Why I put my portfolio on Medium
“Aren’t you supposed to be a designer?”
For designers, portfolios are a point of pride. You spend your entire career designing in someone’s else style; your portfolio is the one place to you’re allowed be you, a labor of love to toil over, anguish over, and celebrate when it’s finally done. I should know: my senior year of college, I spent the entire fall semester creating my portfolio from scratch.
In retrospect, it was a wildly inefficient use of time. All the effort put into web development would’ve been better spent writing case studies, and I could’ve started recruiting months earlier. What’s more, my portfolio had to be updated by hand (in code), which was tedious and prone to error. It was a classic case of Not Invented Here syndrome.
Processes with less friction are more effective. My biggest priority is creating and updating content, and if that means not being considered for one of those “17 Awesome Design Portfolios to Awe and Inspire You” lists, then so be it.
Pros
- Looks great
What you see is what you get, which is my favorite thing about Medium. There’s no gap between what you write and how it’s displayed. - Easy to edit
No need to set up a CMS, or (god forbid) edit HTML directly. - Fully responsive
Already taken care of. Thanks, Ev! - Free
You can get a lot of these benefits with Squarespace, but at a cost. - Get feedback directly via private notes
Mainly from friends, but feel free to do the same! I’m constantly revising things, and always open to critique. - Built-in analytics
With no effort on your part, you get view count, read percentage, and traffic sources for every page. - Leads to discovery of my Medium articles…
…where I can show potential employers I know what I’m talking about¹.
Cons
- Limited customization
If you have a dealbreaker, this is it. I have my own priorities, but I get that you might want more control. - No custom URL
This feature was cut. Mine has a permanent redirect frombryantpeng.com - Can’t include
Made with ❤️ and ☕️footer
Is it even a personal website then?
bryant peng📄 medium🐦 twitter👔 linkedin
Footnotes
¹ At least, that’s the plan.
