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6 Steps to Creating a Knockout Behance Portfolio

Behance is the most popular website for creatives to show off their work. Naturally, showcasing your portfolio on a site like Behance is one of the most effective ways to promote your skills and talent. There are many approaches toward creating a portfolio on Behance. The 'boring' way is to simply insert pieces of your work on a solid background. The exciting way is to design all your portfolio pieces together into a single, harmonious design.

Here are a couple of fully designed portfolio page examples from Wrecking Ball:

Behance - TWC   Behance - Adobe Inspire

Awww yeah! Pretty cool, huh? Are you interested in taking your Behance portfolios to the next level? This article we will give tips on how to make a knockout portfolio that gets you noticed.

1. Select your best work

Your Behance portfolio is most effective as a series of projects: one project per Behance page. If you don’t have much work to show, you could bundle many projects into a single Behance page. A Behance page shouldn’t display all of your work. It’s best to keep it short and sweet, selecting only your best pieces. We recommend selecting, at least, five pieces for a single Behance page.

Remember, it’s better to have a portfolio where you show a few of your best projects that are stunning. Showing many average projects would not be as attractive. The quality of your portfolio is only as good as your weakest project.

2. Share a backstory, complemented by a theme

Deep dive into your work and think about how you will present it. People are drawn to stories. Developing a brief backstory for your project will pull your viewers in. Talk about your story from the initial concept to early sketches, to the finished product. Start your story by showing the finished piece first, followed by your progress which led you to it.

Think about the style and general look and feel of your project to come up with a design for the layout. The design elements you come up with should compliment and enhance your project. Take a closer look at Wrecking Ball’s TWC onDemand project for an example:

Behance Background

Notice how artwork featured in the Adobe Inspire Digital Magazine is used as a decorative background.

3. Flaunt the medium

reading inspire

Using Adobe Inspire

Did you make a website? Then show it on a desktop, tablet, and smartphone. Did you make an app? Show it on its target device. Did you make a magazine? Then show people reading it. Emphasize the medium for the intended work. If possible, take pictures of people interacting with it. Otherwise, Google around for free templates where you can easily insert your work for a nice presentation. Here’s a collection of free tablet/smartphone templates.

4. Keep it simple

The design of your Behance page needs to be simple. We can’t stress the KISS principle enough. Avoid the temptation to make an elaborate design to push for a wow factor. Simplicity pushes your work to the surface, where it should be. Pick one font, pick a color scheme, and stick to it; keep the style consistent.

5. Craft a bio

An important part of your Behance portfolio is your Behance profile. Fill in your profile’s description with your story. Ask yourself, what’s your point of view? What’s your unique perspective on the creative world? What led you to develop this perspective? Answering these questions will help you zero in on your passion. Passion is infectious; putting it into words will make you shine.

6. Keep your Behance gallery fresh

Behance is a large, active community. Posting just once gets you ignored. Those who post on a regular basis attract an audience. Popularity is measured by likes and comments. Your posts on Behance become more reputable when you consistently attract engagement. Popularity has a snowball effect which increases the number of likes/comments. As you create new and better work, make sure you make additions to showcase your latest projects, but with the same focus on careful curation.

To view more examples of awesome Behance portfolios, check out Wrecking Ball on Behance.