A designer’s aim is to clinch the next job with their portfolio. Yet, most fail to create one that intrigues, engages, and sells the designer effectively. Following recommendations and best practices from industry professionals empowers designers to craft an ideal portfolio that perfectly showcases their talent and skill. Here's my take.

Unlabeled icons - bad usability. I guarantee you this would test terribly with people.

It absolutely works. You get more done.

BTW: TL;DR the article is waaaaay tooooo loooong.

The most important things... - How would you describe the responsibilities of the position? - How does this job currently get done? - Who will I be reporting to? (check their Linkedin for background, experience, etc.) - What are the performance expectations and how are output goals defined? What hours will I be expected to be available on Slack and for meetings? What is the work/life balance? Can you tell me about the team I’ll be working with? With whom will I be working with? Does UX have a strong and sustainable position at the organization? What are the greatest issues facing the UX dept/ platform today? What is the current user experience design process along w/ product management? How would you describe the responsibilities of the position? How would you describe a typical week/day in this position? How would you describe the company’s culture? Could you describe the most significant challenge of the role? What do you like most about working for this company? If you were to hire me, what might I expect in a typical day? What are the biggest rewards of working at this job and for this company?

Old.

As a design team leader who hires designers (3 companies over the last 6 years), I wouldn't welcome the presentation of a Portfolio Deck in an interview setting. It's too prepared and inverts the controlling of the interview process to the designer, i.e., "I will show you what I want to show you."

By this time, I've already checked out a lot of their background and portfolio–otherwise, they wouldn't be invited in for an interview—and I'd want to do a deep dive and ask some tough questions. 1) I want to see how they handle uncomfortable questions 2) I want to see how they back up their design decisions.

This would involve randomly picking designs from their portfolio and ask questions like:

"Why did you choose that color for the table background or that button?" "Did you test this design on users and what was the response?" "Could you show me an earlier iteration of this design?" etc etc

First of all, not every day. Second, you seem a little confused about the definition of spam, which is:"irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the Internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc." Third, a lot of links posted here are outbound links to stuff people write about (i.e., blogs) and Fourth, looking at your commentary on past posts here you are hell-bent on being argumentative, mean and just a plain nasty troll. You are the one who should be banned according to the DN T&C, eg "be nice or else". ciao

What is the issue? Not spam. The article is a very cool case study of a logo refresh that would be a very interesting study to read for most designers.

There are great UX portfolios out there with very very detailed design case studies that are immensely valuable as to the process but I agree may not be relevant to your specific project. Nevertheless, looking through how other designers approached a problem and came up with a solution is immensely valuable. Check this out (yes, I put it together so I'm a "little" biased, but this has been massively researched over weeks and weeks. I'm not selling anything with it just providing info.) https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/ux-designer-portfolios

Well, another bites the dusto! Was it tested with user/designers that it's a solution designers wanted/needed?