Patrick Mann

10 Tips on Improving Your Online Portfolio

Patrick Mann — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:37:50 +0000

I’m in the second main iteration of my portfolio and I’ve noticed many things that many other online portfolios are/aren’t doing to improve what they’re supposed to do. Get you clients.

Here are 10 tips on improving your online portfolio to get more visitors, increase the amount of leads and hence clients that you acquire because lets face it, there’s a lot of potential on the web which we haven’t tapped into yet.

1. Decide on Your Target Audience

If you try to target everyone, you’re probably going to acquire less leads and customers than if you chose a specific niche to target. For example you could target small businesses looking to build a website, anyone looking for a graphic designer in your home town, mobile web development, etc. This doesn’t mean you can’t promote your other skills and services but you let them know about these extras after they become a client.

2. Choose the Right Work to Show

With our target audience in mind, what work should we display in kind. If you are advertising your web development skills, you should stick to your main pieces of presented work being only these things.

3. Add a Smooth Scroller for Long Pages

Especially for one page portfolios a jQuery smooth scroller script is essential to avoid a jarring experience for the user. Head to the link below for the jQuery script to make anchor tags scroll smoothly.

Smooth Scroll jQuery Script

4. Make Your Contact Details Easy to Find

So once you’ve won them over and they want to hire you, make sure they easily have the means to do so! For example on my portfolio, I have a contact box accompanied by additional contact links above the footer of every page. Doing so increases the likelihood of them getting in touch with you. Obvious right.

5. Use Web Fonts

With the advent of CSS3 and compatibility with browsers being a non-issue these days, there’s no quicker way of making a portfolio look more slick than with custom fonts thanks to the @font-face CSS property. Font Squirrel has a heap of free commercial web fonts to use on your portfolio. But don’t overdo it otherwise it can slow down your website. Google also has their own base of free web fonts which they can host for you, which speeds up loading times. (Google Webfonts)

6. Simplify and Get Rid of The Clutter

Some portfolios I’ve seen really try to cram as much information onto their pages as possible. Which makes it a lot more difficult to read and navigate. Cut out the crap and whatever they probably don’t need to read.

7. Focus On The Main Skills

Once again using our target market, promote only the skills that suit this target. You could offer the whole kitchen sink of skills but this just won’t work for you in the long run.

8. Do Some Keyword Research

Using Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool will help you find how much traffic certain key phrases will bring such as “web design sydney” and the level of competition for that traffic. Here is another article detailing how to find the right keywords to target. Instead of targeting something broad such as “web designers” which you have no hope of coming 1st in Google, “web development for restaurants” is something you’re more easily going to score 1st place and get more traffic. Finding the right keywords for you portfolio to target will improve your SEO and allow you to possibly get the 1st ranking for that particular niche.

9. Add a Blog to Get More Traffic

Search engines love content. Specifically good stuff. One blog post alone (and I’ve written like 2 at this time) led to a 250% increase in traffic. So having more pages which help you get found is essential. You can either integrate Tumblr or WordPress which the latter I highly recommend.

10. Showcase Your Skills Using the Portfolio Itself

If you’re a HTML & CSS developer, make sure you show off that skill with the site itself! Same goes for graphic designers, JavaScript developers and so forth. If you’re a social media expert, it looks dubious when you’ve only got 40 followers on Twitter.

Got any other tips on improving your online portfolio? Lets hear them in the comments!

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My Brand New Website is Here!

Patrick Mann — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:19:44 +0000

Hurrah, it’s finally arrived!

After getting distracted on working on my new site for ages (pesky end of year exams) I’ve actually done it, in all its glory. Along with the website I’ve also created completely new branding, which was really the reason why I’ve updated my portfolio. Business cards will also be coming soon and I’ll be uploading pictures of them soon. If you happen to run into me, you might even be able to get one from me, with a 60 day money back guarantee with free shipping (just kidding, gotta love infomercials).

But if i’ve learnt anything as a designer, its that your biggest critic is yourself. I’ll probably be thinking in a year how hideous my website is and become irritated enough to build another.

Until then though, enjoy my new website! Let me know if there’s any glitches/bugs or any suggestions (if you’re using Internet Explorer 6 or 7, just update your browser already and I’ll love you forever).

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3 Graphic Design Exercises to Improve Your Skills

Patrick Mann — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:20:39 +0000

Design is a skill and like every other, it can always be worked on. I’m sure your design skills may be great, though it can always be improved whether it’s your skill set, ability to brainstorm ideas or just being able to do it faster.

So here are 3 graphic design exercises that I’ve been doing at the moment to improve my design skills. I regularly do these whenever I have some time to kill or have less work on my plate.

Mock Logo Design

The guise of this exercise is simple. To mainly speed up your creative process.

1. Come up with multiple company names, whether they be existing companies or purely made up. (which I prefer so I can have a clean slate in my mind).

2. I prefer to create names from scratch as they allow me to have a clean slate in my mind and let my creative skills flow. A random word generator is particularly good for this.

3. Get out some paper and sketch out concepts!

4. It’s simple enough. If you’re confident you can set a time limit for the exercise.

5. Repeat daily, weekly or whenever you prefer.

You should be incrementally doing it faster with better concepts every time.

Create a Colour Scheme

Most graphic designers don’t take time once in a while to practice creating colour schemes. And yet it can make or break a design. Colour conveys emotion so it is important to get this.

1. Pick a theme or emotion you want to convey (eg. Bubbly, India, Winter, Festive).

2. Then simply build a colour scheme, preferably made of 5 colours to reflect the theme/emotion.

Here are also some brilliant resources on colour and colour schemes:

An Introduction to Colour Theory for Designers

Colour Scheme Game (For Fun)

Adobe Kuler

Quote Typography

This is my most used exercise to practice my graphic design skills. They always seem to make their way as a wallpaper or a shot on Dribbble.

1. Get any quote or saying of your choice. Quotations Page has quite a broad range of them there.

2. Pick a theme of sorts that would convey the feeling of the quote or you think would complement it and design away!

3. Set a time limit if you want to add an extra challenge.

So there you have it. I hope these exercises will help you as much as they helped me and help you flourish in your graphic design skills.

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