Favorite portfolios

Hello everyone.

I see time and time again the same advice given to students and young graduates: Look at the portfolios in the Portfolio section of these forums.
While this is great advice, I thought it might be nice to have a thread where the community can post their favorites and maybe also have a short motivation why.

This is not intended as a place to post designer’s websites by Nendo, Marc Newson or the like as there is a thread up already but rather top notch portfolios that students and juniors can use as a reference and get a feel for what’s current.
I would imagine this might be exciting for the more seasoned as well.

I’ll start with Elie Ahovi. Well presented work, to the point, easy to follow and a refreshing level of restraint.
http://elieahovi.com

Great idea. I’ll compile some of my favorites this week. I have a few young designers bookmarked who I keep in mind when I have open positions.

This thread could be very helpfully for young designers if it becomes robust.

I have a whole archive of portfolios i’ve collected over the past few years, but there’s some great ones from students who just graduated from UC:

Ben Zavala:
http://www.benzavala.com/portfolio/

Travis Wettroth:

Victor Khramov:
http://www.victorkhramov.com/project_category/portfolio/

Jon Kosenick:
http://jon-kosenick-a05z.squarespace.com/

Kyle Oldfield:
http://www.kyleoldfield.com/

Holly Howes:
http://www.hollowayhowes.com/

Brent Radewald:

Also, Alex Broerman graduated a few years ago, and he has a really nice website:
http://alexbroerman.com/index.html


there’s a bunch more, but I don’t have their websites handy!

https://www.behance.net/francois_rybarczyk

Lately I’ve seen very high skilled French designers. Apparently all of them come from this school that somebody asked about here in the forum, ISD.

I love Choto’s portfolio, very engaging, nice story telling, great sketches and covering the whole process. I’d say it’s the best portfolio I’ve seen.

Glad this got off the ground!
Already really interesting and exciting stuff posted here!

Yeah, ISD is highly represented here in the studios around San Francisco. I work with several graduates from there.
One of them has a nice portfolio website. I appreciate that it strikes a good balance between whimsy/breezy but then backs up with strong ID skills and projects.

Not an industrial designer’s book, but awesome breadth of work and fun to look at:

http://dannyyount.com/index.html

Broerman’s blog is even better. http://abroerman.tumblr.com/

Guess it finally time to plug a side project thing I never got around to finishing. Maybe I’ll go through a new round of updates soon.

(edit: site taken down - was super outta date)

Great stuff, so happy this thread was started as I have always kept a list of top portfolios.

Here are few of mine right now:

I’m also enjoying the work of Joe Bowers, especially some of his side projects such as the AT-ST costumer he built: http://joebowersdoesdesign.com/

Definitely inspiration to use my skills outside of work for “fun” stuff (even though my job is fun)

Joe Bowers, oh man I want to be friends with this guy. That Chicken Walker AT-ST costume had me laughing. And his Sleepy
Sketchbook made me smile. I really enjoy portfolios that show quirky or fun creativity that even though they are not necessarily practical, they show such lateral thinking and allow me to understand the designers’ personality much more.

Just found this guy and really enjoyed the work as well as how it was presented.
Nice, full bleed close up renders with a little PS love go such a long way.

Nice! A lot of those look like relatively quick projects but well finished. Inspiring to show what you can do with a personal project in not too long a time.

I will have to weed through my Coroflot favorites and find a few that we haven’t mentioned…

Danny works with one of my company’s clients, so I had a chance to meet him a few times. Really nice guy, very humorous, humble, and excellent attitude towards collaborating and giving feedback.

My good friend Chris Terella has a pretty nuts portfolio. Probably the most detailed I’ve seen (18 pages for 1 project): Christopher Terella, Industrial Designer in Boston, MA

There’s certainly some beautiful looking portfolios here. I haven’t looked through all of them yet, but I noticed that some of the folios do not show any process. Some don’t even show sketches!

I’m hearing all the time that a summary, or golden thread if you like, of the design process should be included - especially research insights. What do you guys think about that? Surely a grad/junior designer should communicate how they arrived at the final solution and what decisions they made and why?

Here’s a nice folio I came across recently by Kai Lin: Behance

Philip, I was thinking the exact same thing. I’m a recent grad and all throughout school we were told to show our process. A lot of the portfolios in this thread, while beautiful in the final form and presentation, don’t seem to show much process. I’d like to get some more thoughts on this as I’m currently working through my portfolio.

For those who didn’t see it, there was a post a couple of months back about a new book that just came out which compiles interviews from over 100 designers (including our own Michael DiTullo) focusing on what they’re looking for in new hires:

Like some of you have already mentioned, communicative sketching and showing design process are critical components to a great portfolio. I’m recommending that all my students read this book.

w