Does a portfolio need to follow UX conventions?

A portfolio website is a digital product, and standard product rules apply. Ideally, visitors should understand how the website works and easily find the information they need. Conventional navigation and predictable interactions help with this, but does that mean a portfolio should always follow familiar UX conventions? Different goals may call for different ways of organizing and navigating work.

Five designers share why they moved away from conventional portfolio formats and how they approached the trade-offs.

Insights from:

Leah Star Liebe, multidisciplinary artist, writer, designer.

GO.RA, Ukrainian conceptual multidisciplinary artist.

Parcel Studio, creative agency based in Berlin and Seoul.

Artem Matyushkin, founder and creative director of Non-Objective.

Paco Fernández, design director at Work&Co.

Lee Star Liebe

“I’m a big reader and love collecting vintage books and bookends, so I thought it would be fun to let the books themselves guide the navigation on my landing page. It was actually the first idea I had for my portfolio, and once I learned how to create the trigger animations to bring it to life, my imagination ran wild with all the other ideas I wanted to explore that represent my interests and personal aesthetic.

I think my site is more about inspiration and creating an experience than directly explaining my practice. I wanted the navigation to feel like its own little discovery, rather than just a row of text links in a website header.

I know unconventional design can be harder to navigate for some people, and that’s something I’m aware of. The site is full of little hidden moments and Easter eggs that people might not discover if they were just following a traditional menu or UX design. I’m less focused on getting someone to a specific page as quickly as possible and more interested in creating an experience that invites them to explore and play.”

GO.RA

“On my own website, I decided not to limit myself with conventions. I wanted to experiment and create something that could easily grow and evolve, since it’s my artistic portfolio and I’m constantly adding new projects.

The website works like a timeline, with the newest projects at the top, and as you scroll down, you gradually move into the past. It was important to me that the design reflected my visual language, but also had a reason behind it. I don’t like making design just for the sake of design.

I’m a conceptual artist, and I see the website as a kind of excavation site, where everyone can dig as deep as they want. It’s constantly in the process of growing, changing, and transforming. I see it as a working tool rather than something finished or fixed. I wanted visitors to feel curious and enjoy digging around, discovering things along the way.

At the same time, I actually think the website is quite simple to navigate. It just has an unconventional structure and draws inspiration from the digital aesthetics of the 1990s.”

Parcel Studio

“There are different roles a portfolio website can play. The first is to showcase previous work. In that case, visitor-friendly design is one of the most important factors. Parcel Studio’s website, however, had a slightly different role. We’re a newly founded creative studio, and we wanted to put more weight on our branding, visual impression, and voice. Everything else was secondary. Of course, the website design can change as we move into a different phase, but for now, the current design works for us.

Anyone who connects with the elements we put out there should get a better understanding of who we are. But for someone who needs to check our work immediately, it probably won’t help as much, and that’s fine. We’re an independent studio, and doing things differently is one of the beauties of staying away from standard design.

I understand that some visitors might find it difficult to navigate, but no one’s been kind enough to give me that feedback yet. Meanwhile, our website is just one of our touchpoints. We also have LinkedIn, Instagram, my personal portfolio website, and our agency credentials deck. There should be a medium that best suits each visitor’s needs, too.”

Artem Matyushkin

“I believe design is much more than pictures. In its early years, Non-Objective had a purely text-based website. As it evolved, this idea migrated to my personal website. By then, it stopped being the main source of client inquiries and became more of an “about me” page, so it seemed even more appropriate to communicate a vision or an idea, rather than just present a collection of pictures.

I want to encourage potential clients to be more conscious and thoughtful about their choice so that the decision isn't based purely on appearances. I want them to immerse themselves just a little in the world of the designer they'll eventually work with, because the decision ultimately comes down to the designer's personality and how well it aligns with the client's own perspective.

When the studio had an entirely text-based website, we sometimes received negative feedback and angry comments, some quite harsh. My personal website is visited by fewer potential clients, which should give me the freedom to do absolutely anything with it. But there are still people who write, ‘How can this be? It's a design portfolio and there aren’t any pictures. Where can I see them?’ Well, there's Instagram and a link to the studio's website. But overall, these comments can be useful too, since they can be an opportunity to start a dialogue: someone might be more receptive to my perspective on design. And really harsh comments work as a good filter, weeding out people we definitely don't see eye to eye with.

My website is also an introspective look at how my design process is structured. My process always starts with ideas and text. At some point, I simply started jotting down ideas in notes wherever I happened to be, using these nested lists. Somehow, I like the fact that my portfolio, while not literally showing the designs I create, still demonstrates how my process is usually structured.”

Paco Fernández

“Much of the work I do with big brands can’t be published, and when it can, putting together a good case study takes a lot of time. So I decided to apply what I do every day, designing with technology, to my own site, and turn it into a small lab where I can experiment.

As visitors move their cursor, images of my work appear and trail behind it across the screen. It’s something nobody expects when they land on the page, and that moment of surprise is exactly what I’m after. It’s a small game, but it says a lot about how I think: within a few seconds you get a sense of my judgment, my visual sensibility, and how I approach interaction.

It’s a single-screen landing page with no scroll and no navigation: you arrive, move your mouse, and you’ve seen it. That said, I’m already exploring new ways to show my work, and I want to keep experimenting with AI, so the site remains one of my spaces for experimentation.”