A portfolio is maybe the most important thing for a designer looking for work. I talk to a lot of early career designers who have done great work, but don’t adequately show it on their portfolios. Recruiters are also curious about your personality—what drives you? Your side projects or hobbies—something you do for yourself or your community could be what speaks the most about you as a person.

This is a list of sites that I think are great to look at for inspiration.

Portfolios

  1. https://gyanl.com/v2
    An older version of my website that worked as a portfolio, and got me an internship at Zomato and a job at Microsoft. A bit outdated now, but it served me well at the time.

  2. https://abhishk.me/
    Abhishek Sharma does a fantastic job of showing his work visually. The website has case studies about his projects and experiences, and also shows off his side projects and experience with code.

  3. https://rishivanukuru.com/
    My friend Rishi Vanukuru is a design researcher, and his website focuses on his academic work. Not every website needs to look the same, and this is a great example of carefully picking what you want to show front and centre according to your objectives.

  4. https://fedor.design/
    Fedor Shkliarau has an extremely dynamic portfolio site - he uses a lot of animations and videos to show his work.

  5. https://roman.nurik.net/projects/
    Roman Nurik has some cool projects, and he manages to show just what they do with a couple lines of text and looping videos that are only a few seconds long. Sometimes less is more.

  6. https://www.alexkaessner.de/
    I particularly like the iPad Main Menu concept that Alex has on his site.

  7. http://karoliskosas.com/
    Kosas Karolis’ portfolio pieces do a great job of walking you through the design process - what worked, what didn’t and what the final result was.

  8. https://www.arunesh.co.in/
    Arunesh Singh optimises his website for people who don’t have time (really—who does?). He uses a toggle on his portfolio pieces to let the reader switch between a quick and detailed overview.

  9. https://girapatel.co/
    This is a really nice site that shows visual/motion design work.

  10. Gavin Nelson
    Just the basics done really well.

  11. Yuma Naito
    Yuma is a Graphic Designer and this website uses a Swiss Grid to show off some great work.

  12. Vedant Jain
    Vedant’s website has some neat case studies and a grainy VCR background that I love.

  13. Eric Zhang
    Eric is a is a software engineer, researcher, and designer. His website documents his many open source projects, and I love the clean layout.

Blogs

These are not necessarily design portfolios, but I like how they are written and how they present ideas.

  1. https://www.arun.is/
    Arun Venkatesan writes longform pieces about design and technology (many about Apple products) and always has beautiful illustrations and photographs. I also love his writing style - he does a wonderful job of writing in depth about topics while keeping it crisp and easy to follow.

  2. https://tonsky.me/
    A blog by Nikita Prokopov, the creator of Fira Code. He writes about code and design. I love both his style of writing and the visual simplicity of the website.

  3. https://www.gwern.net/index
    This website is dark magic. I don’t know how else to describe it.

  4. https://andymatuschak.org/
    I find something cool each time I look at Andy Matuschak’s website. He also has a really cool evergreen notes system that I hope he open sources some day.

  5. Naval
    This is a cross between a blog and a podcast landing page. Each blog post is the transcript of a podcast clip. The theme and concept is pretty simple but it works well.

  6. Josh W Comeau
    Josh writes about web dev and has really nice touches on his website. Audio feedback? For pressing buttons on a website?? I love it.

  7. Daniel Miessler
    Daniel writes about knowledge and the meaning of life. It’s great.

  8. Kabir Goel
    Kabir writes about design tools and computers. This is a great example of something simple executed very well.

  9. Vyshnav Gangadharan
    Vyshnav writes a lot, and documents it all. He’s got a great layout and some very interesting side projects.

  10. Timecapsule
    Siddharth’s scrapbook with thoughts on design, personal reflections, music and everything in between.

Interesting interactions

  1. https://ikeadrift.com/
    Use the QWERTY keys on your keypad to play a sick drum beat. I love this site. Press U for a secret easter egg.

  2. https://amandayeh.com/
    A whimsical portfolio site that evokes a sense of tech nostalgia with bitmap fonts and Windows 98 style icons.

  3. https://paco.sh/
    This site looks almost confusingly minimal till you hit the command icon and realise you can find everything from there. Not sure I would recommend this approach as the only way to find content on your site, but I did find it cool.

  4. https://akshayverma.net/
    Great typography. Akshay runs Prophecy, which also has a great website.

  5. https://www.english-editor.com/
    This is not a design portfolio, but the site is very well designed and the information is extremely well organised.

  6. Receipt - Minimal Portfolio Template
    Show your work receipts with this cool template

  7. AMAN’S GENERAL MISHMASH OF DESIGN, DATA & CODE
    Aman’s artisanal, hand-crafted website is unlike any other website you’ll see. Showcases some of his data vis work and a lot more.

  8. Leffin - Portfolio
    Leffin’s portfolio uses slick new CSS page transitions to move between states.