Digital Design Blog
Portfolio Tips
- Don’t just show final work. Show your working and thinking behind each design
choice. Companies/recruiters like to see wireframes, mood boards and
experimentation. - If you don’t have any clients/projects to show – Choose one of your favourite brands
and redesign their website/app. Start with wireframes and work, to more concrete
designs after you’re happy. (Just be sure to mention somewhere in the project page
this is a concept only). Examples – McDonalds, Nike App. There are also a number of
idea generators you can use such as https://appideagenerator.com and
https://sharpen.design - Try and show your personality/personal style in the copy and content of the site. The
About page is a great place to do this. Some great examples -
https://www.webfx.com/blog/web-design/30-inspiring-about-me-pages/ - Don’t worry if you don’t have a huge portfolio. In a battle of the portfolios - a 3
project site with detailed, work in progress and design thinking for each piece will
beat a site with single image galleries of each final project – every time. - Choose your project for the job you want. Want an interface career? Include
Website/App projects. Enjoy Branding? Add in some logo redesigns. Don’t include
anything you’re not proud of.
Free Software Alternatives
Adobe Photoshop (Photo editing/touchup)
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
Adobe Illustrator (Vector Illustrations)
https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.1.1/
Adobe Dreamweaver (HTML/CSS/JS coding)
https://atom.io
Adobe XD (Web/Interface Design)
https://www.figma.com (Free plan available)
Story Telling Exercise
https://davebirss.com/storydice/9dice.html
Website Design/Hosting Options
Wordpress
https://wordpress.com/pricing/
The most widely known and used CMS (Content management system), which is currently
used on 37% of all websites and 60% of all CMS based websites. It’s extremely open and
customisable with lots of Visual (Drag and drop style) builders and premium/free themes
available to help get started. You can run something as simple as a blog to as advanced as a
fully fledged e-commerce site with analytics on Wordpress – The limits are endless!
The free plan is a great starting point and will let you play around with some of the features
and they have plans starting at only £3 a month with include the hosting/domain. This is
great resource for premium themes/inspiration: https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress
Similar to Wordpress, but not as open/customisable. It is however completely free to play
around with until you want to “launch” the site so it’s good for playing around with layout
ideas. Huge professional design team behind the templates/layouts so some beautiful
starting points to get going with.
Hosting isn’t as cheap as Wordpress, but it’s still reasonable starting at £6.50 a month.
Webflow
https://webflow.com
A newer player in the online website building market, but quickly gaining traction because
of its advanced user interface and possibilities. Like Wix it’s free to try and you can build 2
projects without paying a penny. They also give over 100 hours of tutorials from simple
tasks all the way to building a fully fledge website.
If you are happy to keep the webflow.io domain there are no costs, but you have the option
to add custom domains and plans start from £11 a month.
Inspiration and Resources
Behance
https://www.behance.net
Behance is owned by Adobe and is an incredible resource for inspiration and keeping up
with the latest design trends.
Muzli
https://muz.li
A wonderful plugin that installs on most modern browsers which adds adds daily design
inspiration into new tabs. A must have.
Codepen
https://codepen.io
A workspace for developers all over the world to collaborate, share and build projects. The
best thing about Codepen is if you see something you like you can make a direct copy
(forking) of it on your own free account and start playing around with the code to see what
you can make yourself!
Themeforest
https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress
Although this where you go to purchase premium Wordpress themes, it’s also a great place
to go for inspiration as a great deal of the themes are built by industry leading design
studios with incredible talents.
Awwwards
https://www.awwwards.com
A website designers/agencies can submit their websites to which gives awards daily for a
number of categories, from Mobile friendly to Most Unique. Recruiters also use it to find
new talent - If you can get your portfolio displayed on here, the job offers will come flying
in.
CSS Awards
https://css-awards.com
A lesser-known version of awwwards, but still a great resource.
Semplice
https://www.semplice.com/showcase
Semplice is actually an extremely advanced theme/framework for Wordpress (but because
of this, unfortunately isn’t cheap at almost £100). They do however have some incredible
portfolios they will add to weekly in their featured library. Great for inspiration for your
portfolio.
Stephen Gallacher
Digital Design Manager
The glue that holds the team together, he makes sure the team have everything they need
to create rich, engaging designs and content. He leads the creative style of the projects,
presenting the protype of digital assets whilst managing workloads and deadlines of the
other designers.
Main Deliverables at Postcode Lottery:
- Creative thinking and idea generation
- Interactive Display Creatives and Page Takeovers
- Assets and internal use
Scott Barron
Digital Designer
Self proclaimed geek with a love for all things technology. He has worked on a variety of
different mediums but mostly focuses on the interface designs for our retail facing website
as well as overseeing our CRO (Converstion Rate Optimization) website tests.
Main Deliverables at Postcode Lottery:
- Single webpage designs (Retail site/Internal/External projects)
- HTML/CSS Coding (Email and Webpage)
- User Interface and Iconography