Rant: My old portfolio was basically a glorified Instagram feed

Used to just throw my best looking UI mockups up with zero context, then a senior designer at a meetup in Austin told me they had no idea what problem I solved. Now every project gets a 2-line 'what i fixed' blurb plus a before shot from the actual client brief. Anyone else realize their early work was just pretty decoration?

3 comments

3 Comments

simon_black9d ago

Nah, sometimes a pretty mockup sells the vision better than a wall of text.

webb.xena9d agoMost Upvoted

Simon's got a point though, a clean mockup can frame things perfectly if the problem is obvious enough... but most problems aren't that simple. A before shot from the brief plus a quick "I fixed X by doing Y" gives people the full picture without burying them in text. Keeps it visual but actually shows you know what you're doing.

king.dakota9d ago

@simon_black fair point but I found keeping it to a single sentence under each mockup that explains the constraint forced me to actually prove I could design for real problems, not just make things look nice. That tiny change got me way more interviews than my old pretty-only portfolio ever did.