When designing an online portfolio, pay special attention to your colors, design elements, layout style, and content. Typically, artists and designers are the ones who have to obsess about these things; but really, if you are selling anything from a service to tangible products, you still need to be careful how you choose to design your presentations. Portfolios are no different from websites, they are highly organized presentations.

Choices of colors are very important—for example, cool colors can complement warm colors. Not only this, but we react to colors and associate them to memories, people, objects, and places. Colors can make or break portfolio presentations (and websites) due to readability, visual comfort, color association, and aesthetics.

The elements of design are: line, shape, form, space, value, texture, and color. All of these elements need to be addressed and that is why setting up portfolios is so challenging. When combining a wide variety of artwork into one portfolio, artists must not only consider how the artwork flows from one category to the next, but how the artwork flows within each category. They need

The layout style should somewhat match the style of the artwork within the portfolio. This is the branding and corporate identity of the portfolio and artist. Artists need to consider themselves as a corporation. The layout should match the stationery and other promotional material. The layout is much like a composition. It needs to have balance and make sense to the audience.

Decorative fonts can help to illustrate the text. Versals and stylized headings add style to portfolios. If the text is online, the body of information or content should be sans serif (i.e. Verdana); and for print, it should be serif (i.e. Times New Roman).

So as you can see, when designing online portfolios (and websites), many aspects need to be addressed. Designers need to be diligent when putting together their colors, design elements, layout style, and content--ALL of the portolio needs to look good!

Debbie Jensen, Graphic Designer and Photographer http://www.debjensendesigns.com

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