Most creative job applications ask for a portfolio. Not your Instagram. Not your Behance. A PDF — curated, organised, and ready to be opened by someone who has about 90 seconds to decide if they want to know more about you.
Here’s how to make those 90 seconds count.
What actually goes in it
Keep it simple. A PDF portfolio is typically:
- A cover page
- Five to ten projects
- An end page
- Your contact details somewhere findable
That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate the structure.
Cover page — your name, location, and if you’re sending to a specific studio or company, a short personalised line goes a long way. “Hello, Studio Name” costs nothing and signals that this isn’t a mass blast.
Projects — this is the bulk of it. More on curation below.
End page — thank the reader, add a bit of personality if it fits the context. You’re a person, not a file.
Contact info — email, location, website, relevant social links. And if you’re embedding hyperlinks, test them before sending. A broken link to your site is worse than no link at all.
File size: keep it under 10MB ideally, 25MB maximum. Beyond that it becomes an attachment problem, not a portfolio problem.
Curation is the hard part — and the most important part
The temptation is to include everything. Resist it.
Start by listing every project you’ve worked on. Then cut ruthlessly. Only keep the ones you’re genuinely proud of. Not the ones you finished. Not the ones that were commissioned. The ones where you’d be happy to walk someone through your thinking out loud.
Aim for five to ten projects. A focused ten beats a padded twenty every time.
Two things to keep in mind while curating:
Tailor it to the role. Study the organisation before you send. If they’re known for digital work, lead with digital. If they publish a lot of editorial illustration, include your best editorial illustration. Generic portfolios get generic responses.
Include work you want more of. Your portfolio isn’t just a record of what you’ve done — it’s a signal of where you want to go. If you’ve only done one branding project but want more branding work, put it in. That’s how you attract more of it.
And if you’re early in your career with limited commissioned work — self-initiated projects, experiments, and rough concepts are completely valid. Employers at that stage are looking for curiosity and hunger, not a packed client list.
On length and pacing
There’s no magic page count. What matters is rhythm.
A quick one-day brief might need one or two pages. A complex research-heavy project might justify more. Mix shorter and longer treatments so the reader isn’t grinding through dense projects back to back.
Think about the experience of going through it from start to finish. Open strong. Close stronger. The first and last projects are what people remember most.
Captions and credits
Every project needs a short caption. Not an essay — a short explanation of what it is, what your role was, and who else was involved if it was a group effort.
Don’t claim work that wasn’t entirely yours. It comes up in interviews and it’s immediately obvious.
The goal: someone should be able to understand your work without you being in the room to explain it. If you need three paragraphs to justify a project, the project probably isn’t ready to be in the portfolio yet.
Design and layout
The PDF itself is a design decision. Portrait or landscape — pick what fits your work best and be consistent throughout.
A few things that always apply regardless of format:
- Your work is the main event — don’t let the layout compete with it
- Avoid pixelation; save as JPEGs and reduce quality, not resolution
- Don’t include two images that do the same job — be selective at the image level, not just the project level
- Page numbers and project titles as headers or footers help navigation without adding clutter
If you work across multiple disciplines or mix commercial and personal work, categorise clearly. Don’t make the reviewer do the organising for you.
One last thing
Your portfolio is never finished — it’s just the current version. Swap projects out as your work improves. Retailor it for each application. Treat it like a living document, not a one-time submission.
The edit gets easier every time you do it.
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