My fave tool for portfolios

Hi, I’m Maureen and I work as a product designer and design content creator. The Cursor Magazine is my online publication on design, workshop facilitation and career.

I built my own website at the age of 12. Fair enough, it was a crappy Lord of the Rings-fansite with scraps of code I got from my friends on MSN. However, it did spark my creativity and interesting in having a place to call my own on the internet. What followed were dozens of websites, blogs and portfolios on pretty much every tool and builder you can think of.

After almost 20 years of building websites and online portfolios, I have a pretty good feeling of what works for me and what not. I’ve tried many portfolio tools ever since I started working as a designer and made many mistakes.

Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

4 tips when building your portfolio

1. You don’t need to code the thing yourself

A classic trap I also fell into. My first UX portfolio was coded by myself, because I felt like that was the only legit way to have a portfolio. Unfortunately, my coding skills are less than mediocre and therefore the process took embarrassingly long and the results were even more embarrassing.

I’ve learned a lesson with that first portfolio: if you don’t like coding, don’t do it. It’s perfectly fine using an online builder to help you set up your personal website.

2. Keep It Simple, Stupid

The KISS principle also applies to building your own website or portfolio. Portfolios that end up on online inspiration galleries might make you think that a real portfolio has fancy parallax effects, custom cursors and a bunch of other animations.

Unless you know your way around building these interactions, you risk making the animations on your portfolio the star of the show rather than your actual case studies.

There’s nothing wrong with a minimalist, simple portfolio with few, but tasteful interactions.

3. Be okay with a version 0

It’s been weeks (months? time is an interesting concept) and you’re finally done with your portfolio. Except that you hate it and you want to throw the whole thing away and start again. It’s hard being okay with that first version when you’ve seen it for so long.

The shortest way to improving your website or portfolio is to be okay with that first version, publish it and gather feedback.

4. Using a (free) template doesn’t make you a bad designer

Building upon the points above: use a template if that makes it easier to finish your portfolio. It’s not cheating and it doesn’t make you a ‘fake’ designer. Templates are actually a great way to get the foundation done and instead spend your creativity on the contents and style of your portfolio.

My tool of choice: Readymag

No-code website builders are oftentimes quite disappointing to me, because they still need an understanding of coding to use the full potential of those tools. They still assume knowledge about sections, containers, columns, z-index an the like. Theoretically I have that knowledge. I just can’t be bothered figuring it all out. I just want an easy drag + drop tool that allows me to build a nice looking website.

That’s how I discovered Readymag and ever since I’ve been building my personal website with them.

Readymag is an online designtool which you can use to create presentations, portfolios or websites. They have a ton of cool templates that you can use for your website. In fact, it were the templates that made me curious about Readymag to start with. They have a certain aesthetic that really speaks to me and they’re easy to customise.

The biggest benefit Readymag has in comparison to other tools is that I can just simply drag + drop shapes onto a canvas. Customisation is easy, too. No struggling with sections, containers or complicated animation settings.

If you’re looking for a place to build your personal website, presentation or portfolio, you should give it a try!

Readymag is nominated in the ‘Creative Production’ category for the Webby Awards. If you have a minute to spare, the fine people over at Readymag would be super grateful for your vote. It’s done in 30 seconds. Consider it your good deed a day!

Vote for Readymag in the Webby Awards