Your portfolio lives somewhere on the internet and that somewhere matters. A custom domain is thirty dollars a year, not thirty dollars a month, and it is one of the simplest things you can do to signal that you take your own work seriously. Squarespace, Cargo, Format, whatever platform works for you, just make sure the URL isn't a subdomain with seventeen slashes in it. If you work in an industry built on detail, the details of how you present yourself are going to get noticed.
The same goes for your email. Reaching out from a gmail address when you're applying to design roles is a small thing that adds up alongside every other small thing. It's a small detail, but it's consistent with everything else you're trying to signal. You're asking someone to trust you with their brand. It makes sense to start with your own.
A mockup with a logo dropped on it shows us the result. It doesn't show us the thinking. Anyone can download a mockup template and put a design on it, that part of the process is the same for everyone. What separates a portfolio that gets remembered from one that gets scrolled past is whether you can explain why you made the decisions you did.
What was the brief? Who is the audience? Why that typeface, why that color direction, why that lockup? You don't need to write an essay for every project, just enough context for someone reviewing your work to understand your thinking. And honestly, if something didn't work and you can explain why, that's more compelling than a clean result with no explanation. It tells us you know what you're looking at, which is more important than whether every project landed perfectly.
More projects is not better. If you have forty things in your portfolio and you're genuinely proud of eight of them, show the eight. A focused portfolio that demonstrates range and intention is more useful than a comprehensive archive of everything you've ever made.
When I graduated, one page portfolios were having a moment and honestly the instinct behind them was right. You don't need a dissertation on your creative process for every project. You need enough for someone to get the picture. Edit ruthlessly and let the work you actually stand behind do the talking.
If your resume or portfolio has a bar graph or percentage next to your software skills, get rid of it. It tells us nothing useful and if anything it works against you.
The toolset for any professional application is vast enough that putting a number on your proficiency is essentially meaningless. What does 85% in Illustrator actually mean? Which 15% are you missing? If you know how to use the program, just say so. If you don't, learn more and then say so. A percentage beside a skill is an invitation to scrutinize exactly how much you don't know, which is the opposite of what you're going for.
If you can quantify it, it means there's room to grow. That's fine, everyone has room to grow. But advertising the gap isn't doing you any favors. List your tools, leave the grades out of it.
One caveat worth noting: if you're applying to larger agencies or corporate in house roles that use applicant tracking systems, keyword optimization is a different conversation and there may be some logic to it. But for anyone reviewing your portfolio directly, the bars still tell them nothing.
Technical skill is expected. Any agency hiring a junior designer assumes you have a functional understanding of the fundamentals. What they're actually trying to figure out when they look at your portfolio is whether you can think, whether you can explain your decisions, and whether you take your own work seriously enough to present it properly. Those are the things that are harder to teach and the things that actually move the needle when someone is deciding whether to bring you in.
