The Interfolio Blog

As the User Experience Designer at Interfolio, I design and implement the interfaces that our members interact with within our products.  When we launched the Portfolio, our professional website building tool for academics, we did so with the goal of making it super simple to create a great looking story of your work. We find it especially exciting to see how some of our power users are sharing their best work using our tools, and here I will highlight five portfolios that exemplify an effective and attractive showcase. 

1. Sally Stamper - A Personal Touch. Sally has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into creating her portfolio, as you can tell from the wide variety of content, generous use of visuals, and links to outside resources. The vast selection of content she shows can really captivate the interested reader. In particular, I like how she has used pictures of herself in the teaching environment. You may not feel comfortable using lots of pictures of yourself, or you may feel like it doesn’t add a lot to your presentation to have them...but to an outside reviewer, pictures of you can really help bring your Portfolio to life and enable the reader to personally identify with you.
2. Perzavia Praylow - A Showcase of Fine Work. Perzavia’s portfolio highlights her work and education especially well. She shows a thorough sampling of her education, work experience and personal interests that give the viewer a great picture of who she is and what she’s capable of -- both important pieces of information for hiring managers and search committees. She showcases her documents effectively by including descriptive abstracts ahead of the actual document attachment, which helps the reader quickly get the gist of the content that will be displayed before deciding to drill down for more detail. Also, she selectively uses high quality photos to add visual interest and real life examples of what she does.
3. Jack Nummerdor III - References and Validation. Jack offers a prime example of a teaching portfolio. Like Perzavia, he displays a thorough outline of his work, from placement evaluations and lesson plans to examples of his research at specific institutions, and personal interests. Showing actual selections of his work, and then backing it up with student teaching evaluations and letters of recommendation, can give the reviewer real confidence in his abilities. This opportunity to view his work in depth is compelling to anyone considering him for a position or searching for him online, because they’ll feel that they understand what he has to offer.
4. Jason Bush - Doing a Lot With a Little. Jason shows that even a small portfolio can be effective at showcasing your work. With just three pages, he has given a well rounded view of his educational background and accomplishments. By creating longer pages, he has fit a generous amount of information into these three pages. He has used attractive photos of his creative work - in this case a picture is truly worth a thousand words. He has made sure that all bases are covered by publishing his essays, and of course, including an essential copy of his CV.
5. Dr. Daniel Bernard - Structured and Organized. Dr. Bernard’s portfolio is sophisticated and professional; he has maximized a smaller portfolio of five pages by structuring one page for each topical area. This organization makes his portfolio easy to navigate and digest. The “News” page shows upcoming events in which he’ll participate, which gives the portfolio a feeling of being active and current. The title “Samples” is deceptively simple, because he shows great-looking video clips of his presentations along with his papers, dissertation and syllabi. He also offers links to his other work and interests online, which give interested readers more information to explore.

These are just a small sample of the many interesting and beautiful portfolios our members are creating, I hope they have inspired you to create a Portfolio or enhance your own in new and exciting ways!

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