When a portfolio becomes a world

A portfolio doesn’t have to be an elaborate experience to draw you in. Sometimes it’s a small interaction, an unexpected detail, a particular rhythm, or simply the way one project leads you to the next. When these decisions work together, a site can start to feel like a place rather than a collection of work.

We talked with creatives whose portfolios are defined not only by the work they present, but also by the environments they create around it. They told Readymag how they arrived at these decisions and what they wanted their websites to do.

Speakers:

Clara Kirkpatrick, illustrator.

Heidi Chisholm of Public/Official, a New York-based design studio.

David Otero of Tumulus Design, designer and art director.

A portfolio as an environment

Clara Kirkpatrick describes her intention directly: “I wanted to make my website kind of like a glimpse into my brain—which I think is pretty busy and weird!” For her, a static gallery wasn’t enough. “I wanted people visiting my site to step into my world,” she says. Her Recent Work page is designed like “a collage or a bulletin board with things pinned around and floating by rather than just a gallery of images.” Once she made that decision, it affected the rest of the site. “I knew if I had my work displayed in such a dynamic way then I should have my landing page be exciting as well.”

Kirkpatrick could also make new material whenever the site needed it. She had an illustration of an ice cream cone driving a convertible, originally made for a local ice cream shop, and expanded it into a street scene with a background and small animations. “It’s sort of just the way my brain works,” she says. She describes being able to “hire herself” throughout the process, creating new things whenever a need arose.

That approach extends to work that could have simply been displayed as images. Kirkpatrick designed a deck of Tarot cards for Barnes & Noble’s publishing house and decided to make them actual cards floating through the site instead. “I wanted to play around with those as actual cards floating by rather than just displaying a million different tarot cards on a page.” 

She sees the Recent Work page as the part of the portfolio that feels most like her. Some of the cartoons there are particularly personal because they feature her as the subject and are based on situations she’s experienced. Her approach, she says, is to look for “a small or funny scenario that occurs on a regular basis that people can both relate to and laugh at.”

When one decision leads to another

For Public/Official, the starting point was different. “We knew from the outset that we were launching our little studio without big reputations or networks,” says Heidi Chisholm. In New York, she saw many talented studios competing for attention along with a tendency toward “black and white websites with small sans serif logos in the corner. That wasn’t us,” she says. “We’re about as far from minimalists as can be, so we decided to really lean into exuberance and joy and let our web presence tell that story.”

The studio also wanted a choreographed scrolling experience. At first, they couldn’t afford to hire a developer to build it. After discovering Readymag, they realized they could make the experience themselves. “It allowed us so much control over how the landing page experience unfolded,” Chisholm says. At the time, it also felt like a point of difference.

One early decision shaped the rest of the site: splitting the desktop version into three columns. The structure “very much guided how the site ultimately came together.” It also helps organize different types of content and, Chisholm points out, improves clarity and efficiency. But the site leaves room for details that don’t have an obvious functional purpose, too. Low-resolution GIFs appear next to “Let’s chat!” at the end of the homepage scroll. Silly captions appear when you hover over images in the Play section. “There’s honestly not a lot of subtlety,” Chisholm says. “In a way that’s the whole site in a nutshell.”

For Public/Official, the personality of the site also works as a filter. The studio wanted something unexpected and joyful, with personality and fun taking priority over professionalism and polish. Chisholm says that this attracts clients and collaborators who resonate with their vibe while inevitably not attracting those who don’t.

Finding a rhythm

David Otero of Tumulus Design remembers a particular moment that changed the direction of his portfolio. The first time he designed it, he was listening to Nine Inch Nails’s song “Closer.” He noticed many layers of sound in the music, each with its own rhythm, while the entire thing remained cohesive. “This made me think it would be really interesting if the animations and elements on my website could all be doing different things at the same time,” he says, “while still feeling like one coherent whole.”

That idea became a principle for the site. It also helped Otero understand what didn’t belong there. “There were quite a few ideas that either required too many images, GIFs, or animations, or were simply too common or straightforward for my portfolio,” he says. He likes Swiss-style design and the way some designers “manage to achieve a lot with very little.” But he’s realized that it isn’t how he works. “It’s a style I can learn from and admire,” he says, “but it’s not necessarily how I work.”

Otero also sees a difference between the parts of the website that come from his own interests and the parts that have to follow a different logic. The shop, for example, is the part of the site that feels least like him because it needs to be clearer, more streamlined, and more efficient for the user. “The rest of my portfolio comes from my interests and tastes,” he says. He also keeps returning to the portfolio itself. Otero says he has “this strange habit of redesigning my website every two or three years,” trying to make it reflect who he is at the time.

Authorship is in the details

For Public/Official, this connection between a portfolio and its author is fundamental. “A portfolio is the cornerstone of any designer’s career,” Chisholm says. “And how you pull it together says as much about who you are as what’s in it.” She doesn’t see that as something new. “The role of a portfolio hasn’t changed,” she says. “It means the same now to us as it did then, regardless of the form it takes.”

Kirkpatrick also sees the website as an extension of what she wants her work to do. “I like to make people laugh with my work,” she says, “and I think that should be part of my website as well.” That’s why a caterpillar can crawl across the page.

“It’s unexpected, but hopefully it’ll make someone smile in that little moment.”—Clara Kirkpatrick

The question becomes more complicated when AI enters the picture.

For Chisholm, the authored part of a portfolio comes down to “personality, a strong point of view, a real concept, high craft, crazy imagination, humor, taste, etc.” Her assessment is blunt: “AI is getting really good at perfecting mid. But no one gets inspired by mid.”

Otero focuses on the process behind the finished site. “A lot of my portfolio has come from mistakes I discovered through experimentation,” he says. He refined those mistakes when he felt they produced a good result. “Design also requires taste and cultural awareness,” he adds, describing how his multidisciplinary practice led him to combine 3D, animation, and GIFs in ways that felt natural to him. Even if AI could copy his website, Otero says, “it wouldn’t be able to arrive at the same conclusions I did.”

Is “wordbuilding” the right word?

The designers themselves don’t necessarily describe what they’re doing as worldbuilding. Kirkpatrick comes closest: she wanted visitors to “step into my world.” Public/Official talks about personality and “vibe,” while Otero talks about rhythm, experimentation, and making different elements feel like “one coherent whole.”

What connects these approaches is the attention given to the environment around the work: how visitors encounter projects, what happens between them, which details stay, and which ideas get left out. A portfolio doesn’t have to become a fictional universe, but it can develop its own logic, with the work and everything around it shaped by the same set of decisions.

Ready to design a portfolio that feels like a world of its own? Sign up for Readymag and start making your next project.