Hello people, I am back from my well deserved vacations ready for a new year full of content for free for you! Hope you all did enjoyed a nice vacations with your families and your best people.
The other day an ex student of mine made a question in a WhatsApp channel we are both in: “Can someone recommend where to create a game design porfolio?”
There is no specialized website, as far as I know, to create a portfolio. That is bad, because of discoverability, but is good because forces us designers in thinking out of the box and not using templates and pre-defined layouts.
I personally use itch.io, also if there are a whole lot of things that I cannot put on my portfolio because they belong to specific companies where I signed NDAs. That’s the eternal issue of our job.
Study your target
When you prepare your portfolio, you should think in WHO will read it. Will it be an HR manager? Maybe a lead game designer? Or a CEO? Every people speaks differently and every company does so, too.
- Look at companies you would like to work for
- Look at their game designers and try to find their portfolios (you can also ask them on LinkedIn)
- Create your porfolio using well your references
At the end of the day doing a portfolio is a for of design!
What to put in a portfolio
As I said before, I think there is NOT a general rule, a template, a standard, a best practice. You should find your way and make your own talents shine!
I can tell you what I would put:
- Start with a video gameplay with most meaningful moment of each exercise/job. People don’t want to have to download anything to see what you did.
- Add some capture with very special moments, most memorable moments.
- Notes on what you learn and on your process. You can use the STARR method that is also used by some recruiter.
- Link to external documents and references. I use Google Drive for that!