In this article, we will display some ideas and projects that could be a blast this year. This would be great for you to do because it would allow you to update and also upgrade your design portfolio. Whether you are a full-time professional graphic designer or a part-timer offering graphic design services, creating a sleek graphic design portfolio is key to showing your unique style and highlighting your skills in today’s design world.
Your portfolio has to give your target audience a peek at your ability to conceptualize, develop and execute a design. When you are dealing with creative block, you can find your flow again by discovering work that inspires you. We often find ourselves scrolling through graphic design sites to see what is new and exciting. From commissioned work to personal projects, browsing another creator’s graphic design portfolio can be a fair way to flash the idea that you have been waiting for.
6 Ideas to Update your Design Portfolio
If you are a graphic designer, then you already know that your job is to help a company create its brand identity, starting with its color palette and logo design. You should keep in mind that all your design projects play a critical role in increasing your client’s brand visibility. You may want to take a page from some established brands and research what works and what does not in marketing campaigns. You may also get inspiration from your possible client.
But to increase any client’s brand visibility, uniform branding elements should be used in their marketing collateral, such as flyers, business cards, and flyers. Your clients’ web design should also be consistent with their branding. Below this, you will find some projects that surely will give you an idea of what to do next as a designer.
1. Reinterpretation of a Classic Work
This type of project is a great choice for any designer to show that they think seriously about design, as well as a fine opportunity to showcase a well-made printed product. Creating a custom edition of a favorite book, for instance, is a simple yet challenging way to show off your design skills. A redesign of a classic album cover could be another fun option.
2. Pop Culture Inspiration
Here you can create some images separately and silkscreen them onto the cover for a unique, handmade look of something that comes to your mind about the current scene. Taking the cover in this fun direction can be an unexpected move that makes something like a magazine stand out. Pop culture references make for instantly recognizable and relatable imagery, and they also add an element of playfulness to a design concept.
3. Product Packaging Design
Packaging, which is the outerwear of a product, should also be coherent with the brand. A great product packaging design can go a long path. Having this project in your portfolio could lead to more chances. As a graphic designer, you can showcase your skills by integrating a client’s branding into the packaging design.
Packaging concepts alter, depending on the outcome. You should be able to come up with different packaging designs for food and beverage products and develop another set of packaging concepts for medicines, skin care products, toiletries, and other pharmaceutical products. Your creative skill is a significant requirement for these kinds of assignments. Or you can just refer to templates from many sites and take inspiration from these designs.
4. Brand Design
It is a no-brainer that a corporation should focus on how to share its brand with a target audience. Even while a brand is still being conceptualized, one of the first features to consider is its logo. Designing a logo is not as simple as you might think. It is key because the logo design should encapsulate your brand’s vision and speak to your potential clients.
You might want to hire a professional graphic designer to create your logo. But what if you do not need one? With your creative mind and the logo templates offered by Creative Market, you do not need graphic design skills and prior design experience. Worry no more because you can set to make your life more uncomplicated with its wide array of logo mockups as well as fonts and graphics to choose from.
5. Trifold Brochures
A trifold brochure is most typically used to promote a product or a business. This printed material consists of three equal sections, with the sides folded over the middle. It typically contains high-resolution images and chunks of text to promote businesses such as restaurants, travel agencies, hospitals, real estate, and even churches. The challenge is to accomplish a balance between graphic design and typography. Creating these kinds of project designs like trifold brochures is a great addition to your portfolio because you will be putting all of your design ideas and skills into one task.
6. A Product Label
Here is a story. American designer Wake Coulter got creative when creating a brand identity for ØsterGRO, a sizeable urban ranch on a Copenhagen rooftop. In search of a design that “visually evoked the colors and typography of Danish farmstands,” Coulter decided to utilize potato prints in his work. The result is a series of labels and brand materials that represent ØsterGRO’s identity in a fun and timeless manner.
Coulter’s use of unexpected materials as inspiration and a tool for this work is fantastically thought out. Hopefully, it will inspire all of you to think outside the box too and look at ways you can use the subject or the brand in an unconventional way to build something that stands out.
Conclusion
If you want to succeed this year as a designer and your design portfolio looks kind of dead, then here is your redemption.
