A Designer’s Portfolio Review with Timothy Achumba
Designer Arthur Petrillo gives a behind the scenes look at their portfolio, with Timothy Achumba.
Watch time: 26 min
Five Key Takeaways
First one, clarity in storytelling.
One of the strongest aspects of Arthur's portfolio was the clear storytelling throughout.
Each project had a clear logical flow, making it easier for reviewers to understand the challenges and how Arthur approached them. Your portfolio should really tell a cohesive story, with each project connecting seamlessly to guide the viewer through your design journey.
Balancing depth and brevity.
Arthur's portfolio struck a nice balance between showing and telling. It's really important to provide enough detail to demonstrate your thought processes without overwhelming the viewer. So highlight key design details and outcomes while avoiding too much detail that might feel repetitive, especially when it comes to process.
Three, showcase your visual design.
Arthur's portfolio does a great job at showcasing both product thinking and individual design skills. Visuals are just as important as functionality, especially for roles requiring a strong eye for design. So ensure your portfolio balances interaction design and visual aesthetics. Especially if the role demands it.
Tailoring for the audience.
When actively interviewing, Arthur tailors their portfolio to suit specific jobs or interview stages. Going deep into specific areas is great for design discussions, but might miss the mark in broader reviews. Adapt your portfolio to suit the audience. Whether it's for a design review or an interview, it's important to highlight your most relevant skills.
And five, preparing for feedback and growth.
When your portfolio is reviewed, employers naturally offer feedback and identify areas for growth. While you may not always agree with everything they say, it's important to remain open minded and self aware of your growth areas. Always be open to feedback. Demonstrating a growth mindset and showing the steps that you're taking to improve is just as important as showcasing your strengths.
Transcript
Timothy Achumba: In this video, fellow designer Arthur and I will conduct a portfolio review, sharing insights on what recruiters and hiring managers are looking for, we'll critique role work, discussing what works and what can be improved, and by the end, you'll have some key takeaways and practical tips to help you elevate your own portfolio and stand out in this competitive design field.
And so Arthur, would you like to introduce yourself?
Arthur Petrillo: Hi everyone. My name is Arthur and I am a designer. I'm based in London. I have worked at Meta, Google, RGA, and Wise. I'm currently consulting for design studios and tech companies in my own design practice. It's a privilege to be here with Timothy and people at Good Maven.
Timothy: We're going to break down Arthur's portfolio, we're going to walk through the work that they've done. Talk about the structure of the site, the storytelling, and how they really put things together in order to try and attract hiring managers and recruiters.
Arthur: Every designer knows that a portfolio is a really hard thing to come up with because it's really hard to talk about ourselves, especially for me.
And I wanted to pull this portfolio out quickly because I needed to share with some companies with some people who were requesting work from me. Because I needed this really quick, I started designing straight on the tool that I designed the portfolio on to see how it would work and what the tool could offer to me.
There are many ways you can do this. Of course, I had an initial design thinking on Figma, which I try to… get in between while I was doing this portfolio. I think one thing that's really important to me is to have really apparent menu items where I can see a description of the things that I want to find.
So for instance, on the top, you can see that's a home link. Of course, you want to go back to this page. You have the cases, which are the two most important things of this portfolio, and then I really love my photography work, which I brought in the very first highlight, and then I have my design Instagram and my LinkedIn.
I really wanted these to… stand out really big. Just because I want to make it simple and straightforward. And then as you scroll, this highlight, which is almost a quick introduction of what I do. And because I don't believe in roles in general, I think that roles in different companies have different names.
And I've worn so many hats in my career before. So I just listed all the hats that I wore here. Just because I don't think there is a set structure and a set name for what we do. Anyway, we're all designers. And I just wanted to say this is my 2024 portfolio. This is my work hub. I don't want to call this a portfolio because I want this to be almost a homepage for myself and for a sort of a studio that I represent, which is me.
And then I start with a couple of really important things about myself. One thing is about my identity. I identify as a they/them. I'm a non binary person. The other thing is the time of my career. I've been working for 19 years now. Between design and art direction, mostly those are the main roles that I had across these years.
And then I just wanted to show my experience in a really brief and designed way. Of course, everything feeling in a grid, everything needs to be super modernist and the way that I wanted to design this portfolio.
Timothy: You mentioned sharing your photography work here. I think portfolios… And just about your professional career.
I think it's about you as a person. I think it's important to express who you are. And you've done that here. You link the things you care about, your photo isn't necessarily going to get you the job, but it's nice to show people a bit more of the human side of you and what you're interested in and what you care about and what kind of drives you.
Because part of, part of landing a job isn't just about the work itself. It's also about the cultural fit and you as a person. And so it's really great seeing that. Yeah, strong navigation. I think that's a key part. A lot of recruiters are looking through tons of portfolios, hundreds in some cases.
And so having a really clear, strong way of getting around the portfolio… is really powerful. And… when I looked at your portfolio yesterday I really loved seeing your work as quickly as possible. I think, we designers are visual people. So, just below the fold, just below the information is “here's work that I've done”. So I wanted to call that out as well, but yeah. Yeah, keep going.
Arthur: Yeah, that aligns a lot with what I see as good portfolios in general. So every portfolio is almost a collage of things that you think resonates well, of course, design is made of inspiration.
We follow certain trends. We follow certain design patterns. So we follow certain designers that we love, we learn to love them throughout our careers. So I am heavily influenced by [Post Malhaus] stuff. So everything that I do for myself, it should always be a bit more, minimal. Of course every case is a different case.
We should design for brands. When I try to convince, or when I try to walk people through my work, I try to [present] this as my branding. There's not a brand or a logo or something, but there's also the level of personality. But also for me, what I wanted to do is that my portfolio shouldn't have an identity that stands out against the work itself. It should be a little bit more in the background, but sophisticated, but in the background as so then the work itself can pop up. So I wanted to avoid having lots of micro interactions, lots of things that make my portfolio the thing, because the thing should be the work.
So that's the hardest part is to find a level of sorts that you want to add to your portfolio. So this very first moment here, I think Timothy, it talks about myself and about my work as a merge. So we need to find that balance between those two things.
And then, you said, the first thing is a little bit of my work as a whole, as a designer, because Timothy said, I think we are all visual people. And as much as design is strategy and design is product, I just wanted to highlight some of the really quick… images of the things that I've done that I'm proud of.
So there's a lot of work that I did for companies, but that's also a lot of work that I did for myself too. So that's how we do this sort of presentation page. It's usually a merge between what you are and what you can offer to the company. Like Timothy just said, cultural fit is really important for me.
Timothy: Just on that point I remember when I was interviewing places, I would often show work that I have done just for myself, side projects, little interaction concepts. …a few of the designers have reached out to me [and ask] should I show things that I've done on the side that aren't at a company or don't have metrics?
I think, yeah I think it's important to share what you're proud of and it's all in the service of communicating who you are, communicating your skills, communicating your eye, your taste, all these elements are important and creating a complete picture of who you are. So yeah, I think it's great seeing some of that, some of those side projects and yeah, that's really nice.
Arthur: After it, I go through this sort of reel of the things that I did that I'm proud of. I just wanted to reinforce it as a secondary thing, where was my last role just because it aligns with your career progression. So I want people, if they want to hire me as a design consultant, I want them to know what was the last place I worked at.. And yeah, I just added currently what I'm doing, which is design consultancy, acceleration, and as a freelancer, and then what I'm focused on.
And what I'm specialized in. So I just need to people to understand what it is I'm specialized in. And that helps people while they're hiring me, because first I get some questions. So are you looking for product design roles? Are you looking for brand roles? What are you looking for?
And then I [realised] actually I can do both, but if you show them those names that they're looking for, it's easier for them to understand, okay, I'm going to work with this person or I'm not going to work with this person. I think because people see my portfolio and I think that kind of resonates with your type of work too, Timothy, correct me if I'm wrong, but we are super visual and people sometimes have this preconception of, oh, this person is super visual… because there's a sort of a spectrum to everything everyone thinks about, which is you're either too strategic or you’re either too visual. And then when someone is super visual, they might have this preconception that the person doesn't have the understanding of the overall business, which is what drives our work these days.
So I really wanted to call that out because you overcome that feeling in that preconception. I think I did presentation coaching before in my career. And one thing I was really impressed by and that I never did before is “who am I designing for?” So we would do a layout of those people.
I am designing for people who would want to hire me. So these people might be working in big tech companies in design studios or advertising agencies or whatever. And what are their thoughts about me? And how I can compensate those thoughts with information? So that's really important while designing your portfolio, which is if you're heavily on the strategy spectrum of a product designer, for instance, it might be good for you to show that you know about visual design, or at least you know how to judge a good visual design, or at least you have some sort of understanding of how to craft a good product after my strategy is done.
So for me, that's really important. And that's something I really want to do, which is compensate for the things people might think I'm not good at and show them that I have a vision for that. And one thing that I learned throughout my career, and that's my take on design and that's what I want to offer to companies is I want to design products and brands with the highest craft standards.
This is a bit obvious. We all should set an aim for the highest craft standards. But for me, I want people to know that this person can design a good product in terms of craft also, not only on the strategy side.
So one thing to call out, I wanted people, after scrolling this page, I wanted people to understand what type of design they should expect from me in a really straightforward sentence. I know it doesn't look as inspiring as it should be, but it's really straight to the point. So if you want to hire me, this is what I'm going to offer. So it's good because it helps people to know, okay, this person is not for me or I would love to work with this person because it can filter and help me get exactly the type of job that I want to get.
So this is really helpful. I usually tell people to have this sort of big bold statement of what you really want to do. And what is your specific thing? And what's that thing that you think that puts you out of the pool of talents? If you already saw enough and you want to get in touch with me, you have my email here.
And if you want to see my work, you can click straight on my work and then it goes to the cases page. One thing that is really important for me and the portfolio is to be pretty intentional about which page you're on to signpost people who are looking at your portfolio. So in this case, I am on the cases page.
Again, we repeat the menu on the top, which is important because I want people to have access to all those at any point of their experience while working on my portfolio and the cases page. One thing that the best portfolios that I've seen, and we get inspired by portfolios, there's a sort of a mental model that kind of comes across in every portfolio. And I think that's really positive. That's really interesting. Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Of course, we're not going to copy a portfolio exactly because that's not cool. But we can pick some of the things in some portfolios that work, it can work for your portfolio too.
I don't think that's a crime. I don't think there's any problem with that. I think it's actually positive because you're showing that you do research, that you understand your industry. You're actually telling a lot about yourself as a designer too. So anyway, that's how I wanted to do this page.
I want people to read the first sentence and to understand almost exactly what that project is about. So in this case, the Meta case we enable Metaverse users to create avatars from a face scan. So if you read this sentence, you already understand what this feature and product is about.
So I wanted to replicate that throughout all the cases to create consistency. When you hover each project, you see an animation of something related to that project. So that's what I wanted to do to create some visual pizazz. And yeah, I have a description for each of the cases right in the cases page.
So then when people tap into these cases to see them, they already… know what to expect.
Timothy: How many case studies do you think a designer should have on their website?
Arthur: That's actually a good question because if you think about interviews, you usually have time to present two cases. And then if there's time, you then gonna have a third. I think one case would take probably 20 minutes to present and then the read would be five to 10 minutes. So I don't want to take a lot of someone's time. So I think that probably somewhere in between five and eight is ideal, but I'd love to hear your thoughts too.
Timothy: Yeah. I think that makes sense. I think for me the approach that I take and tell people to take is that again, there's a narrative here. So what does each case study tell you about what you are trying to communicate? And so maybe there's a specific type of skill or specific experience that you want to try and visualize or communicate with a specific case study.
So maybe over three or four case studies, you've shown your physical skill, your visual skills, your interaction design, your product thinking, and maybe obviously all of them probably have all those things, but maybe one has is really visual or one is super interaction. So you get this diverse sense [that there’s] many situations with many different types of problems with many different types of potential solutions. Here's the breadth of my skills. So that's usually how I think about it. It's more focusing on the type of skill you want to try and communicate versus any sort of hard number.
But yeah, I think I err on less because I usually say three to five, but yeah, I think around that five number is great because it can show the diversity of situations that you're working in.
Arthur: We don't have a lot of junior professionals in our industry, just because of the way the industry is set up. Now, I mentor a lot of people who are starting. And I also think that it's not a problem at all to come up with your own product, you come up with your own ideas. I really love when people come out straight out of the uni with probably three different products.
I know a lot of really seasoned designers, people who are directors, they have their own products and every product started as a playful moment for them. So I think that a really good moment to come up with case studies is by creating your products. If you don't have anything in your portfolio… or any real case study, it's easy to come up with your own products and have something that would help you beef up your portfolio.
This is the space where we can show our tool set, so it's good to show diversity, it’s good to show a product or a project where you are much more strategic than a visual or the other way around. So I think that's the moment. I think I would love to call that out because it's really important.
And I one hundred percent agree with you, Timothy, that having this broader set of products might be helpful, but cool. In my portfolio here, we have a couple of projects. For instance, the Meta project comes from a strategy background. Of course, we needed to create avatars straight from a face scan, but it also has a visual outcome, so it's a more balanced case study, whereas the Google project is highly on the strategy side.
Because you change the mental model of how people edit and manage their business profiles. And then I have one here, which is the Wise data visualization vision, which was launched on Wise’s Instagram. I think this one is much more on the visual side. So that kind of illustrates what we are talking about, having different types of projects in different types of the project spectrum.
So then we can have good diversity and a set of tools and people can understand what they can expect from us.
Timothy: The balance of actually how you did it on the homepage and you had this reel, that's a really nice thing that I want to add to my site eventually when I redesign it.
But yeah, that reel was great. And… you mentioned copy is something that can either be reduced or finessed or just continually massaged. That's really good. The flow overall having the chance to continue through the project without having to go back to the homepage is strong.
Even with the Wise project… you can see it's definitely more visual, a lot less text. And that diversity is really key.
It's been really fun, going through your work and seeing the thought behind it. And I've been taking notes myself. But I just wanted to first say, thank you. Thank you, Arthur, for taking the time to walk through this and share. And I know your site is an inspiration to a lot of people and with all the tools out there now, with Framer and Wix and all these other tools, it's really easy for designers to build great websites and have the control over their vision.
And it's been really cool seeing this as a designer who I guess doesn't write code. It's really nice. It's been great. Thanks for everyone who's tuned in and taking the time to listen. If you have questions or thoughts, you can definitely throw those in the comments.
You can reach out to us via email. Just go on goodmaven.com and you'll find the email there as well. And if you're looking for portfolio reviews, you can also reach out to us and we can definitely help you massage and adjust and improve your work. I want to say thank you. Arthur, and thank you all of you for tuning in.
Arthur: Yes, thanks Timothy. It was a pleasure. Actually we haven't met in person before we started talking about doing this video and it's a pleasure to meet you and to learn from you and to talk to you. It's a privilege for me to be here. Thanks everyone at Good Maven. I think it's been super helpful for me.
It was actually a pretty good moment. I feel I did 10 years of mentorship now, after this call. And it's a pleasure to be among people who are willing to actually help other people get a better job or land on their dream job or something, for me inclusion is definitely something that's my heart.
And it's part of what I do is try to have as many diverse faces. And the places that I work for. So I'm here for portfolio reviews for mentorship and anything else you want help with. But yeah, thanks everyone. Thanks Timothy. And everyone at Good Maven. If you want to have sessions with us, just ping us on LinkedIn.
Thank you very much and have a good week, day or yeah, whatever you are. Thank you.
Watch the full length interview on YouTube
Timothy: So to wrap up. Let's talk about five key takeaways that will help you elevate your portfolio.
Thanks again for watching. And if you're interested in more design tips, hit subscribe.
