10 great examples of graphic design portfolios

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When it comes to creating a stunning graphic design portfolio, there are a number of tips you should follow, but there’s no ‘one correct way’ to lay it out. In a way, that’s good; it means you’re free to experiment and showcase your creativity in designing your website. But it can also create a tyranny of choice: with so many possible avenues to go down, it can be difficult to find the right direction for you.

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It can, however, be helpful to look at the graphic design portfolio created by your peers – not only to get inspiration from their work, but to discover the self promotion methods they've used. In fact, even deciding you don’t like something about their portfolio may help you clarify what you want yours to achieve. Why not start with this selection of great graphic design portfolios?

01. Alex Coven

Coven uses some simple tricks to make his portfolio distinctive

Alex Coven, in his own words, “wears three hats”, as a freelance graphic designer, letterer and frontend developer based in Chicago, USA. He illustrates those hats literally on the homepage, which is a brilliantly simple way to convey the depth of his skills and experience.

Scroll down on his site to see his work, and across on each one for more information about that project. Clever use of colour overlays again acts as a simple device to keep things distinctive and interesting.

02. Rafael Kfouri

This minimal one-page site gives Kfouri’s colourful and impactful visuals room to breathe

Rafael Kfouri is an award-winning graphic designer currently working for AlmapBBDO. He previously worked at  Wieden+Kennedy Portland. 

The one-page portfolio site is a tricky thing to pull off, but Kfouri succeeds well in giving his colourful and impactful visuals – including single images and collages – room to breathe. Giving them almost the entire width of the screen, with just a couple of slim sidebars for context, allows visitors to enjoy and appreciate the wide scope of his work at a leisurely pace.

There’s only the barest of information about each project, and to be honest, we’d like to have seen more. But as a way of showcasing graphic eye-candy smartly and with minimal (if any) clicks needed to get to the goodies, this portfolio offers a lot of inspiration.

03. Heather Shaw

Heather Shaw marshals her work with simplicity and elegance

With almost 20 years' experience in design, Heather Small designs brochures, menus, business cards, books, annual reports, Powerpoint and Keynote presentations, responsive websites, applications… anything her clients need, in short. And her impressive portfolio site marshals all this diverse work with simplicity and elegance. 

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Overlaying photos of each project with a block colour provides an element of visual consistency. Meanwhile, the big, bold typography and simple but effective design make it all very easy to navigate.

04. Stefanie Bruckler

There’s a touch of old-fashioned elegance to Stefanie Bruckler’s portfolio

Based in New York, Stefanie Bruckler is an Austrian designer and illustrator with a particular interest in branding and editorial design. Passionate about building cohesive and strong brands as well as typography and packaging, she’s applied a touch of old-fashioned elegance to her website. Its minimalist, grid-based layout, muted colour palette and restrained use of type are all enclosed within a fixed, single-line frame.

05. Peter Komierowsk

There are acres of white space in this restrained layout

Peter Komierowski is a visual designer working in Vancouver, British Columbia who specialises in illustration, branding and identity design, and interface design. With many high-profile clients, including The Huffington Post, NBA, Telus, and YouTube, there’s a lot to fit in here. 

Komierowski’s homepage takes a quite radical approach, featuring just a small number of logo designs, surrounded by acres of white space. It’s a strategy born of (justified) confidence in the high quality of his designs, and it works brilliantly.

06. Tobias van Schneider

This creative director’s portfolio is strongly type-focused

Tobias van Schneider is a multidisciplinary designer and creative director born in Germany, raised in Austria and currently living and working in New York. Focused on branding and interactive design, he’s had some big-name clients including Red Bull, BMW, Google, Wacom, Sony, Toyota and Ralph Lauren. 

When you’re working at this level, the work tends to be beautifully photographed. Schneider takes full advantage of that, with a portfolio design that contains plenty of beautiful images. Plenty of lovely typography ties everything together – there is an unusually large amount of text here for a graphic design portfolio – and overall this site succeeds in conveying the breadth of Schneider’s experience and the depth of his work.

07. Grant Burke

The case studies on this portfolio site reveal just enough information about each project

Grant Burke is a Toronto-based freelance graphic designer and illustrator specialising in logo design, brand identity and illustration. In the past he’s worked both as an in-house designer for large corporations and at an agency. 

Like van Schneider's, Burke's homepage proves that you can use a lot of text in a portfolio, however if you scroll down or click on Portfolio in the top menu you’re greeted by a strong selection of work in a picture-grid format. 

Hover over each square for a brief summary, and click through to a full case study. These serve as a model for sharing the right amount of information about a project on a portfolio site; not too little that it leaves you hanging, not too much that it overwhelms.

08. Alessandro Scarpellini

There’s a real air of sophistication to this portfolio design

Italian designer Alessandro Scarpellini has worked for a wide range of clients around the world in the fields of art direction, branding and visual identity, magazines and packaging design. He’s also the curator of Visual Journal, an inspirational blog about the best in branding and graphic design, so you’d expect him to know a thing or two about curating great work. And his portfolio doesn’t disappoint. 

There’s a real air of sophistication to its design, which showcases examples of his work in a restrained sideshow and offers a personal biography in bold type below. Comprehensive it is not, but you certainly get a clear sense of this creative’s personality and approach to his design work from this minimalist portfolio.

09. Nicolas Paries

This portfolio boasts an original layout and some quite spectacular scrolling effects

Nicolas Paries is a young French art director who’s been working since 2008 with premium brands such as Chanel, Lancôme, Dior and Nespresso. The layout of his portfolio site is quite original, and the graphic effects as you scroll down are visually spectacular and hugely impressive. In short, this portfolio website is a real one-off.

10. Jennifer Heintz

Heintz’s portfolio site makes great use of colour

Jennifer Heintz is a designer and illustrator living in Boston, USA. A recent graduate who majored in graphic and information design, she’s also creative director of the Northeastern University Political Review.

When you’re a recent graduate, you typically don’t have a huge amount of work to draw on, so careful curation and imaginative presentation become paramount. Heintz’s site scores highly on both, with a great use of colour, delightfully smooth scrolling and a snazzy eye motif. 

These work together to make each individual project much more enticing than it might have seemed on a more cookie-cutter site.

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