Designers Need a Home
March 25th, 2014
Once in a while, someone will retweet me and by curiosity, I’ll end up on their Twitter page trying to find out more about this person. I’ll read their short bio and it will say something like, “I’m a designer.” Oh, nice. Let me click on your website link. “Coming soon.”
Your website is your home. It’s a place where you can experiment, write, code, design, think, iterate, blog, code, play, tinker, develop, and ultimately improve. It’s also a place where potential clients can find you. With that said, why are there so many designers without a personal website?
Not Good Enough for Me
One of the main reasons why so many designers don’t have their own website is because they have such a hard time pleasing themselves. It’s always hard to design when you’re the client. You are your own worst critic. I’ve personally gone through this stage myself. I don’t know how many different unfinished PSD’s I have of my personal website. The key to designing for yourself is to “Just do it!” Create a deadline for yourself and meet it. If you’re not pleased with the end result, you can always tweak and iterate it. It’s like your living room. If you don’t like how it looks, just move the furniture around.
Not Enough Time
This is another excuse that I hear. “I’m too busy with work / client projects.” If that’s the case, throw up a simple page. You don’t have to have a portfolio with 20 different case studies. Sometimes, less is more.
If you want a quick and easy one-page site like the example above, you can download the Personal Page: a free, simple, one-page mobile-friendly website that gives you a way to have a very quick and easy personable website that aggregates your activity, and positions a simple logo, a portrait and some description text in a nicely formatted manner.
Another alternative would be to show your most recent Dribbble shots. By doing so, it’s a lot more current and can easily be updated. I used this new project by Benjamin De Cock called Dribbbox to showcase my Dribbble portfolio and it took about 2 minutes to set everything up.
If you want to showcase more work and your web design skills aren’t up to par yet, consider using Dunked or a similar service. There are many tools out there that can help you create a beautiful portfolio without much technical know-how.
No Professional Work
If you’re just starting out as a designer, then you might not have any professional work to show. Consider using some of your school projects as portfolio pieces. In addition to that, you can also try an unsolicited redesign just to show what you are capable of.
If you don’t have a personal website, this article was not meant to bash you or put you down. Take this as a challenge. Take some time and focus on building your own house. And once you’re done with it, make sure to invite me.