Great Portfolio Website Design Trends For Graphic Designers And Creative Professionals

As a graphic designer, your online portfolio is an essential element of your branding and professional efforts. A well planned and executed portfolio website will draw in new clients and opportunities for design work. Your portfolio is often the first place people will visit to find out more about who you are and what you do. You only have a few seconds to get someone’s attention; so make those few seconds count by presenting an eye-catching and engaging portfolio website. Here are a few of the top trends in portfolio design.

Single Image Landing Pages

Landing pages have been growing in popularity over the last few years. Most popular in the mobile and application development genres, single image layouts use a large image to cover the entire webpage. Images are worth a thousand words, so using a large image to convey who you are and what you do goes a long way. The featured content or product is bold an immediately noticeable, conveying a very clear message to the visitor. Single image landing pages are unique from simply adding a traditional background image. The image selected for the landing page is a custom image with links and dynamic content. Displaying the most recent or best piece from your portfolio is an excellent way to draw visitors into your work, and by providing links and dynamic content, the call to action is apparent and easily accessible. 

Oversized Typography

No matter the profession, typography is important. No one will be interested in your work if they can’t read about it. Beyond making a portfolio more legible, typography is great design element. Oversized typography works well for portfolio design because it opens the opportunity to express yourself through a creative tagline or signature. Many professionals have recently started using there signature on their portfolio pages to show authenticity, and connect with a more human touch in a digital space.  

Video Backgrounds

Video backgrounds are becoming almost as popular as the single image landing pages in portfolio design. Similar in concept to the single image landing page, the video background is used to prominently display specific aspects of your portfolio. In general, video backgrounds are used on the home page or landing page of a website to encourage the viewer to engage with the content on the website. 

Full Width Header Images

Full width header images use the entire width of a webpage to display a unique photo. The full width headers allow a great deal of customizing in portfolio design. These images can include product photography, business portraits, hand-drawn sketches or paints, custom typography, quotes and anything else you can export into an image formate. There are several ways to implement full width header images. Many portfolios use them to feature a special project or event. Each page of a portfolio can have a different header image, adding additional flexibility. 

Minimalism

The trend of minimalism continues through 2017 in the portfolio design space. Allowing the work in the portfolio to speak for itself is always a welcomed design choice. Minimalism uses clean lines, subtle color schemes and white space to create a clear and open feel. This trend is especially popular in portfolio websites for graphic designers. Because many designers have so many colors included in their artwork, using too many images or typography styles may add clutter and become distracting to the view. Minimal portfolio design does not indicate a boring portfolio; rather it demonstrates professionalism and simplicity. 

Content Sliders

Content sliders typically the single image landing page. Sliders are great for including additional content in an area where space is limited. Galleries, long descriptions and summaries use content sliders to maximize the space they use on a webpage. Content sliders are also great for mobile optimization. As more and more people search for content on their mobile devices, providing a quality, mobile friendly experience is crucial to the success of your portfolio. By adding content sliders, you eliminate the need for a visitor to have to scroll through several elements to reach the bottom of the page.  

Single Page Layouts 

Single page layouts take the concept of the single image landing page to the next level. While a landing page is used to guide the visitor to the other sections of a website; the single page layout does not link to additional pages on the website. This layout is proving quite popular with fans of minimalism and the single image landing page. By using one page for your entire portfolio, you are drawing focus to your work and encouraging the visit to stay on your portfolio and interact with the content provided within that page. Visitors are more likely to contact you or provide feedback because they have seen your portfolio without distractions. 

Material Design

Google’s overhaul of the look and feel of the Android OS is leading to a trend of material design in places beyond Android applications. Material design is clean and colorful with straight edges, flat textures and understated backgrounds. Many authors and editors gravitate towards material design concepts for their portfolios. The typography pairing for material design are great for displaying text-centric portfolio pages. No matter if the page consists of selectable text sections or thumbnails of previous work; material design presents the content in an appealing way. 

Negative Space

Using negative space as a design element is trending in the photography community. Negative space is another example of a design that allows the work to speak for itself. Negative space works by using the page’s available blank areas to emphasize key elements on a page. The portfolio pages are not blank. They include imagery and typography to add style and flair without overwhelming the viewer with too much information. Negative space has become so popular because it has a way drawing the eyes and attention to an important aspect of the webpage.