When designing an online portfolio, pay special attention to your colors, design elements, layout style, and content. Typically, artists and designers are the ones who have to obsess about these things; but really, if you are selling anything from a service to a tangible product, you need to be careful how you choose to design your presentations. Portfolios are no different from websites, inasmuch as they are highly organized presentations.

Choices of colors are importantfor example, cool colors can complement warm colors. Not only this, but we react to colors and associate them to memories, people, objects, and places. Colors can make or break portfolio presentations (and websites) due to readability, visual comfort, color association, and aesthetics.

The elements of design are: line, shape, form, space, value, texture, and color. All of these elements need to be addressed and that is why setting up portfolios is so challenging. When combining a wide variety of artwork into one portfolio, artists must not only consider how the artwork flows from one category to the next, but how the artwork flows within each category. They need to ask themselves: Is it done in a visually pleasing way? The portfolio interface must contain good design elements and complement the artwork and not fight against it.

The layout style should at least somewhat match the style of the artwork within the portfolio. The layout style of the portfolio should also match the stationery and other promotional material. The portfolio design (or online case) is much like a composition. It needs to have balance and make sense to the audience. The easier the navigation, the longer you will be able to hold your audience to view the portfolio samples.

Decorative fonts such as versals or stylized headings can help to illustrate online portfolios. For online portfolios, the content should be sans serif (i.e. Verdana); and for print, it should be serif (i.e. Times New Roman).

As you can see, when designing for online portfolios (and websites), designers need to be analytical and diligent about their color scheme, design elements, layout style, and content?ALL of the portfolio needs to look good! (revised 2/15/2006)