How to Make an Immersive Portfolio
You already know what I’m going to tell you, don’t you?
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I am a designer. In order to show what I can make, I’ve always needed a portfolio. I’ve been paying $18 a month to host design work on my portfolio. That is the cost of a coffee, breakfast sandwich, and protein smoothie. I’d prefer to have more coffee so I’ve just taken my portfolio offline. If you are a designer, this is a exciting but scary process because you are completely reframing how you present your work to the world. Given that I don’t want to rebuild a new portfolio over a weekend, I’m inviting you to watch me do it over the next 14 weeks! But honestly, you already know what you need to do. You don’t need me to help you. Why? Keep reading…
Why 14 weeks? Because that is the day of my next race: a half marathon near Charlotte, North Carolina. You see, I earn money when I write on Medium.com. The most I’ve made is $6 in one month. The yearly subscription is $50. If I just make $5 every month, my way of presenting my work to the world becomes free. But if I time that with training for a race, I’m now doubly motivated to earn money and track my performance.
You might quickly see that this article isn’t just about making an immersive portfolio. It is about leveraging habit formation to design products that people love. So without further adieu, here is my blank slate for my portfolio:
You’ll notice that it is not a 2D canvas that most designers place their content on. It is an immersive experience. You can follow the link in the captions to go see it on Spatial.io.
So, what goes in a portfolio? Work that might inspire someone to pay me more than I currently make to create designs that will move their business in a competitive direction. If this is the case, let’s not worry about what that content is yet but rather how people are likely to interact with it. If you are reading this on a PC, then you have a decent view of the image I shared, especially if you went to move around within it. But if you are on mobile, you’d have a pretty small window by which you peer into a virtual world that is rather…
