You are a good player.
This year, we saw the May 1st Reboot reborn, thanks to Van Schneider & his team. Loads of designers updated their portfolio at the same time & we were able to discover amazing showcases from talented designers all around the world.
This experience made me redesign (again) my personal website & think about one thing.
What does it mean to showcase your work ?
As a designer, you certainly have to highlight some of your projects to let the world discover how creative you are. That’s a fact & you are right. But today we have so many platforms for us to share our work, that I found useless to create a brand new portfolio with several projects I crafted months ago. Instead, I chose to write a short bio & let people learn what they wanted to know about me through social networks.
Showcasing your work is about letting know to your community, clients, friends & family, the guy you are through your style & projects. Share what you want to share, keep for yourself what you are not totally proud of.
Too much visibility kills visibility.
Today, we have the opportunity to share our experience through multiple platforms. Your portfolio is one of these, but many companies are developing tools made for sharing all sorts of different content.
A new social network is born online everyday. I want to try them all but I feel a bit disappointed each time I test them. I was using Peach, Beme & more recently Shorts for personal use. I can’t say I spent hours on it. First, the community is really tiny & even if interfaces are innovative & pleasing, I eventually gave up on both.
The fact is we can use social networks for anything. Instagram for the best of my camera roll, Twitter for curation & some deep Internet shit, Medium for my thinking — hey, hello you — & mostly Dribbble for professional use & showcasing my everyday work (I won’t list everything, but they are many).
Each social network has a goal, a value. Using it can give you everything you would receive.
Static portfolio ⚡️ Dribbble & Behance
For a long time, each & every year, I updated my personal website with the work I’ve done during the past year. It was great, I was completely free to show what I wanted to show, the way I wanted it. My portfolio website itself was sort of real project I was able to highlight because of the time it took. I always felt something weird making it : why do I have to rework the presentation of projects I’ve done months earlier..?
Then I’ve made a practice of posting my projects on Behance or Dribbble right after it was done. It was easy, simple & I had instant feedback. It gave me the opportunity to keep an up-to-date portfolio without creating a whole page on my website (what I’ve never managed to succeed btw).
After years testing the both solutions & trying to feel the difference, my heart belongs to Dribbble.
It is not simpler & quicker to post on social platforms; because of communities, I noticed the audience going through my projects was growing like 5 times more than on my static portfolio.
Stay bold & simple
This year, I decided to show the best with words. My website is all about bio & social links. I like it even more than before because it’s bold & simple. Using the right colors & typographies should be enough to show the kind of designer you are. Feel free to check it live on maxbrunel.com.
Everything that I’ve just written right here was my feeling about personal portfolios only. Please don’t feel hurt if you enjoy showcasing your work, I understand that.
