11 reasons why I don’t show my portfolio.
I know this is going to sound crazy to most of you: I don’t have a public portfolio on display on my website. Which seems very counterintuitive for a Designer.
This article is not meant to be a suggestion to ditch your own. This works for me for reasons I’m going to elaborate but might be the wrong choice for everybody else (it could be for me as well, but since making this decision I have already collaborated with clients who never saw my portfolio).
So let’s begin.
My name is Fabien. For the past 25 years I’ve worn many hats in the Design industry: Creative Director, UX Lead, DesignOps Manager, Web/Graphic/Brand Designer. But I’ve also been a DJ and the first Italian male food blogger. This last one doesn’t really matter here, but I’m half Italian half French therefore food must always be mentioned. :)
In all these years I worked on hundreds of projects in very diverse areas, for local businesses and the Big Brands alike.
If anything, my portfolio should rather display a plethora of very diverse creative works and highlight the big clients. Yet I decided to take all down.
1. Non Disclosure Agreements
The first reason is pretty obvious, even though it might sound like a very convenient excuse.
Pretty much all of my agency work of the past 10 years (since I moved to London) is covered by very strict non-disclosure agreements (NDA). And not just a warning not to disclose any detail of the project while working on it, but even not to publicise my role or the fact my company was delivering it. Ever.
Personally, I never liked these restrictions and I find them very detrimental as well, in a sense that it becomes hard for an agency to attract new clients and good talent if it can’t publicly display anything it does (yes: agencies should show their portfolio).
But the agencies I worked for in these past years all agreed with such terms to ‘protect’ their clients, therefore those projects cannot appear in my personal portfolio. Among others, I worked for fintech, insurance, healthcare companies and the restrictions make sense when working with very sensitive data or for projects that could attract malicious attention. But why still enforce it after the project’s been published?
Anyway, you could argue that I shouldn’t care at all, now that I left those agencies… But if you were to hire me, would you rather appreciate my integrity or see that I breach agreements at any given opportunity?
2. Clear work-life separation
A good recommendation to any designer without a portfolio (or with undisclosable work) would be to showcase side projects.
Absolutely. But these are not really my thing either. My side projects are mainly outside of the Design sphere: in Photography, Music, Literature.
Not to mention all the spare time I save for my family.
Even though Design has always been my passion and my life, to the point that I can say I breathe Design, I have so many interests in life that I can’t (and don’t want to) solely focus on that. Therefore my side work is elsewhere and doesn’t belong to my design portfolio.
If you’re curious to see my photography, some of it is on Instagram: @fabienb
3. More is less
25 years is a long time. And a lot of projects.
A portfolio like mine would contain lots of them in order to attract as many clients as possible. That seems to be the sensible thing to have. But as you know, when there are too many options it’s hard to make a decision. And when there are too many projects in a portfolio, it’s difficult to judge and find the one that’s right for a specific client in a timely fashion.
It can be overwhelming and a waste of client/recruiter’s time.
Now, I hear you say I should limit that to the last, what, 3 years? But before that I may have had 5 years of experience working with a famous brand… So should I simply scrap that and not let similar brands hire me and take advantage of my expertise?
Let’s just say it’s complicated. And I’m all for simplifying things.
It would be a lot more valuable to create ad hoc pages to pitch my profile to clients, based on their industry. I would pick a handful of works to showcase in order to focus on an effective proposition rather than a portfolio.
But 25 years of projects in an online portfolio? Uh, no thanks.
4. Published works are already outdated
Even if I were to disclose projects or publish all my work, time has passed and therefore those projects would be already outdated.
You know how fast things evolve nowadays, so it’s likely that you would be looking at something that doesn’t have much relevance anymore.
I wish I could say my work is timeless, and perhaps some is.
But in this day and age a Designer should simply accept that their work, particularly in the Digital field, is very much volatile.
I have also been on a sabbatical this past year, travelling the world. Quite a lot, actually (even going literally full circle). And this adds to the age of the projects I worked on… Mind you, some might have even been entirely replaced already.
5. Projects ownership
Over the past decade or so, I did grow to a Creative Direction role, which meant most of my daytime job was hands-off or I got involved in the initial phases to prototype and pitch ideas to the clients.
As a consequence, either my design evolves during development and becomes almost unrecognisable in the published work (hey, it’s a good thing: projects change based on user’s feedback, research and testing… It’s UX baby!), or I feel like the published work is ultimately more creditable to my team than it is to me. Which again would be a good thing, because it contributed to my designers’ team growth.
Sure, I kicked off the idea and the direction, worked closely with my team and the clients and ensured delivery and post phases were all equally top notch. But is that still my work? And can this honestly feature in my own portfolio of creations?
How can I let you judge all I have done operating in the background from a few visuals I did not effectively published myself?
I can take you through the processes, of course. I can tell you how my role impacted the projects, yes. So let’s talk.
6. Mentorship and Leadership are not visual
OK, so, is there anything in my role that I can sell if I can’t use my designs?
Of course, in all these years directing Design and UX in different companies I can confidently say I have provided effective mentorship and leadership.
You want a leader that leaves a mark. One for whom tears flow when they leave or gets introduced as “the person who taught me everything I know” by their team.
Everybody wants a leader that drive towards what’s best for the company they work for, and their clients, but doesn’t forget to be a team player caring about the other members deeply and mentoring those who will eventually take his place. All while nurturing a healthy and fruitful relationship with clients and stakeholders.
I could easily tell you I am this sort of leader and I would love to show it to you. But then these are skills you can’t really display visually in a portfolio, can you?
If we are to talk, I can take you through the successes (and failures) and elaborate on what all of this means, but that’s not really something one can judge simply glancing at a portfolio.
7. The hard truth about mental health
We’re entering personal rather than professional here…
If you did read my article about my recent struggle and where this took me, you already know that for a while I wasn’t in a particularly happy place.
And I’m afraid my mental health problems have had a clear impact on my work and vice-versa.
Thanks to the work of my team, we still published good stuff together and created successes for our clients. But I would have left that period as a gap in my portfolio anyway because of what it reminds me. And not knowing why, this gap could raise concerns in a client looking at it, ultimately pushing them away.
I talk openly and honestly about that, I just don’t enjoy showing that side.
8. More of the same
Back to the professional side of things, one of the many drawbacks of an online portfolio is that you are always showcasing what you have already done (and that is lapalissian).
What happens then, is that you get hired to do those same things over and over because that’s where you proved your skills already.
And (tragically) this is true at a very granular level: for example I know of great illustrators who can draw pretty much anything but then published a couple of works with, say, pinups and then all they get hired for is drawing more pinups.
Don’t get me wrong, this could be perfectly fine if your aspiration is to become the best pinup illustrator in the world, and there’s designers giving talks at conferences about how this actually helped them. But to a lot of creatives this could become quite frustrating as they’ll find themselves in the same endless routine loop.
And guess what? I’m that creative.
9. I want to work on the NEXT big thing
A direct consequence of the previous point… You can appreciate now that I don’t particularly enjoy doing the same thing over and over or rest on the laurels of my (and my clients’) success.
I know it’s counterintuitive, as you would normally use what you learned in a project to make the next one better and play to your strengths. But actually what really drives me as a designer is to continuously challenge myself and hopefully learn something new every day.
I work hard to master the skills required to succeed, but then I feel the urge to move to mastering another one. And then another one.
I’m eager to learn new things and my curiosity drives everything I do.
The journey can be as interesting as the destination. At times one could feel in a perennial loop of mediocrity, always starting afresh something they’re not comfortable with. But learning, maybe going through a few failures and then succeeding again, is part of a growth that always makes you better and stronger. You learn different ways to find solutions, and can discern better the one that solves your problems best.
Being hired to work on a similar project to one in my portfolio, would not allow me to learn anything new and then grow.
And copying myself over and over would also be the wrong thing to do for my clients’ business because…
10. What you want me to do is understand you, your business, your clients
… because that previous work was effective for that particular client, but their mileage may vary considerably, even if they happen to have a very similar target audience.
What you really want from me is to understand you, your business and your clients.
If I don’t do that and provide you with a copy of another project, simply with your skin applied on top, you won’t have the success you aim for and consequently blame my work for that.
A portfolio is often viewed as a catalogue from which to choose a product and somehow reuse that. But my work for you needs to be tailored to you alone to achieve maximum success.
And I truly believe in this, whether it’s an icon for an app or a long-term digital strategy, a UX consultancy or a branding exercise. Whatever the work, you are unique and so is the solution that suits you.
I can re-use tools and take advantage of what I learned from previous projects, but on the line are your own needs, your own clients, your own success.
11. Hire (me) for attitude, retain for skills
So now you know why you won’t find a public portfolio on my personal website.
But let me wrap this up with a suggestion that is not necessarily specific to me: hire for attitude (and then retain for skills).
You think you need to see a portfolio, because in there you might find that a person has the design flair and skills you would like to introduce in your team. But you can’t possibly know if the person will fit in your company culture and be a nice colleague or team member.
And to me, this has always been the far more important aspect.
Also, remember that skills can always be learned.
You need to go far beyond a portfolio to find who’s right for you.
Hopefully this has somehow tickled your interest and you want to discuss furthermore if we can collaborate on something that would make you, your users and I happy and successful.
So let’s talk. Let me understand how I can help you.
“A person isn’t solely defined by the work they do. They are defined by their experiences and passions that reflect their point of view on life and thus the way they solve problems.” — TIFFANY EATON
