How to Build a Design Portfolio From Scratch, Part 1: What to Include and Why It Matters More Than Ever

Part 1: building a design portfolio from scratch. What to include, how to research, and why it matters more than ever.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know you need a portfolio. This design portfolio guide covers what to include, how to approach the research, and why it matters more than ever. Maybe you’re switching careers, from development, from marketing, from something completely unrelated, and you need to prove that you’re a designer. Or maybe you’ve been designing for years but your portfolio is outdated, empty, or doesn’t exist at all.

I’ve been there. And with the rise of AI tools and vibe coding, there’s this strange new pressure: if anyone can build software now, what makes a designer valuable? The answer is exactly what your portfolio needs to show.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on building a design portfolio from scratch. We’ll cover what to include and how to think about it. Part 2 dives deep into writing case studies. Part 3 covers actually building and publishing the thing.

Why Design Portfolios Matter More Now, Not Less

There’s a narrative going around that AI is making designers obsolete. I think it’s the opposite.

When everyone has access to tools that can generate interfaces, write code, and produce visuals, the skill that separates good products from bad ones isn’t technical execution. It’s design thinking. The ability to understand a problem, research users, make intentional decisions about hierarchy and flow, and create something that actually works for the people using it.

AI can generate a login screen. It can’t tell you whether your onboarding flow creates unnecessary friction, or why your checkout abandonment rate is high, or what emotional response your color palette triggers in your specific audience. That’s design. That’s you. This design portfolio guide exists because proving that is more important than ever.

Your portfolio’s job is to prove you can think this way. Not just that you can make pretty screens, but that you can solve problems through design.

The Mindset Shift: Think of Your Portfolio as a Design Project

The best thing I did when building my portfolio was treat it like a client project. It has a target audience (potential clients, recruiters, collaborators), a goal (demonstrate your value and get hired), and it deserves the same process you’d use for any design engagement.

That means research first, design second.

Design Portfolio Guide: Start With Research, The UX of Your Portfolio

Before opening Figma, spend time understanding what works. Look at 20, 30 portfolios from designers whose work you admire. Don’t copy, study the patterns.

What to pay attention to:

• Information architecture, How do they organize their work? What’s on the homepage vs. individual project pages? How many clicks to see actual work?
• Case study depth, How long are they? What level of detail feels right vs. overwhelming? Do they show process or just finals?
• Navigation patterns, Table of contents? Sticky nav? How do they handle long case study pages?
• Non-project pages, What goes on the About page? Do they include a resume directly or link to it? How do they handle contact?
• What’s missing, Which portfolios leave you wanting more information? Which ones give too much?

Collect everything that resonates. Any good design portfolio guide will tell you that research is where the real foundation is built. Screenshots, links, notes on what specifically works. This becomes your reference library, the same way you’d gather inspiration for any design project.

Then Find the Vibes, The UI of Your Portfolio

Once you understand the structural patterns, shift to the visual direction. This is the same UI lens you’d use on a client project, aesthetic and emotional, completely separate from the structural research you just did.

Look at the portfolios you collected and notice which ones feel right. What color palettes are they using? What typography choices define the personality? Is the layout dense or spacious? Is the vibe minimal and restrained or bold and expressive?

Start sorting your references into distinct visual directions, the same way you’d organize inspiration into vibes for a client. You’ll probably find yourself gravitating toward two or three distinct styles. That’s your visual direction taking shape.

Your portfolio’s aesthetic is also a design decision that communicates something about you. A clean, minimal portfolio says something different than a colorful, experimental one. Neither is wrong, but it should be intentional and aligned with the kind of work you want to attract.

What to Actually Include

Projects: Quality Over Quantity

As Figma’s portfolio resource guide suggests, four to six projects is the sweet spot. Enough to show range, not so many that each one gets lost. Choose projects that demonstrate the skills you want to be hired for.

If you’re switching careers, you probably have more relevant work than you think. Were you the developer who ended up designing the dashboard because there was no designer? Did you create wireframes or mockups alongside your technical work? Did you make decisions about user flows, information hierarchy, or interface layouts? That’s design work, you just need to frame it that way.

If you genuinely don’t have enough work to show, create concept projects. A well-executed fictive project with clear thinking is a legitimate portfolio piece. Just label it honestly as a concept and document your process the same way you would for a real client project.

Case Studies: The Heart of Everything

This is where portfolios succeed or fail. A case study isn’t a gallery of final screens. It’s the story of how you solved a problem. People don’t hire designers for pretty pictures, they hire you for how you think through problems.

We’ll go deep on case study writing in Part 2, but the key mindset shift: explain your decisions, not just your deliverables.

About Page

Not a CV. A narrative. Who are you, what do you care about as a designer, what’s your perspective? If you’re a career switcher, this is where your unique background becomes a strength, not something to apologize for. A designer who also understands engineering, or business, or healthcare, that’s a differentiator.

Contact

Make it easy. Don’t bury it. If someone is on your portfolio and wants to work with you, the path from that feeling to actually reaching out should be frictionless. This is a UX problem, treat it like one.

For Career Switchers Specifically

If you’re coming from another field, development, engineering, marketing, anything, your biggest challenge isn’t having enough work. It’s framing the work you have as design work.

The internal dashboard you built as a developer? That involved design decisions about layout, hierarchy, and usability. The marketing landing page you created? That involved conversion thinking, visual communication, and user psychology. The product features you specced? Those involved information architecture and user flow decisions.

You’ve been designing. You just haven’t been calling it that. Your portfolio’s job is to translate that experience into design language.

And honestly, in this moment, when AI tools are blurring the line between who designs and who builds, someone who understands both sides has a genuine advantage. Own that in your portfolio. It’s not a weakness that you came from development. It’s a superpower.

Coming Up Next

In Part 2, we’ll get into the deep end of case study writing, structure, templates, how to show your thinking, and why your process documentation matters more than ever in the age of AI-generated design. In Part 3, we’ll cover building and shipping the actual portfolio site.