A practical guide and tips to boost your Portfolio on Behance
“I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.” — Saul Bass
Hi folks!
As I mentioned before in previous entries, I’m a designer that came from a computing science formation. By the time I was in college, I invested a lot of my free time in learning design theory as much I could, reading some Design books(Don’t make me think, color theory, and more…), articles, and design tutorials. I don’t know you but I think I’m the type of student that learns by watching examples rather than reading much or watching long videos. And that’s how I ended up on Behance. I remember scrolling for hours into hundreds of projects trying to find those that have 2 important things:
Full process descriptions, that show me how the pros were doing the stuff.
Theory applied and results, to see outcomes and incomes for solutions. also great visuals :P.
Almost 9 years later, Behance continues to be an important part of my design day, especially for portfolio design.
Since I have created my account, Behance turned in my online portfolio and reference tool for design projects, visual design, and creative processes presentation. I always try to keep it update for my interviews and share my work, so I just need to have the link ready for any time. I also use this platform to share some assets that I create along with my project and share it for free, of course.
I think I have seen this platform evolving all these years, adding new functionalities that make sharing creative work and learning a better experience for designers. I guess I always beat around the bush so let’s focus. In this article, I want to share with you my process to share content and keep my portfolio up to date on Behance! I hope you like it and work as a guide in your next design ventures!
First of all…
Behance allows you to share a lot of documentation of your work, like text, images, video, and other media. I think for product design you can also include a link for a prototype in Adobe XD (honestly never used that feature; maybe soon I’ll be sharing an interactive prototype to try it), so you can make your project more robust and complete.
I hardly recommend you share only completed projects. It’s not that you can’t, but I prefer this way because you have a lot of things to say and show after you completed your project. Also, think about what people expect to see about your projects, Do you want them to see only one shot? or do you prefer to show them How funny was to the final product?.
Lately, I have seen a lot of content creators sharing one shot of their projects or only a couple of screens without background or a story. It’s ok but for Product design, the more you show, the more chances you have to win. Remember that there’s more than one step for product development design.
Planning
I suggest you start with a plan. Some good questions (because questions are always a good point to start) to answer first can be:
- What do you want to show to your audience?
- What was the purpose of the project?
- What was your role in the project?
- How was the process that you followed to solve the design problem?
- What kind of activities and techniques did you use along with the project?
- What was the conclusion or the knowledge you gained from that process?
I’m really happy that lately many designers had started to share part of the user research process and findings letting us watch this to see these methods in action. Recruitersters and talent hunters also spend some time looking for this, remember that.
Looking for references
One of my first steps it’s to find references for the visual style that I want to apply to my portfolio entry. I like to think that each project has its own style. so I try to find a way to do something different from the previous entry. Again this is only a personal preference, but having a strong background of references will keep you inspired to design.
Wireframing
Yep, wireframing. As in any digital product, wireframing helps me to articulate the structure, information architecture, content design, and an early idea of how I want my product display to look. In this step, I do some research in other portfolios even outside of the product design world. The print design really inspires me at the moment to decide what I want to do. I also include dummy content to play a bit with the content. By doing this I can have an early concept of my design display, make adjustments, discard sections of content or include new ones.
Copywriting
Wel years have taught me that everything starts with content. In the modern reality of digital products, content is king. That means that you need to give value to each word you put in your products as if was another design element. But again, this is not the topic today (by the bush hehe). I do take the time to articulate my ideas, in the more coherent way possible. In this copy stage I include:
- Introduction(I work on this one after I complete all the work, to articulate better).
- Purpose or overview of the project: Why, when how, and what I did; normally a short paragraph that describes this it’s ok. Sometimes I talk about the process and methods we follow to find the solution.
- Description of activities: After listing and deciding the activities that I want to include, I proceed to add a short description of the tasks, the goals, and the result. This is core for the understanding of the process steps and results.
- Copy conclusion: Again after I finished the other work, it’s easier to do an overview of the work that was done. One friend (also a designer ❤) gave me a great recommendation: include what I learned for the project, what changed in my perspective, and tell people how my solution fits in a transformation process.
And finally, some Style and personality. his is a personal preference but I love to write a lot of funny stuff, I try to make it the more nontechnical possible 😂.
Putting all together and mockups
Once that I decide on a Visual style and the content, I think it’s time to put it all into the mixer. I suggest you think of two types of mockups.
Visual Protein:
As Guillermo del Toro the director said, visual protein si different from visual candy because it actually works or has an intention, it’s not only pretty visuals, it’s actually having a purpose. Think about this, Select the key pain points of your project, let’s say, the dashboard screen, and then integrate it using an amazing 3D mockup describing each part of the interface, something that inspires others and makes your design shine. In these mockups, I try to make my components look professional, unique, and with a lot of quality.
Functional Mockups
On the other hand, we have Functional Mockups, which are groups of screens that display interaction, like videos, gifs, motion, etc. The goal here is to provide samples of functionality that explain the way the project works, how the information was structured, and give a closer look to a final cut.
Preparing to upload
We are almost there! At this point when I feel satisfied with the result, I do some extra tasks to ensure all works as it should.
The first one is double check everything, the copy, the copy in the mockups, and all the links and references are working well.
Previous to the post I ask for feedback from two or three colleges before I post all for all public. This helps me to figure out if the descriptions are good to explain the goals, miswordings or if something can be improved.
As a designer, I believe that testing is the way to go for making a better job every time.
Another important part of the release process is to think about other project details, like the cover, the title, and the description. I take some time to do this because these elements have a lot of influence on the discoverability of the project.
Hashtag design
Well, hashtags are crucial in promoting material for social media. Behance is not an exception. I normally follow this structure:
- About the project: #App, #UX, #UI, Etc, etc.
- About the theme: #Fintech, #realstate, #HumanReosurces
- About the style/activities: #Minimalistic, #visualDesign, #protyping
Promoting
This is optional but why not? Behance is a social network and you can find there job and collaboration opportunities, feedback in your work, and connections that can help you in your career. That’s why for me it’s very important to make my work visible
For promotion I plan things like:
- Share in social media, like Twitter, special groups from Facebook, Linked In, and why not Insta-stories.
- Behance stories. (Akka work in progress) Lately, my fav channel to promote my work. Even if I have the project finished, I prepare a series of stories telling the process, talking about activities like testing and showing additional content, inviting the people to my profile. This interaction is really cool.
- Interaction with other designers: I learned this later, to receive you need to give feedback. In fact, there is a youtube video that explains it. A good way to bring the audience to your projects is networking. Take the time to find projects that you like and give them 3 good things you found and 3 opportunity areas. Just that. Add that as a regular practice and you also will learn and discover new techniques and material to work. It’s a win-win symbiosis.
Conclusion
So that’s all for this entry. I recently applied this formula in my latest project on Behance. I think it’s a very powerful tool to give visibility to your projects and I hope this guide helps you to achieve your goals. I still need to do some work on my portfolio learning from what you leave in the feedback section and watching others’ work.
Thanks for read!
Be safe, David :)
