Why we always got the portfolio approach wrong
How we sell ourselves as creative people and why we need to revisit the way we make our portfolios.
The one and only mistake we all made
As designers we naturally show the what. We display our craft, showing how beautiful and great our previous projects were. We are proud of them, or at least we want the potential client to believe we are (although every designer I know tends to criticize his project as soon as it’s released. Very natural indeed, but we still need to show that it’s great when we meet a new person, don’t we?).
What I learned and applied is to show the why. Why a client needed you, and why it was a huge benefit for them to work with you. Of course you can show the project itself, but it’s not what will make the prospect to contact you and sign a contract. This is where we need to take a step back and ask ourselves this crucial question: “Why do I do a portfolio?”
“Why do I do a portfolio?”
My point of view is from a freelance designer. I am not completely sure this also applies for designers who are looking for being hired by agencies, I think it could be, but I would love to have some feedback from you about that.
- I want prospects to contact me and hire me
- I want new opportunities and work on projects that fit what I like to do
- I want to be known by my peers
If you are freelancing, the first reason “I want prospects to contact me and hire me” is a question of life or death. Not really but still: if you don’t get clients, you can’t go on. This is the business part of being a freelancer. But we usually don’t tailor our portfolio and website towards this goal. We prefer to stick to what we are sure of: we finished a project and we want to show it. But is it really what will make a potential client pick up the phone and hire you? Not really. Knowing that a plumber finished a bathroom job won’t make you hire him on the spot. But if you hear that there was a huge leak and he solved the problem in 1 hour, and the customer praises him…
Clients are not design experts. You are. So just showing a project isn’t enough as he usually can’t say if it’s a good or bad job. However, knowing that the previous clients had some sort of success because of your input, that is the main key that will transform a prospect into a client.
Focus of the why and less on the what
Here is the common timeline of a project:
- Customer has a problem
- You offer something
- Customer get results
Customers are more interested in the results we can provide them and way less interested in us. Most of designers’ portfolios are based on #2 (You offer something), sometimes a bit of #1 (Customer has a problem) but very few of #3 (Customer gets result). Big discovery of the year? We should put a lot of #1 and #3, and very few of #2. That’s what will make clients trust you, trust that you can help them.
1. Customer has a problem
Stop trying to get your clients understand you. Show them that you understand them.
Find the small precise problem they have you can solve:
- “What are your customers’ concerns?”
- “What are your customers’ frustrations?”
- “What are your customers’ goals?”
2. You offer something
Stop showing the final result as a piece of art that came from the sky. Show and explain the process of your thoughts and how you work. In order to trust you and give you some money, clients need to see how you work instead of — only — what you produced.
And very shortly, if you want to work on specific projects (and you should know or learn which projects you want to work on), show 2–5 projects in that direction. Even if they are not all clients’ projects. A student got hired by Spotify just because she did a revamp of their app as a UX practice. She showed the whole process of her work in her portfolio and they loved it.
3. Customer’s results
Stop talking about your service. Explain what your client will get from it.
- “We will help you make money.”
- “We will help you save money.”
- “We will help you save time.”
- “We will help you get more happiness.”
- “We will help you get less stress.”
In my case, I try to show that I will help them generate more innovative ideas through my Design Thinking facilitations skills, and save some time and money by prototyping and testing them.
The best way to show how you made an impact on your previous clients is to literally shoot success metrics like visits increase percentage since the new website has been launched. If you have this kind of information, show it! But most of the time, it seems hard to get some numbers from a client — like how much more money he made after the huge re-branding you did. Yes it is hard and tricky. But still, there is a lot of ways to show that your client got success because of you and your work.
Here are a few examples of what testimonials I got from my previous clients:
“Max Masure possesses phenomenal Design Thinking facilitation skills and enthusiasm for designing products and services around existing human needs. They’re a holistic thinker who will help you search for opportunities to innovate — whether it be internal processes or external products/services — within your company.”
Elodie Camaret, US Consumer Innovation Director — R&D, Essilor USA“Max Masure’s talent, experience, and hard work have made them a valued asset to our team, and we are excited to continue seeing the innovative ideas and designs they will be contributing to the project.”
Omar Siddiqui — CEO at Kiwi, Inc.“The workshop was amazing, eye opening and paired raising awareness and planning tactical solutions together better than any workshop I’ve ever done before. To top it off, Max was a phenomenal facilitator and they are always a pleasure to work with. Can’t wait to have them come do workshops at Uber!”
Lara Kristina — Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at Uber“Max Masure, who had forged his reputation internationally as one of the best in his field, was my obvious first choice. Personally, I am absolutely delighted with Max’s work. Their designs for Talkspace were outstanding and played a critical role for securing corporate investment during both our first and second funding rounds. Max also provided the website with an aesthetic, usability and interactivity that contributed to attracting new clients and to increase customer loyalty.”
Oren Frank — CEO and Co-Founder, Talkspace“The fact that I engaged them at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, two of the leading banking institutions in the world where cost is only secondary to developing world class applications, speaks to my confidence that Max is among the very upper echelon of designers in the world. Their impressive talent in design makes them one of the best designers I have worked with in my 20 years long career.”
Diane Petan — ex-Director Credit Suisse Private Banking“I hired Max to design the First Goldman Sachs phone trading app which provides a new and innovative user experience that greatly increases usability for rapid trading on a smartphone while reinforcing the Goldman brand. The advanced design allow our prestigious clients to instantly, yet safely, trade millions of dollars every day, with the efficiency of a perfectly crafted and powerful app. Max also distinguished themself by making the Goldman Sachs Orbit project the huge success it is now.”
Rick Schonberg — E-product development team at Goldman Sachs“I knew Max Masure’s extraordinary ability and talent were the only way to make this challenging project like Currenex a success. And, as always, I was amazed. Max perfectly understood the need of our fast-acting expert clients and they were able to majestically design a beautiful innovative tool and deliver the responsive and real-time platform we needed to reinvent Currenex.”
Rick Schonberg — Global Head of Product Development, Head of Currenex North America
No numbers here. But, still, the cause of their success is indeniable linked to the work I did with them.
Finally, a good portfolio is a portfolio that is launched.
It’s always better to go for simplicity in terms of design so you can launch very soon (they recommend to launch no more than 4 weeks after you started your portfolio).
I launched the newest version of my portfolio in less than a week. I didn’t want to get stuck for ages with an unfinished portfolio so that was my deadline. (new portfolio launched this week at www.maxmasure.com).
Originally published at www.maxmasure.com on september 10, 2014.
