Art, design web portfolio networks are great sources for inspiration and in some cases for finding free high quality design elements that can be used for many creative purposes. These websites are also very good for the designers as they get unique possibilities to reach a very large audience – true win / win situation. In this article tripwire magazine provides a list of some of the best online portfolio solutions and a short description of the features they offer. Besides using portfolio community websites, you should also consider setting up your own creative portfolio website using WordPress. Please leave a comment if I have missed an important player in this field!
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Index
Website and Web Design Portfolios
Art and Design Portfolios
Behance
The Behance Network is a large portfolio site where many talented designers present their creative artwork. The site has a really clean and intuitive interface and lets you browse art elements easily ex. sorted by Featured, Most Recent, Most Viewed, Most Discussed, Most Appreciated, Seeking Feedback. Finding specific elements on Behance is is acheived through the search function where a number of tags/categories can be used as filter. It works OK but a regular menu access would be great too.
Most featured view
Designers profile
Designers can create their own profile where all their work and relevant information is combined.It is possible to alter the basic layout of the profile page to make it match the designers needs. Behance Network also includes functionality to communicate how busy designers are and if they fx. are available for any freelance jobs.
Circles connecting people…
Behance Network have a social networking element and allows it’s users to hook up in what they call circles. This is a great feature and you will be able to find designers with a specific focus and interest fx. Logos, Photography, Grunge Designs etc.
deviantART
deviantART is probably one of the largest online resource available when it comes to design, photography, typography… well you can find nearly anything creative there. If you’re looking for inspiration in a specific area you will see that the number of submissions are enormous in most categories, even very specialized categories like fx. Digital Art–>Pixel Art–>Characters. The left menu is a very fast way to navigate the many categories and on each portfolio view page there are many options availble to zoom in on the content you’re looking for.
deviantART users can create their own profiles with portfolio, galleries and much more. Heres an example of a profile with many of the features turned on.
On deviantART users can create Collections of artifacts that are somehow related. This is a great feature as it makes it easy to find what you need and more of it… Try moving the mouse over a Collection and you will see that the images in the collection is swapped in. Collections are not categorized and it makes it a rather manuel process to browse through them.
On deviantART offers other cool features. User can fx. request other users to give critics and rate their artwork. There’s also a shop and you can buy prints of selected graphics.
Coroflot
Coroflot is a career and community site for creative professionals. Coroflot hosts individual creative portfolios and a database of job and project openings. The thriving community that visits the site daily represents a cross-section of the global design industry-working designers, design managers, internal and external hiring professionals, business managers of design firms, marketing and product management professionals, students, and educators.
Coroflot provides statistics on profile and image views, organized by month ; Group your projects into sets and organize them with a drag-and-drop interface ; Let everyone see how great you are, or share your project sets confidentially ; Add tags to images to help people easily find your work; Build a network of industry peers. Share your connections with others ; New job postings that match your criteria sent via email daily or weekly. RSS feeds of new job listings available as well.
The profile and portfolio is simple and easy to use.
designrelated
design:related is a community site and inspiration tool that brings together creative people from different disciplines (and parts) of the design world. Design:related serves to motivate designers to share ideas, inspire, and be inspired.
The profile section on designrelated is good and contains the features that most designers will need.
carbonmade
carbonmade is a very large portfolio site with more than 100.000 portfolios and more than 200.000 projects. With Carbonmade, you can manage your online portfolio with a variety of tools that allow you to change how you display your work. The core idea behind the design of Carbonmade is to keep your images or video at the forefront. For a better idea on what Carbonmade can do for you take a look at some of the Featured portfolios. It is free to start with but as you need more images and projects paying a fee is required.
There are two main ways to get access to portfolios with specific focus: Sift by Area of Expertise or Sift by Skill. There are many categories in each but they are moderated by the site and all make sense.
The design on carbonmade itself is very modern and the tools are working well. The portfolio is build for presenting images you will find the gallery features you need.
There are different ways to set up the visual layout of the portfolios. You can order your images and projects any way you like with drag and drop functionality. White, black, sans, or serif, and thumbnail layout; you choose the canvas to best show off your work.
There are many other features you should check out. They provide a good overview that you can find here.
shownd
SHOWN’D aims to provide users with a centralized hub to maintain a portfolio and secure employment. Employers benefit from the vast array of creative professionals and artwork displayed on the web site as well as the tools provided for sorting through the various showcases. It is realtively new so the volume of online portfolios is not huge but still it is OK. It also has a job section making it easier for potential employers to quickly find the professional that they need. Content can be browsed using several category listings – Skills & Specialties, Images, Flash… and each have many sub categories. Navigation seam good and gives you direct accss to what you’re looking for. SHOWN’D is free to start with but as you need more images and projects paying a fee is required.
Portfolio listings gives a good overview of the designers and their style.
Potfolios can be set up in multiple ways and the look and feel is nice and the site effective and wasy to use.
Culturehall
culturehall is a relativelu new online art space dedicated to the promotion of early to mid-career contemporary artists. Culturehall provides select artists an easy to use and flexible set of tools to present their art on the Internet. Artists on the site can get feedback from other users through critics.
culturehall provides collections of art in Issues with featured art from its members.
As expected culturehall offers a profile with a simple portfolio and a few other features. The functionality provided in the profile is very simplistic.
Krop Creativedatabase
Krop is a recruiting company in the high end creative space and they created a portfolio application for their potential candidates, Krop Creativedatabase. It is a free portfolio and resume application and hosting but there is also a PRO version with more features. Design of the portfolio is clean and professional.
The same is really true for the reume…
Website and Web Design Portfolios
FWA
FWA is a flash based website portfolio where anyone can publish a web for a fee and get their design rated by a committee of judges. FWA is a huge database of webiste in out standing quailty where the beat stand out as site of the day or month. If you’re a web site designer your creations should be listed here and maybe you will be selected as a winner some time and get all the publicity it brings ;))
Professional on the Web
Professional on the Web is a directory where web agencies and freelancers can list their profiles and manage showcase of their web projects.
After signing up users can complete their profile using in_place_editors and you can arrange projects and tags by drag&drop.
Users can search web professionals by tag and also rate their projects. Tags seams to be created by the users on the site with no moderation and it’s not too good.
Lars started tripwire magazine back in January 2009. He is really passionate about web design, web development and loves to look into new technologies, techniques, tools etc. and to write articles for his readers.
Great job. Its really informative. Thanks for your sharing.
Nice collection of art and design, its very helpful to web designers. Thanks for your sharing.
What about ArtBistro? They have a free portfolio tool and a monthly gallery showcase.
wow cool website like it a lot.
great…thanks for sharing
Thank you thank you thank you!
Now it will take me ages to explore all of these communities!
I have three or 4 pages on my website that show my artwork.
Very nice article, very useful list of sites for building portfolio