Engaging in the Community
I only started building my social media presence in the design sphere at the beginning of this year because I felt like I wasn't connected to the design community and wanted to get more involved. After being active on Twitter for a bit, I quickly learned that Dann Petty was a must-follow designer–from his educational content to the work he produces, it makes sense that he is a prominent member of the design community.
My Journey to Build a New Portfolio Site
I am in the midst of creating a new portfolio site for myself (this very one you are reading this article on)! At the time of writing this, my current portfolio site is a 1-pager on a Framer mini plan. I quite like what I built and it does the trick in terms of showing my work, but I have been feeling the need for a bigger site to have bigger project pages and to start a blog as well (since you are reading this, I was successful)! Following Dann has been fruitful as he has a fair bit of content out there about developing better portfolios. On top of offering a course by the name of, "The Portfolio Course", he also posts some portfolio review vids on Twitter from time to time. I pulled out my Field Notes and jotted down some notes as I followed along with his recent session.
6 Key Takeaways
Dann posted a 15 minute review session over on Twitter(X). He was moving quick, simulating the situation of being a busy person looking through multiple portfolios trying to find the best candidate for the job he needs done. Through this practice, he dropped some gems that I have taken into account in designing this very site:
Tease Continuation
Give the viewer a reason to scroll down past your hero section. Make them want to keep scrolling to see more.
Show your work ASAP
Don't hide your work! Make it easy to access. It doesn't matter how impressive your site is, if you aren't showing your work as soon as possible, you are defeating the core functionality of your site.
Email on top of site / easy-access contact info
I noticed that Dann was looking for contact info and some sites had those details buried small in the footer. He scrolled back up to the top to see if there was a section for it in the header or hero. If you want new clients, make it easy for them to get in touch with you!
Simple grid / show as much on one page as possible
Don't go hiding all of your work in project pages. Fill up your homepage with as much work as possible so potential clients can get a solid overview of the breadth of your work as quick as possible. It's a portfolio site, show your damn work!
Position & skill set clearly stated at the top
There were a few sites where Dann had to look around a bit to even find out what the person was good at! A well polished site with fancy animations is meaningless if viewers have a hard time finding out what you do!
Site social image needs to POP!
Ah we've all head that before… "can you make it pop?" but in this instance, it is crucial advice. The final and arguably most important thing you can do is make your social image intriguing to get potential clients to click on your site. Dann put a callout on Twitter(X) for portfolio submissions and he picked 4-5 to review right from the comments–those with fairly basic social images didn't catch his attention. The ones that stood out from the crowd won his click. There was potentially tons of good work he passed up all because of that first split second impression. Your site's social image matters!
