Homeless Designers
Every once in a while, someone will retweet me or favorite my tweet, and by curiosity, I’ll end up on their Twitter page trying to find out more about this person. I’ll read their short bio and it will say something like, “I’m a designer.” Oh, nice. Let me click on your website link. “Coming soon…”
Your website is your home. It’s a place where you can experiment, write, code, design, think, iterate, blog, code, play, tinker, develop, and ultimately improve. It’s also a place where potential clients can find you. With that said, why are there so many designers without a personal website?
NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME
One of the main reasons why so many designers don’t have their own portfolio website is because they have such a hard time pleasing themselves. It is hard to design when you are the client. You are your own worst critic. I’ve personally gone through this stage myself. I don’t know how many different unfinished PSD’s I have of my personal website. The key to designing for yourself is to “Just do it!” Create a deadline for yourself and meet it. If you’re not pleased with the end result, you can always tweak and iterate. It’s like your living room. If you don’t like how it looks, just move the furniture around.
NOT ENOUGH TIME
This is another excuse that I hear. “I’m too busy with work / client projects.” If that’s the case, throw up a simple page. You don’t have to have a portfolio with 20 different case studies. Sometimes, less is more.
If you want a quick and easy one-page site like the example above, you can download the Personal Page: a free, simple, one-page mobile-friendly website that gives you a way to have a very quick and easy personable website that aggregates your activity, and positions a simple logo, a portrait and some description text in a nicely formatted manner.
Another alternative would be to show your most recent Dribbble shots. By doing so, it’s a lot more current and can easily be updated. I used this project by Benjamin De Cock called Dribbbox to showcase my Dribbble portfolio and it took about 2 minutes to set everything up.
NO PROFESSIONAL WORK
If you’re just starting out your career as a designer, then you might not have any professional work to show. Consider using some of your school projects as portfolio pieces. In addition to that, you can also try an unsolicited redesign just to show what you are capable of. But if you go this route, don’t just focus on the visuals. Show your process and the thoughts behind the redesign.
You can also challenge yourself to do a design project like Nechita Paul Flavius. He designed a UI element for 100 days. There’s a 100 days of UI Challenge that was just created and you can sign up and join other designers in creating.
If you don’t have a personal website, this article was not meant to bash you or put you down. Take this as a challenge. Take some time and focus on building your own home online, and once you’re done with it, make sure to invite me.
— — —
This article was originally posted on my personal blog.
