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By Jacob Gube

Design portfolios come in various forms. Traditionally, they have been print-based and something you would carry to a client pitch or meeting to showcase what you’ve done and how you did it. Today, many designers take advantage of the Internet to publish and showcase their work via their online portfolios. Having your work displayed online removes the geographical restraints that traditional portfolios impose on you.

With many portfolios online, it’s often hard to stand out from the sea of competition out there. It takes a creative design to grab the user’s attention long enough for him or her to enjoy sifting through your work. Adding rich interactive elements, framing your work in a unique way, and concocting a means of providing a unique experience can not only get the user’s attention but also show your capabilities as a designer.

In this showcase, you’ll find a variety of beautiful, unique and highly creative portfolio designs. The aim here is to stimulate your creativity and inspire you to create your own portfolio or re-think your existing one. You’ll see portfolios from a wide range of fields, including Web design, product design, illustration, photography and even animation. So, we now present to you 50 beautiful and creative portfolio designs.

You may also want to take a look at the following related articles:

• Creating A Successful Online Portfolio
  In this article, we review five pitfalls that commonly plague portfolio design. Then we’ll offer portfolio tips that, if carefully considered and well executed, will deliver quality results for your portfolio.

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50 Beautiful and Creative Portfolios

Pikaboo
This portfolio showcases a creative navigation scheme; use the scroll button on the mouse to navigate up and down the showcase. Alternatively, the designer gives you a columned view of the showcased work if you click on “Overview.”

Lyndon Wade
This portfolio effectively integrates the interface of the design. Clicking a category link of the portfolio expands a “film-strip” view of the thumbnails in the section. Upon clicking a thumbnail, it expands to a full-screen view; clicking on the left or right allows you to navigate through all of the showcased paragraphs in full-screen mode.

Jesse Willmon’s fall 2008 DESIGN-TACULAR
Jesse Willmon presents his portfolio in a unique fashion, through “doodles,” giving it a memorable user interface.

Daniel Stenberg
Daniel Stenberg frames each of his works beautifully and allows users to navigate through them horizontally. The result is a clean and simple but effective portfolio design.

Domenico Tedone Design
Unconventional navigation schemes can be a great way to leave a lasting impression on users (but they can also make users leave in an instant); Domenico Tendone capitalizes on Flash’s strength of being responsive to user events by showcasing his work via a revolving 3-D wheel. Use the scroll button to scroll through his work.

Marc Dahmen
Marc Dahmen gives us a creative user interface by showing his projects as business cards. Clicking on a business card gives you a nifty animation as it enlarges. To make navigation easier, the portfolio provides keyboard shortcuts (you can see them at the top left of the page).

SuperLover
The excellent selection of colors in this portfolio complements the showcased artwork, and the organization of each piece makes it stand out.

Aline Caron Portfolio
The presentation of the thumbnails in this portfolio gives it a unique interface, reminiscent of the chemical table of elements.

chris woods

Minimalist portfolios focus the user’s attention on the works being presented, as seen in the portfolio of Chris Woods.

Deep
Deep’s portfolio gives users a unique navigation interface; the plain solid background and text make the showcase the highlight of the home page.

Dave Werner’s Portfolio
Dave Werner’s portfolio gallery is shown as an artistic collage; clicking on a piece in the collage expands it.

Booreiland
Booreiland’s portfolio gives users a “breadcrumb” navigation scheme so that they can easily jump through sections.

vivified
In this showcase, the projects dominate the entire page, and a thumbnail gallery on the right-hand side gives you a way to browse through the projects.

nisgia.com
Interactive designers can show off their creative skill in user interaction by having a portfolio with distinctive interactive elements, as shown by nisgia’s portfolio.

Rob Young
Rob Young frames his projects in a MacBook Pro laptop, alluding to the nature of his job as an art director and designer.

Sid Lee
This clean and simple portfolio gives focus to the active work being viewed by allowing it to take up a large part of the viewing area. Hovering over the right-hand side of the page opens up an alternate navigation menu.

Nile Inside
Artwork is displayed in a “film-strip” view, and clicking on a piece expands it without navigating away from the film strip. Even with the rich interactivity of the portfolio, it doesn’t rely on Flash.

Les illustrations de Lapin
Illustrations displayed side by side beautifully showcase the illustrations made in the artist’s sketchbook, giving the portfolio an unprocessed, raw, natural look.

Contrast
Conventional design portfolios are visual, but that isn’t the case with Contrast’s portfolio, which displays its “thumbnail” gallery in a text-based format.

sroown
sroown effectively uses its logo to frame its design gallery. Note the red “Jump back to top” element along the right-hand side that follows you along as you scroll down the page, a subtle enhancement of the interface that gives you insight into the small details they pay attention to in their designs.

OnWired
OnWired showcases its design process by taking us from conception to final product in each of its projects.

Michael Muller Photography
Michael Muller’s portfolio directs the user’s attention to his photographic work by making it the focal point of the page. Hover over each piece to navigate through his work.

EveningLab
A creative interface makes EveningLab’s portfolio stand out.

Die Neue Modern
Irregular shapes and sizes of the thumbnails in this portfolio give it a unique and “systematic disorder.”

Made Like Me
This portfolio shows the typical way of displaying thumbnail galleries; but by leveraging the artwork’s vivid colors and placing the art against a dark background, each piece pops out of the page and the gallery achieves a unified look.

Marius Roosendaal
An accordion user interface gives Marius Roosendaal’s portfolio a nifty way of showcasing his work while allowing it to remain compact, thus maximizing valuable screen real estate.

Jason Reed Web Design
Jason Reed’s portfolio features a horizontal accordion menu, which minimizes the need to scroll and, again, makes the design compact.

Thibaud’s portfolio
Thibaud’s portfolio uses color swatches as interactive elements, which not only hints at the nature of his work but also effectively showcases his skill, experience and creativity in interactive design.

standardimage
Standardimage features a unique navigation scheme that auto-scrolls down the page when you click on a menu item. The portfolio design is clean, simple and minimal, which makes each piece stand out.

bcandullo.com
Brad Candullo beautifully frames his creations with worn notebook pages, giving them an organic look and feel.

James Lai Creative
James Lai Creative’s portfolio sits on the front page. Each thumbnail is in a frame, and you can navigate through them horizontally.

formrausch
This portfolio puts each project in a beautiful frame, showing the designer’s meticulous attention to detail.

Serial Cut
Another minimalist portfolio design that focuses attention on the artwork.

Dawghouse Design Studio
Dawghouse Design Studio displays its projects on a notebook paper background. The hand-drawn concept is carried through with each graphical element, including the “View site” button and the “Next” and “Previous” buttons.

Hot Meteor
Eye-catching, smooth animation that uses horizontal and vertical movement creates a memorable user experience.

Oneover.com
The unconventional 3-D showcase seen in this portfolio provides a great user experience.

13 Creative
13 Creative houses its portfolio on a steno pad. A beautiful navigation scheme and subtle, fluid animation make this portfolio a memorable design.

TROZO GALLERY

Eduardo Valdivieso’s style of art transcends the canvas and works well as part of a Web design, allowing the two media to complement each other.

Danny Blackman
Danny Blackman’s animated navigation makes navigating through his projects a pleasant experience.

Frisk Web
Frisk Web displays thumbnails of its projects as taped-on Polaroid shots, giving the portfolio design an uncommon and remarkable layout.

foxie’s graphic design

This creative portfolio interface uses books sitting on a bookshelf for navigation.

Visualbox
Visualbox takes advantage of the vivid colors of its work by placing its portfolio against a plain dark background, effectively emphasizing the “Visual” in its company name.

Ed Peixoto
An unconventional layout for a thumbnail gallery and subtle yet memorable hover-over animation make this portfolio design impressive.

Odd Web Things

Odd Web Things stays true to its name by showcasing its work in an unusual fashion. You just might think about the design long enough to remember the company’s name, or even explore the rest of its website looking for an explanation.

NANAMIart
NANAMIart integrates its portfolio in the design by displaying it near the header, giving users access to it at all times.

Vault49
This portfolio is text-based until you click on the name of a project; the name then expands to show a preview of the artwork.

SKINS INTERACTIVE
Fluid, smooth 3-D animation makes browsing through Skin Interactive’s portfolio an enjoyable user experience.

adncom
A rotating display that revolves around an illustrated sheep gives adncom’s portfolio a unique twist.

SeymourPowell
The deck-of-cards introduction gives users a sense of what SeymourPowell is all about in a matter of seconds.

hellokarl
hellokarl combines subtle, fluid animation along with great large-scale product shots to create an engrossing mood.

Related posts

You may also want to take a look at the following related articles:

• Creating A Successful Online Portfolio
  In this article, we review five pitfalls that commonly plague portfolio design. Then we’ll offer portfolio tips that, if carefully considered and well executed, will deliver quality results for your portfolio.

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