rl Creative

Hello, my dear people! Today is Monday. The weather isn't the best, at least here – in Estonia, but I'm already feeling how December is coming

Remember my last post about Freelancing? As you remember, I wrote about what strategies you can use to get more clients, and also mentioned about creating yourself a portfolio with some done works. Today I'm also going to talk a bit about portfolios. But this time, more closely and I'll give you some additional tips on how to get more clients with your portfolio

Avoiding Mistakes

So, let's start. Have you laready tried my previous tips? I bet nobody did that Yep, it takes time, a lot of time to create a really good portfolio. How it can be done? Quite easily. Some people start with opening photoshop and drawing some examples. Some people start with browsing through web searching for examples of good portfolios. Neither of them start from right thing. And I'll tell you why.

I had made the same mistakes several times, before I understood, what I was doing wrong. First time I began creating a portfolio layout in Photoshop and when it was almost ready I thought, that I should check out how other portfolios look like. And I looked... After that I deleted my sketch and there was a big delay in my work. Second time I thought, that I should better look at other websites before creating my own portfolio. So, I began browsing. I did that for several hours and when I finished I had sooo many ideas that I didn't know, what I really want. I wanted everything, some kind of awesome crazy flash based portfolio and updating-friendly php script in one pack with a lot of design elements. It was easier to create 10 various portfolios using different designs, than to create the one I wanted. So, browsing through portfolios was a bit wrong idea.

Good Start

So, first thing you have to do is prepare yourself Take a cup of coffee, put some music on background, take a piece of paper and begin sketching. Yes, sketching...on a pure white paper with and ordinary pencil, not the one you have by clicking Shift-B several times while being in Photoshop (Sorry Mac users, I don't know your keyboard shortkey for Brush/Pencil). Describe some ideas for yourself. What kind of design you need? Should it be minimalistic or full of design elements? Should it be animated or static? Should it be Flash based or Wordpress blog-styled? How many categories will you have?

It doesn't make any sence of having many categories, group your works before you have 4-5 categories. Think out, how the works will be shown, think about size of thumbnails and how the will be shown.

When this part is done, you can now open your browser and search for cool portfolios to get some inspiration. But stick to your needs. If you decided to create a flash-based portfolio, then search for flash based, not a blog-based, otherwise you will return to my situation.

Showcase

To search for a good portfolios you just have to login (or signup, if you haven't done this before) to some social network and search there, cause lots of Design Gurus post there very good links In my previous post about freelancing I added some examples of good portfolios. This time won't be an exception. Here is a list of very creative portfolios.

Enila.fr

Very cool flash based portfolio in two colors - black and almost pure magenta (with a 40% of yellow). Very simple and minimalistic.

mullerphoto.com

Awesome JavaScript based portfolio with a simple functionality and very easy to understand how it works

madelikeme.com

Groovy and simple grid based and Lightbox powered portfolio. Its style and colors totally represent the works

dannyblackman.com

Minimalistic with a white background and cool one click scrolling from work to work is very attractive and simple. After a while you catch yourself scrolling from one work to another without even mentioning it

edpeixoto.com

Cool darkstyle and groovy portfolio with awesome design elements and perfect scrolling effect.

adncom.fr

Very cool and clean portfolio made in positive colors

Also visit my previous article about freelancing. There you'll find more examples.

Tips about creating portfolio

So, you need some tips about creating a portfolio? Well, here you go. What is the reason of creating a portfolio? Just because other designers have?

NO. the reason is that you need to get clients and you have to show them something. And you don't have to be a genius to understand one simple thing - if client don't like your portfolio, he won't order anything from you. So, you need a bit of analyzing, who is your potential client. Is it a young company or quite old? How many of your potential clients will understand the tendence of modern design? For you some designs can be cool enough, but client may say that it's dirt, it's crap, it's a piece of shit or something more terrible To avoid such things, always ask yourself: "Who is your potential client?"

If you will be able to design a portfolio your potential clients will like, then you definitely get lots of orders from them. Yep, it's a bit crappy, cause Clients never know what they want, but still...they are those, who pay money and if you want to get money, then you have to do what they need It's some kind of prostitution, but what can we do about it? Convince client that modern design is cool and awesome? Well, if the person is not very young, then probably he won't understand it. So, we can do totally nothing about it

Conclusion

Organize yourself and try to do everything step-by-step. More analyzing will help you to do user-friendly interface in your portfolio and it means, that more potential clients will understand what is where. But don't forget, that you are a designer and even simple design can contain awesome and crazy design elements

Cheers and be creative!

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