Why designing a portfolio is important for designers?

Originally posted on my Twitter in Indonesian 👉🏻 Link to thread

This week there is a roundtable session to review the portfolio of one designer candidate at my company. Incidentally, the candidate is from Google, we were excited when we wanted to review it & our expectations were already high

❌ But we drop the candidate. Why?

🧵 Lessons for us designers when making portfolios & applying for work 👇🏻

Disclaimer: I'm sure Google's design team is cool, how can it not be cool, no need to explain why Google is cool. But maybe it's just this one that... like this 😅

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Disclaimer again: I will not attach anything from the candidate's cv and portfolio. Just want to share the lesson learned

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1. The CV...

The candidate's name is small, but the intro paragraph is big. Seems to be in a hurry to design it because there are a lot of text components etc that are not aligned or missed alignment. Bright yellow text on a white canvas, it's really hard to read 😭. Is the candidate not hard to read himself?

Lessons learned:

For a CV, these are the important things to include:
- Name and contact must be clear
- Working history along with details about what team and if you can enter what impact we made on the team
- Link or access to the portfolio
- Education

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2. The portfolio slides...

Again, bright yellow text on a white canvas 😭. The choice of colors is really bad, and those of us who are reviewing assume that this seems to be in a hurry. But I don't know if that's the concept. But the texts are really hard to read.

Also, the visuals that the candidate displays are really like throwing them away. Again, the alignment is messy, the UI flow is end-to-end in screenshots, and just put on 1 slide, it doesn't show up automatically and when we zoom in, it breaks 😭

Lessons learned:

Always make sure again that it's readable. Is the layout good to see? Is the reading flow good? Before applying, try to position yourself as a hiring manager, then take a quick look at your own portfolio

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3. The personal website...

There are still lots of lorem ipsum, and even the title of the website is still untitled... On the website, no one knows who the candidate is, not even on the about page. It just said "Hi there welcome to my site..." nothing self-introduction, those who access the website won't know whose the candidate is. 😭

The layout of the project showcasing is really messy, it's like being thrown and not designed at all. The project cover designs are also not designed, it's like throwing the UI out of place. When you enter the case study, the UI is big, but the font for the case study is very small, maybe 8px, just not readable if you don't zoom in or keep your eyes close to the laptop.

Lessons learned:

If you haven't finished your website yet, it's okay, you don't have to use the website, and it's also okay to use a slide deck. For the website itself, it's still the same, try to make sure it's readable or not. How is the navigation good or not?

General Lessons learned:

Your portfolio shows who you are, communicates your skills and design taste, and lets people know that you are the right candidate for their company. As a designer, you should design your portfolio.

It doesn't have to be really visually outstanding, but at least it's not too bad, the important thing is:

- Self Introduction
- Giving a good context
- Readable
- Easy to navigate
- Clear

Until now, I still hold on to Yoel's advice: "Outside Indonesia or big companies, there is also a lot of incompetent designers", I added, "inside Indonesia or small companies, there are also many who are good at it". don't be too impressed with the title, just look at the work.

End of thread. Thanks for reading.