50 Beautiful And Creative Portfolio Designs

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Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions, a web publication for web developers and designers, and the Deputy Editor of Design Instruct, a web … More about Jacob ↬

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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 to inspire you to create your own portfolio or re-think your existing one. You’ll get to see portfolios from a wide range of fields including web design, product design, illustration, photography, and even animation.

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.

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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.”

Pikaboo screen shot

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.

Lyndon Wade screen shot.

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

Jess Wilmon screen shot.

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.

Daniel Stenberg screen shot

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).

Marc Dahmen screen shot.

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

SuperLover screen shot.

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

Aline Caron Portfolio screens hot.

chris woods

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

Millice screen shot.

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.

Deep screen shot.

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

Dave Werner's Portfolio 2006 screen shot.

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

Booreiland screen shot.

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.

vivified screen shot.

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.

nisgia.com screen shot.

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.

Rob Young screen shot.

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.

Sid Lee screens hot.

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.

Nile Inside screen shot.

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.

Les illustrations de Lapin screen shot.

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.

Contrast screen shot.

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.

sroown screen shot.

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

OnWired screen shot.

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

EveningLab screen shot.

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

Die Neue Modern screenshot.

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.

Made Like Me screen shot.

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.

Marius Roosendaal screen shot.

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.

Jason Reed Web Design screen shot.

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.

Thibaud's portfolio screen shot.

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

bcandullo.com screen shot.

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.

James Lai Creative screen shot.

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

formrausch screen shot.

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

Serial Cut screen shot.

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.

Dawghouse Design Studio screen shot.

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

Hot Meteor screen shot.

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

Oneover.com screen shot.

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.

13 Creative screen shot.

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.

TROZO GALLERY screen shot.

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

Danny Blackman screen shot.

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

Frisk Web screen shot.

foxie’s graphic design

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

foxie's graphic design screen shot.

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.

Visualbox screen shot.

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

Ed Peixoto screen shot.

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.

Odd Web Things screen shot.

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

NANAMIart screen shot.

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.

Vault49 screen shot.

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

adncom screen shot

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

SeymourPowell screen shot.

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

hellokarl screen shot.

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