Want to learn how to create a killer creative portfolio? Here are ten design trends to make your portfolio stand out from the crowd in 2024.
As a creative, your portfolio is a dedicated space to display your accomplishments, skills, and experience within your niche. Whether for design, photography, video, or anything in between, the principle is the same – your portfolio should showcase your best creative work.
Whether you’re a seasoned professional looking to refresh your online presence or a budding creative eager to make your mark, there are always a ton of design trends and techniques you can leverage to elevate your portfolio from ordinary to extraordinary.
You only get one chance to make a killer first impression: the question is, how do you make it count? From immersive multimedia experiences to sleek minimalist designs, let’s explore ten cutting-edge portfolio trends redefining the art of self-presentation in 2024.
What is a Portfolio?
A portfolio is a physical representation of your identity as a creative, acting as a window into your innovative journey. Your portfolio should be full of wow-factor work and showcase your best skills in seconds.
That sounds like a lot of pressure, doesn’t it? It may seem impossible to minimize your entire collection of work to one highlight reel, but there are plenty of ways to exhibit your favorite snippets in a way that suits your style.
Portfolio Website
An online portfolio, otherwise known as a portfolio website, is the format most of us are familiar with. With the ability to get creative with interactivity, bold colors, and funky layouts, an online portfolio offers you the most choice for showcasing your work.
Online portfolios are the best choice for beginners, as you can quickly find hundreds of creative portfolio templates already on the web that will kickstart your design. Better still, you can use portfolio platform builders like Wix or Squarespace to help you build a site from scratch.
Social Media Portfolio
Next up, we have a social media portfolio. For the digital creatives on the block, showcasing your work on your social feed could help reach more potential clients.
While platforms like Instagram and TikTok are hubs for connection, they’re also an excellent medium for displaying your work to a broader audience. For example, if you’re a photographer, you can now use Instagram’s new Creator Portfolio feature to present your Instagram feed as a live portfolio, showcasing your best shots for new followers to stumble across.
Physical Portfolio
Portfolios weren’t always online. Before the internet, creatives would sketch their latest dress designs or gather their best negatives in a physical binder.
While most portfolios have now lost the ‘physical touch,’ some still opt for this style, as handing a client an actual folder of work can enhance the experience.
For example, if you’re a budding artist working with textures or a fashion designer trialing new materials, imagine allowing clients to feel their way through your designs for a more immersive insight into your work.
Why Do You Need a Creative Portfolio?
“A portfolio gives you a unique professional identity that evolves alongside you,” says April Rinne, one of Forbes’ “50 Leading Female Futurists”.
As one of the easiest ways to showcase your skillset, portfolios offer proof of your expertise: this alone can inspire an employer to take you on or a consumer to commission your work.
With this in mind, let’s have a closer look at some of the key benefits of a creative portfolio:
- Enhancing Personal Branding: We often only have a few minutes to sell ourselves during an interview or a pitch. If you create an accompanying portfolio, you can establish your brand using pieces of work that reflect your unique values and enhance your professional identity.
- Streamlining the Recruitment Process: If you’re applying for a new role, you will likely be up against several other candidates. Including a link to your portfolio within your application makes it easy for an employer to access everything they need to know about you in one creative hub full of your best work. What a way to stand out from the crowd.
- Improving Credibility: Your portfolio demonstrates your commitment to your industry. If you’re willing to go the extra mile to exhibit your best work, you will likely gain more credibility as a creative. While we can write anything in a resume, a portfolio showcases the achievements you’re talking about, rendering you more trustworthy to an employer or a potential client.
- Easily Adaptable: Your portfolio evolves in line with your career progression. As a versatile tool that you can constantly update with new work and achievements, you remain relevant within your niche and on top of changing industry trends.
- Taking Control of Your Narrative: Without seeing your work, it can be hard for employers, clients, or consumers to visualize your style. If you want more control over your narrative as a creative, adding a portfolio to your belt will help you showcase yourself however you want.
How to Create a Portfolio That Stands Out
Creating a stand-out portfolio requires out-of-the-box thinking. As more creatives find new ways to showcase their potential online, it’s essential to regularly update your portfolio with fresh ideas to stay relevant in such a competitive landscape.
We’re talking about jumping on hot design trends, offering your target audience an interactive experience, and telling a story your competitors can’t compete with.
Adaptability is critical for a stand-out portfolio. You must constantly monitor your greatest competition and take inspiration from trending portfolio websites to find new ways to insert new debates, crazes, and styles into your ever-growing portfolio.
As you evolve and develop as a creative, it’s essential to ensure that your portfolio grows with your changing values, mindset, and position within your industry.
10 Design Trends to Enhance Your Creative Portfolio in 2024
Whether you’re figuring out how to create your first portfolio or looking to update your current one, we’ve got you covered.
Here are ten cutting-edge trends to jump on board when designing your portfolio in 2024.
1. Bold Minimalism
You’ve heard of a minimalistic design, but have you combined it with a bold centerpiece? The bold minimalism trend has recently grown in popularity as more portfolios opt to prioritize negative space and feature a powerful central image. Whether your centrepiece is bright, bold, or busy, using clean lines and white space to surround it is a great way to make the star of your portfolio stand out.
In the case of this trend, less really is more! Take this example from art director Tim Brack. His portfolio consists of several minimalistic page designs and plenty of white space, with each project featuring a striking, eye-catching image proudly in the middle, accompanied by bold typography. Do you see how it draws the eye instantly to the center of the page?
2. Layering
Another trend emerging in the portfolio design scene is layered elements. If you want to paint a more exciting picture of yourself, why not stack different page elements to add depth to your online portfolio?
Better still, the structure you choose for your layers helps guide the eye through a visual hierarchy. In doing this, you can choose what your viewers see first, making the most important elements the ones we are drawn to first.
French graphic designer Sophie Doukhopelnikoff executed this trend well in her online portfolio. As you can see, she chooses to layer individual elements in order of transparency, cleverly drawing you from the picture to the text.
3. Unexpected Visuals
Have you always wanted to pop a pink elephant on your website with absolutely no context? Well, now could be the time to do it. Unexpected imagery is becoming more and more popular among the sleekest 2024 portfolios. Adding unrelated visuals to your web design draws attention to your humorous personality and has become trendy.
Look at this majestic cat feature from web designer Ryo Irago, for example – it certainly makes you want to see the rest of his body of work!
4. Interactive Elements
As we enjoy more interactive experiences in a modern digital world, portfolio websites are no exception to the demand for immersive UX design – and interactive graphic designs are in for 2024! To really make your portfolio stand out, show your audience what you can do in real-time. For example, Australian designer Beci Orpin‘s website features various interactive elements, including a pet rock hunt!
If you’re a web developer or UX creative, it can be particularly valuable to show off your skills using interactive elements.
Look at this interactive resume by Robby Leonardi, an illustrative designer and animator from New York. Creating a game-like interactive site to display his work, as you navigate through his portfolio, you play a character that floats up in a hot air balloon and runs through an underwater world on a quest to discover new content. Talk about engaging!
5. Video Backgrounds
Video backgrounds are also a popular portfolio feature in 2024. Over half of consumers prefer to watch a video than read a piece of text, so it’s no wonder that more people are integrating video content into their portfolio design. With the ability to showcase your best work in action, videos help keep viewers engaged with your portfolio longer.
As an animation lab, Gizmo regularly updates their portfolio to include large-scale video clips and demo reels of their latest projects – instead of reading about their work, you get a sneak peak instead.
6. Statement Typography
While typography is by no means new trend on the design scene, it’s certainly one to keep in mind if you’re looking to create a cutting-edge portfolio. In 2024, we’ve seen designers opting for bold lettering and sans-serif type block capitals to really draw the viewer to important pieces of text.
Using bold text and creative placement, graphic designer Howsem Huang cleverly mixes typefaces throughout his portfolio and uses unique placement to show his work in an authentic yet trendy way.
7. Unique Navigation
Next up, let’s talk about portfolio navigation trends. With the increase of interactive UX design, unique navigation paths have also become popular amongst designers for their portfolios.
Coming in as one of our favorite portfolios to date, this clever navigation design from web developer Bruno Simon is one of the most unique portfolios we’ve come across.
Using your mouse and keyboard to navigate the site, you drive around Simon’s portfolio in a car, traveling to each destination in any direction you please. As you reach each element, it unravels and takes you to a piece of his work. How exciting!
8. AI-Powered Portfolio Builders
One trend dominating portfolio creation is generative AI. As the world of artificial intelligence develops, did you know you can now simply input your information into an AI-powered portfolio platform and watch it build your website in front of your eyes?
For example, Hostinger’s AI Portfolio Builder allows you to generate your portfolio’s design and accompanying text. With its easy-to-use, drag-and-drop nature, beginners can edit their AI-infused designs before sending their site live online.
This trend, in particular, is aimed at beginner portfolio builders. If you’re new to designing websites, using an AI-powered portfolio-building tool could help you get your work out there in half the time.
9. Split-Screen Patterns
Next up, we have split-screen patterns. This design trend has dominated portfolio layouts for years and continues to be a popular choice amongst creatives in 2024. Choosing two contrasting colors can divide your portfolio into sections, drawing attention from one side to the other and creating a striking visual effect.
Graphic designer Xavier Cusso combines split-screen patterns with parallax scrolling effects to help viewers move from one project to another. Following the split created by two bold contrasting colors, his site prioritizes functionality and a stand-out aesthetic.
10. Dark Mode
Thinking about crossing over to the dark side? Dark mode-inspired UX design has been popular for many years now thanks to its improved accessibility – and it’s since cropped up in many online portfolios.
Dark mode boasts a darker color scheme featuring lighter contrasting text; a juxtaposition of traditional color schemes. Not only can dark mode help a portfolio appear more professional, but studies have shown that 81% of Android users and up to 70% of iPhone users find dark mode more appealing when engaging with content.
This simple yet effective dark mode-inspired portfolio from front-end developer Brittany Chiang is sleek, chic, and super easy to read – just one example of how effective a darker color scheme can be for creative portfolios.
Create Your Own Creative Portfolio Today!
And that’s a wrap, folks! We hope you enjoyed discovering some of the hottest portfolio design trends on the block with us. As technology gets even more clever, we’ll likely see more innovative approaches to creating an online portfolio. While you’re here, learn how to create a killer portfolio with our ultimate portfolio guide or discover more trending design styles in our roundup of the top graphic design trends for 2024. Or start building your own stunning online portfolio today with Envato!
