Brainstorming Ideas for your Graphic Design Portfolio

A constant issue I find with fellow struggling creative graduates or candidates can honestly be developing your art portfolio. I often find it difficult to go through old work and think, “Ah, I’m proud of this. It definitely represents what my current skills/style is like.” Perhaps I’m being a little dramatic; of course a portfolio is supposed to be a gallery of previous works and proof of your abilities. But what happens when you haven’t necessarily “created” anything in the past couple of months, or worse, you signed a contract that has a strict non-disclosure policy? After a brainstorming session with a friend, I have just a couple ideas and solutions to help develop some content for your portfolio.

Idea 1 – What’s Your Branding?
A simple thing we tend to forget about is central goal of your portfolio and who it represents. YOU! Regardless on if you’re a student or a graduate, at the end of the day you need to market yourself to your future clients. Now you don’t have to go and design a huge campaign for yourself. Start small and work on a simple logo or signature to put with your work. Envision if you had your own design company, would you want to use your name, pen name, or have a general company? Understandably this can be a bit tricky in itself, after all who doesn’t want to make the perfect timeless logo? But don’t stress, think of something important to you that you identify with. Make mock-ups and settle on the concept that makes you the happiest. Even if down the line you no longer enjoy that concept you can always redesign or just re-brand yourself. Major companies update their looks after a while, there is no stopping you from changing your mind at a later date. Best of all, even if you work for a company or decide to work as a Freelancer, you have a way to identify yourself for clients.

Idea 2 – Your Portfolio = Your First Example
Regardless if you have a digital or physical portfolio, don’t look over potential space to show off what you can do. Your portfolio is the first thing that most clients are going to see. Use this as an opportunity to show how your graphic designs as a functioning example. Think about what medium you want to host your works on. A physical portfolio can be as simple as creating a cover for a portfolio book or case. While there are many digital portfolio hosting sites, such as http://behance.net and http://dribbble.com, that are free to use. Look up which UI/UX format best attracts you and compliment your design work. If you do have money to spare however take the time to look into developing your own website. Having your own unique domain name and control of the over all UI can be very freeing and the best way to show people what you can do. You can make the site more oriented towards your personal taste and style. Luckily there are basic templates that you can customize, still allowing you to stand out even if you struggle with programming or writing scripts. Simply just taking your time to invest in the main home for your works goes a long way.
If you take my site for example, I like to contrast my minimalist site with unfinished/messy art style. This allows for both a creative, yet professional, appearance.

Idea 3 – I Like That, But How About This?
We all have all seen a design or concept that we rather enjoy. However everything can be improved, why not take on that challenge yourself? What areas can be altered or updated? What can you do with their content and optimize their potential? This can work especially well for companies you are looking into applying for. The goal isn’t to say that a design is lacking, the focus should be on what can you bring to the company. What do your fresh eyes bring to the world of graphic design? Anything from re-imagining the design to making a new design based on the concept, can make a big impact.
To be clear, I am not condoning stealing other peoples’ works. When you look into improving or transforming the work, always give credit to the original company and/or designer. Your goal is to change the work to the point where it matches more to your style and preferences. However taking credit for other people’s original design and concept is never ok. If you wouldn’t want someone taking credit for your work, don’t take credit for other people’s work. Copyright in the art world is a very messy and difficult go through. It is best to stay as respectful to other artists’ work as possible. Transform the work, don’t steal it.

Idea 4 – General Companies
So you don’t want to redesign or base your works on any other company. Perhaps you just haven’t found that inspirational concept. Maybe you just want to challenge yourself and come up with a bunch of general designs for some faux companies. The first thing you would need to decide upon would be ideally into what type of companies you want to work for. Food, sports, gaming, the list goes on. The sky is the limit when coming up with hypothetical companies. Consider what the faux company’s style and goal would be. Similarly to designing your own branding, how would you best design and represent these companies?
Don’t focus on trying to stay realistic or strict in what you need to design, that’s for when you have clients. Spend your time tackling unconventional company concepts, no matter how ridiculous, to stay loose and creative. The only client opinion you have to worry about pleasing is yourself, don’t stress. Use word generators if you want an even bigger challenge. Just keep going and designing, you’ll be surprised what you can come up with.

Of course these are just a couple of ideas I came up with while brainstorming with a friend late at night. A lot of these are simple advice ideas that we tend to overlook from time to time. The goal is to to keep it simple, create, and develop a portfolio we can be proud of. The one thing I don’t believe in creating content for others for the sake of exposure. If you want to truly create content for free you might as well do it for yourself and on your own terms. Your work has value as long as you are willing to invest in yourself. The time you spend on yourself and work will show the more you practice your craft. Don’t aim to be perfect, aim to be proud.

Good Luck!