In any business, your first impression is the last impression that you make on your customers. Likewise, in order to be a successful graphic designer, you must make a firsthand impact on your potential clientele. And what better way to make an impression than through your graphic design portfolio. By exhibiting your creative talent within your portfolio, you can catch the attention of your potential clients.

Since the competition for graphic designers is getting tougher by the day, the need for uniqueness and novelty is crucial in order to survive in the graphic design field. A creatively designed and impressive graphic designer portfolio depends on four main factors, namely: Layout, Correct Placement of Work, User Friendliness and Uniqueness. Any portfolio that exhibits these characteristics can be considered an effective one.

Today, I round up the 30 most creatively designed graphic designer portfolios of 2011. These portfolios reveal creativity and inventiveness of the graphic designers.

Juan Diego Velasco

Multiways

Creativepayne

SecretPenguin

Bcandullo

Brad Colbow

Big Sweater Design

BrainART

Deda

Erik Riccardi

Lounge Lizard

Indubitablee

Sydney Web Studio

Egopop

Cornerd

Jek2k

Html5lab

Info Grafixlab

Jomurgel

Kyle Bebeau

Art Attack

Mo’s Art

Richie P Designs

Pieoneers

BROKEDESIGN

Just Being Creative

FANTOMAS

ERSIN Graphics

Kosadesign

DragoDesign

The most common way for a graphic designer to learn is through trial and error. Especially for young and aspiring graphic designers, who keep on committing mistakes because of lack of experience. You must have heard of the old adage “To err is human”. So the next time you make a mistake, don’t fret over it…instead learn from your blunders.

Having learnt from my mistakes, which I encountered in my career, I wish to educate my fellow designers about some of the errors, which they should avoid in any case. Following are 10 of the most common mistakes that most graphic designers commit in their graphic design careers:

1. Working without a Design Brief:

2. Ignoring the Target Audience:

The purpose of graphic design is to visually aid companies in expressing their message to their target market. Hence, if the graphic designers ignore the target audience, they will never be able to create the right design. In order to create relevant designs, you must first analyze the intended customers for which it is aimed at. Overlooking the target will lead to a weak and aimless design.  

3. Not maintaining a Contract:

4. Avoiding Contact with the Client:

Some graphic designers feel shy while some are completely ignorant when it comes to staying in touch with the client. One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your professional life is not communicating with your clients properly. By not staying in touch with clients during the project, you make them feel ignored and unwanted. You must take feedbacks from them to avoid any client criticisms in the end.  

5. Procrastinating:

6. Not Staying up-to-date:

In this cut-throat competition, it is essential for graphic designers to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the field of graphic design. As technology upgrades every day, newer and better ways of graphic designing are evolving. Those who fail to catch-up in graphic designing eventually lose the race.  

7. Not Starting in Black and White:

Some graphic designers fail to understand the importance of starting in black and white. They directly create the colored version of the design. This is a big mistake as one should know how the design looks in black and white because some promotional mediums don’t allow for colors. Hence, what you create in color might not look good in black and white.  

8. Pass off Plagiarism as Inspiration:

9. Neglecting the Power of Simplicity:

Some graphic designers believe that if they add more effects in design, it will become attractive. But the reality is otherwise. Adding too many elements to a design makes it complicated and messy to look at. They often neglect the power and significance of simplicity. Instead of making intricate and difficult to comprehend designs, designers must prefer simple concept that the target audience will remember.  

10. Lose Confidence:

Graduation day is a very crucial day for every graphic design student. It is the point in life where you make the all-important decision regarding you graphic designing careers. Believe me if you’re still about to graduate school, now is the ideal position to start thinking about your future and career prospects.
Having spent nearly a decade in the field of graphic design, I believe it is my duty to impart knowledge and guidance about the practical world to the young and aspiring graphic designers. So today, I would like to give a few career advices for graphic design students that you will want to remember your entire life.

1. Continue the Learning Process:

Just because you’ve graduated from graphic design school, it doesn’t mean that you should stop learning further. Learning is a continuous process that should be pursued by every human being from cradle to grave. Don’t let your skills stagnate by saying no to further learning. Don’t limit yourself to one specific skill set, be a jack of all trades. The more multi-talented you will be, the more openings you will get of acquiring a job. Constantly update yourself with the latest tricks and techniques in graphic designing so that you don’t lag behind.

2. Theory is easy, Practice is NOT:

The first thing that I learnt from my experience as a graphic designer is that whatever you learn in textbooks don’t always apply in real life. This is because talent is more essential than degree in graphic designing. When stepping out from the school life to the practical life, you must learn to differentiate between theory and practice. Now I don’t mean to discourage the concept of reading textbooks and course material. You may learn the essence of graphic designing from school but when you enter the practical field among creative veterans, the whole scenario changes.

3. Don’t stop Socializing:

Many students who are graduating from design school hold a perception that after stepping into the professional world, they will not be able to hang out with their friend circle. Well…they couldn’t have been more wrong. This is because networking and social media for graphic designers is extremely imperative. Maintain your contacts with colleagues, seniors and teachers all along your professional life. Frequently visit graphic design related seminars and build contacts with creative veterans over there.

4. Build a Graphic Design Portfolio:

A pre-requisite for becoming a graphic designer is to assemble and build your personal graphic design portfolio. It serves as your identity and displays your creative potential to the world. Now of course you must be thinking…being a graphic design student with no work experience, what will I show in my portfolio. No worries, you can start off by displaying your assignments and class projects in your portfolio. With the progress of time, you can update some real work as well.

5. Polish your Core Skills:

Although I just mentioned that one should be the jack of all trades, but I personally believe in being “Jack of all trades and master of one.” While acquiring the know-how about several aspects of graphic designing, remember to polish your core skills in order to make them prominent. For example, if you have a desire for becoming a web designer, cultivate your CSS, HTML and other web developing skills.

6. Gain Experience as an Internee:

While this piece of advice isn’t compulsory in becoming graphic designers, it certainly helps boost your credentials for future career. Interning at a design related firm is a pre-requisite at every graphic design school so that shouldn’t be a problem for most students. But for students who think that evading the internship program is better…think again. Internship gives you a great chance to experience the ‘real’ world and learn from the adept and experienced people in the professional field.

7. Never Lose Faith in your Abilities:

Take it as an advice or simply motivational words, but never lose faith in what your abilities as a graphic designer. You will encounter scores of people who criticize just for the sake of it. When you enter into the professional world, you are surrounded by people who are more experienced than you. Don’t get discouraged that you don’t know much and be confident in whatever you know. Satisfaction for graphic designers is the key to success.

8. Make your Personality Attractive:

Rugged jeans, a pimped shirt and fuzzy hair, probably coupled with a pierced ear…this is the general perception of a graphic designer’s appearance. However, my advice isn’t for graphic design students to be like that. I believe that appearances are only skin deep, your real personality is deep within. Develop your personality into an interesting and appealing one, the kind that people will find hard to resist. Update yourself with the latest news and trends on things besides graphic designing as well. This way when you converse with people, they won’t take you for a design geek.

This piece of news reminded me of my last twitter post where I compiled “20 Creative Twitter backgrounds & 10 Graphic Designers to follow” where I had asked all my readers to drop their creative profile links. The response was huge with loads of comments, tweets and diggs. So here I am today with more artistic twitter background compilation.

Some background hunting has been done by me while most of these were recommended by my enthusiastic readers

gummisig

binojxavier

LemonBirdStudio

kocovega

sickdesigner

multidesign

Ahmed_cbgrafica

ArtiqueStudios

BellaCosaDesign

psycko

thepixelmom

AbuQuelty

RafaelC1990

anousone

curiouslt

Doubleolee

SynGamer

KyleWilliams2

bigjonevans

espn

yahoo

spurrachel

cyantist

bongobrian

adamcasey

JollyLizard

dickieadams

canvascubed

dabobabo

To succeed in the world of Graphic Design, always exhibit you creativity skills in a tempting and presentable manner. If you are a fresh graduate and looking for a job as a graphic designer, the first tip to success is to create a “smashing portfolio” Here I would suggest that it’s better to have an online portfolio, for various reasons. An updated website portfolio is an ideal option for freelance graphic designers.

As there is an old cliché “A picture is worth thousand words” and nothing better than an impressive portfolio can promote you as a brand. Without proper web presence, no one is ever going to know about the hidden potential inside you.

5 Must Ingredients for a Perfect Portfolio:

Apart all these listed features, just remember that an online design portfolio should be easy to use, should be clearly sectioned and simple in design to allow your design artwork to shine.