I joined a creative Meetup group and got the Adobe subscription. It was so much fun creating work for myself, expanding my skills, experimenting, and getting feedback from other creatives.
I put these graphic design pieces all over my blog, Kristen Morris Writes, (RIP) and they’ve been languishing in my external hard drive since.
When building out this portfolio site named after my Instagram handle, tulips and tornadoes, I wanted to bring back these designs. Thankfully I still really like most of them. This is a good segue into the next reason to build a portfolio.
Remember All The Cool Stuff You’ve Done
Everyone could use a remind about all the cool stuff you did. Sometimes you need to remind yourself that you’ve created some cool stuff and having a portfolio to thumb through is one way to do that.
From personal passion projects to client work there’s sure to be some impressive work. This year I’ve revisited a lot of projects from the archives of my computer. Everything from my design projects to short stories. Even if it isn’t perfect I still appreciate it.
It’s always a pleasant surprise to be impressed by work my past self did. In many ways I’ve progressed but I still love the majority of my creations. This is also the trick to constantly comparing yourself to others. You’re only supposed to compare yourself to your past self.
When I’m feeling extra productive, I take the time to tweak things a bit or just totally start over with the end result in mind. This is what going to a writing retreat in Paris and getting inspired with a boost of creativity will do to you.
Make Improvements As Needed
If you’re an overachiever, hi hello it’s me, you can go back and improve things even more. I’m all for prioritizing the done over the perfect but there’s no reason not to improve something if you have the bandwidth to do it.
Before going live and showing off your projects online you can change things to improve them. A few of the blog posts and essays I wrote are pretty good but some light editing like changing the formatting to make them easier to read is a no brainer.
I’ll post some sneak peeks and then add the links later when it’s live. Should be next week, finger’s crossed!
Ready To Build Your Portfolio Site?
This is a great project to DIY with some free resources like the Redesignia blog or totally outsource a custom site and take tech off your to do list.
