
Unit 11: Eportfolios or online portfolios
Principles of portfolio design
The best portfolios share three traits: unity, navigability, and simplicity.
Unity. The more unified the pages of your portfolio are, the more likely we are to stay there.
- Come up with a basic design and background that is repeated on all pages
- Keep associated items parallel with each other from one page to the next.
- Use headings for short blocks of text, and when you do need to use long blocks (like an essay or assignment), show clear links back to the root page.
- Set up your portfolio so that when we visit linked pages, they open in a new window - so that when we close them, we automatically return to the portfolio.
An example: The page is called “My Design Projects,” and it describes four projects. Each project has a short heading, written in bold red text, followed by a short project description (just 3 - 4 lines long, in black text), and at the end of each description is a link, “Visit the project page.” Between each description is a solid black line to enhance separation, and the background is white so that all text readily stands out. Also, at the left of each of these descriptions is a small screenshot (also clickable) of the project page. Once we go into a specific project page, we see a “Return to My Design Projects page” and a “Return to my homepage” link at the top of the page. This basic form is repeated on other pages, and so we have a strong sense of unity to your portfolio no matter what pages we are visiting.
SMILE - ePortfolios or online portfolios by Joe Schall, The Pennsylvania State University and modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.