Adam Little @ CIID

Ashwin taking photography by Tobias Toft

For my friends at CIID, here are some ideas for creating quick websites to document your work. What’s important is that they are cheap or free, easy to update with no code needed and that they look professional while emphasizing the work displayed.

Creative Networks

Screen shot of a portfolio on Coroflot

The easiest way to get your work online is to join a creative networking site. These are like social networking sites for designers and allow people to upload images, videos, resumes, etc. My website of choice for this is Coroflot which is both a network of portfolios and a job board. Coroflot is geared towards the Industrial Design field which makes it a good choice for Interaction Designers and its connection to Core77 gives it a reputable brand. In the past I have been contacted by job recruiters through this site, but that may not happen so much outside of North America.

If you sign up with this one, be sure to add me to your network: http://www.coroflot.com/nonlocal.

Other sites like this include Behance (see Marcin’s portfolio), Carbonmade (very slick), Computerlove (more graphic design focused), and db-db (more experimental).

Blogs

Screen shot of a portfolio made for free using WordPress

What the sites above really lack however is a way to document your process and as an interaction design student this is crucial. The best solution for this is to create a blog. The most popular blog service is WordPress which can be setup for free at wordpress.com (not to be confused with wordpress.org, which is where you go to install WP on your own host).

Have a look at this test blog I setup to get an idea of what you can do with a free account. Otherwise, you can have a look at Eilidh’s excellent blog which she made for free and without having to program.

The alternative to WordPress is Blogger which I find to be less customizable. And for those of you who like to share videos, photos, links, etc… but are not interested in writing much, be sure to have a look at Tumblr.

Hosting your own website

The fun really begins when you have your own website. What I mean by this is a domain name (yourname.com) and space to store all your files online. To do this you need a web host. Finding the right web host depends on your needs but let me say I use the cheapest package from Dreamhost.com and that serves my purposes just fine. Most hosting companies offer 1-click-installs for popular blog software such as WordPress. This means you can easily install WordPress on your own website and since you are hosting it now, there are a lot more options for customization.

Screen shot of the Sharpfolio theme for WordPress

This is really great because you can now install themes (aka templates) designed by other people. For example my blog uses WordPress but looks drastically different than the example above because I have installed a customized theme. Web developers are creating and sharing new WordPress themes all the time. Have a look at Sharpfolio, a WordPress theme design specifically for designers who need a portfolio website. Here’s the live demo. Sharpfolio is clean and simple and would do justice to anyone’s work.

Screen shot of a portfolio made with Indexhibit

Of course you don’t need to use WordPress or any other popular blogging software. Check out Indexhibit created by the graphic designer Daniel Eatock. Once installed on your web host, Indexhibit allows you to easily create a portfolio website. Websites created with Indexhibit prides themselves on being ultra minimal and intuitive so that the work displayed can speak for itself.

Goodluck!!!