The Evolve Guide to a Great* Portfolio.
Tips & tricks from Team Evolve.
The purpose of this guide is to help you put your best foot forward and share what we think makes a strong portfolio! It’s intended to help anyone interested in applying for internships, junior positions, academic programs, or just refining their projects. You can download a PDF version of this resource at the bottom of the page.
First things first. "Great" depends on your audience! What type of work do they specialize in? What are their values as an organization? We always recommend tweaking and tuning your portfolio to be the most relevant to the organizations and industries you are interested in.
Our opinions are grounded in experience.
10 year long internship program
49 internships across Industrial Design (ID), User Experience Design (UX), and Graphic Design (GD)
150+ 1:1 Portfolio Reviews and Interviews
These recommendations were built with the collective experience across our design teams over the past 10 years. It reflects our unique point of view from reviewing portfolios and interviewing candidates from all over the country and internationally for our internship program. We hope you find this information valuable, accessible, and actionable to help you find your next step— wherever that may be.
Now let’s get started…
A great portfolio has a solid foundation of...
Empathy
Understand the needs and challenges of your audience.
Exploration
Demonstrate creative problem solving.
Craft
Use visual storytelling.
Six pillars of great portfolios are…
Clear Framing
Visual Thinking
People Centered
Iterative Process
Collaborative Teamwork
Storytelling & Editing
Now, let's dive a little deeper into each of these…
Clear Framing
Be clear about the problem from the start.
Help your viewers understand what your intentions are. Tell us why you’re passionate about it!
Clearly state your goals of the project. This will comeback in the end and help you evaluate your creative solutions.
Set parameters—it’s okay to say what you're NOT doing. And be realistic with your timeline. This helps set expectations.
Use ‘how might we’ statements —“ How might we (the problem)… in order to achieve (the goal)”
State your approach. What insights are needed to thoroughly investigate the problem? How will you get those insights?
2. Visual Thinking
Illustrate the key pain points.
Photos, sketches, illustrations, and diagrams are often better than words to get your point across. If you source an image on the internet, include the source to give credit to the creator.
Document the problem in photographs and make a storyboard—flex your director skills here!
Show the behind the scenes. We love seeing the process— it’s often the most interesting part to talk about.
Take process pics! And don’t forget to ask someone to take pictures of you!
3. People Centered
Bring people into your process and keep them at the center throughout your project.
Have at least one project that is people centered. Talk with them and learn about their needs and challenges.
Develop a muse and let their voice keep you connected to what truly matters. One solid quote that embodies the challenge is gold!
Use Codesign! Build and test prototypes with them and incorporate their feedback.
Continue learning from them throughout the project.
Show how your final solutions work well for them.
"We're not hiring you for your ideas or inventions. We want to hire you for the way you think.”
- Paul Backett, Evolve Co-Founder
4. Iterative Process
Explore. Be curious. Go wide.
Produce a wall of sketches and ideas, build a lot of prototypes, be rigorous.
Show that you can sit with a challenge and work out many solutions.
Explore multiple avenues. Don’t get too fixated on the first few good ideas.
It's not about being perfect, it's about making progress. Don’t be too precious, that's why it's called a ‘sketch'.
Zoom out and show the breadth of your exploration—it’s interesting to see what didn't make it as well.
5. Collaborative Teamwork
Show that you work well with others. Give credit to yourself and your teammates.
Choose your team and assign roles so you can work effectively.
Use collaborative tools both digital and analog, like Miro, physical pin-up boards, and printouts.
Show us how you made important decisions together, then how you worked toward the collective goals.
6. Storytelling & Editing
TLDR! Focus on what matters most.
One step leads to the next.
It's not enough to show the best ideas, it's about the process you used that got you there.
Show us how you made important decisions. Analyze your exploration by putting your concepts up against your goals—let the best one win.
Celebrate 'a ha' moments.
Everyone loves a banger insight!
Show what didn't work and then what you did about it. The ‘failures’ are what lead you to the best idea and ultimately, will support your final design solution.
Go backwards, to move forward
Sometimes design isn’t linear but stories are often better if they are.
It’s okay to work backwards if you forgot to document something in the moment. Go back and rework a prototype or stage a photo, no one will ever know, and if it makes a better story… do it.
Share out loud ;)
Editing your own work is hard when you’re really close to it. It helps to present it to an audience.
The more often you practice, the more important points will rise to the top.