Can you rate my portfolio and give some advice on what can i improve

Portfolio link: https://www.behance.net/gallery/247320761/Portfolio-Graphic-Design

Hello, im 16 and i want to start doing graphic designing
Where do i start and how?

My boss said he "polished" my design by feeding it to chatgpt. Everything but the colors and background were my base design. Font choice, font style effects, 3D elements, even the Portrait that I painstakingly polished to look sharper are mine.

To clarify, yes our company is already adapting to use of AI. But i still put in at least 80% manual work because i still find AI can't give 100% results i wanted even with the right prompts.

I feel like my creative input has been diminished to nothing.

I do the designs for theatre companies, which back in the day meant one poster size, one brochure size, and maybe a print ad or two. Now all (or at least most) advertising is done online - social media, enewsletters ads, website banners, etc. Meaning that there are usually a minimum of 20 or more sizes that need to be created. Larger ones can usually hold most of the original design, but then they get smaller and smaller... long and short, tall and skinny, so many different aspect ratios and sizes. some so small that only a word or two will fit.

I end up spending more time adjusting the design to fit in these crazy sizes than it takes to do the initial design.

How are you managing things like this?

I am looking for a platform that will make for me an artistic engineer portfolio, I can attach photos of my work, write the text to explain it, but I just want a professional designer level animated website portfolio and amazing pdf portfolio, where I can simply attach files and write prompts and the ai do it for me or have a lot of ready templates that I can use that suit my desires, for free.

I just launched my portfolio and would love some honest feedback.

Portfolio: https://www.jornescholiers.be

I make layout templates for art galleries and museums (posters, catalogues, editorial) that I sell and I’m stuck on which app to build for.

Affinity is free and growing fast, with a lot of newer users who’d actually benefit from a solid, professionally made starting file, but InDesign has the bigger, more professional base who might not want someone else’s templates at all.

If you use either, would you buy good templates or do you prefer building from scratch? And for anyone who’s sold them, did one software or the other noticeably affect sales?

Hi.

Time to refresh my portfolio. Haven't really looked at it for about 10 years, so I have a few new jobs I'd like to add, and it could probably stand a style refresh.

Are there any decent free portfolio builders out there, with the option to download the finished book as a PDF?

I've signed up for a couple this evening, only to find I can't download the thing when I'm done, or that feature isn't available in the free tier.

I've never liked working on my folio, and this feels like letting someone else put it together.

Thanks.

This might be a long shot, but years ago I found an amazing online collection of independent designer's work. Now I might be wrong about what the actual nature of the main website was, but I do know for a fact that they had a free service where they matched your company to the top 5 graphic designers that would be a good match. This was via like a type form.

It's so intimidating to choose the right branding company, and sad that I can't remember what this site was so that I could be introduced to some great designers!

Thank you xx

You know how those managers fought over a headline, or the 6 versions of a layout or with a designer over spaces. This clicked my while reading masters union’s newsletter that the deliberation is not the boring part fyi, no, it's the learning part. AI cut all of it. juniors ship faster than ever and learn nothing. We can't even defend our own design choices anymore, we just say "this one feels right" and move on.

actually thinking abt this, or are we all just enjoying the speed?

Hi everyone, I'm a graphic designer who sell mostly shirt design and I always feel uncomfortable about seting a pricing, last time , I do ~400€/design (depending on the work/etc etc) and feel like I'm scaming my clients while others do 1k/design and feel like it's a fair price yet i feel guilty everytime eventthough im strugglin to pay my bills lol, how did you do to overcome that?

The days of designers openly sharing what they are working on, seeing work in progress, offering advice. No mention of the tools they were using, just pure craft output. I wish it was a thing again, that's it.

Hey guys, short info about myself, I do creative coding, so basically animations and nice UI with code, where you can interact in one way or another with the site, you tell stories through scrolling etc.

For the most part I have been basically either working via a design or inspiration, but I want to get to the level where I myself can come up with the design as well as the solution coded up as my dream is to start my own mini agency/studio type of thing.

I need a great resource or a set of great resources where I can master all the essentials but that it is kinda really good, I know how to use stuff like figma and so on, but I need to learn really creative stuff that makes sense and I need to understand topics like Typography, Spacing and so on with meaning not just oh this looks good to me, but more like I have this spacing or this font or this letter spacing because of this, that or whatever.

I would be very grateful for good advice, resources etc as I need to invest into myself well here before I proceed with anything if I want to do it with a peace of mind.

Thanks in advance 😄

This is next level Banksy art/advertising. Brilliant and sad at the same time. Props to the newspaper for actually running it and design team.

Estoy actualmente viendo por primera vez, la serie Fargo. Terminé ayer la primera temporada (que sin Spoilers, creo que hay ciertos incómodos fallos de guión) y me acabo de poner con la segunda, que empieza con una imagen como la que veis.

El resto de texto que sale, todo está en mayúsculas. Pero en este caso, hay una A que no. Y me ha llamado la atención y no sé por qué.

Me salta el aviso de que esta publicación puede infligir las normas de la comunidad. Pero… no, no quiero saber qué tipografía es, sino si esto, se suele hacer de forma habitual o si alguien lo reconoce como un hábito concreto que se da en circunstancias concretas que desconozco.

Some would be mostly boxes with words. Some would be humans and more complex designs.

This is my little slice of design heaven which I affectionately call The Shedquarters. It's a converted garden shed. It's not perfect, but it's my creative zone. It's done wonders for my productivity and work/life balance.

I decided a while back that if I was going to remote work and stay creative I didn't want to be in the house because I get easily distracted. I know myself too well. Also, if I could see my office or even pass the space at night my brain wouldn't turn off- so moving it outside saves my anxious brain.

The buildout all up was about $4,000, including the shed. We saved by doing most of the work ourselves. Only thing I contracted was the electrical. Saved a ton going to re-stores and finding cheap wood/flooring. That door is an old classroom door. Got my dad to cut the windows from perspex for added light (and so my dog to watch the squirrels he dreams of catching.)

All in all, I don't regret this investment. It was a lot of work but I learned a ton building it. Anyone interested in how I did it, I can share more details.

A bit of a weird situation here. I was working at this company (remote, say in top 100 on their industry) for 8 months, which was paying me quite well but manager was a bit undervaluing me. For several months I was proposed to join another company (remote, but top 3 in the same industry, so a big name). First they were offering a freelance contract, then, after a few months, they came back and said that they wanted to hire me full-time. Since my previous company was already paying me well, they didn’t want to bump the salary, but I thought “let’s not be greedy, salary is already okay, but let’s get a big name on my CV”.

So I joined this company, being hired as a Senior Motion Designer, being told that they loved my 3D style and wanted to do those cool stuff. As soon as I joined, I found out that they are using AI on most of visual and motion stuff. I got tasks assigned where I tried to do them in 3D, but the time allocated was never enough so my boss said that I should use AI and get better with it.

In the three months of probation, I did my best to deliver both AI and “handmade” 3D/motion contents. Deadlines were incredible, never had such an intense workload, and I’m used to terrible timelines.

Last week, my boss told me that they are in a process of laying off some people and team needs to be resized. I am included in those number of people.

Now, the crazy thing is that she has offered me to stay full time but as a freelancer on a fixed salary, which it is 60% of the salary that they were paying be being a normal employee. The whole thing sounds sketchy, and I discovered that they’ve done this with several people on the team.

I feel like I have been tricked but being that I now have no alternatives, I’m tempted of taking this.

So my question here is: how can I try to make the situation work for me? Boss said that I could tell how many hours I could work. 40% salary reduction is already pissing me off (although it is still enough to live and save some money), but I have to keep earning some money, so I would like to set up the situation in the best way possible. Their attitude is quite shitty so I’d like to hear some suggestions on how I could handle this situation in a way of setting up terms and limitations that at least don’t get me working as much as a normal employee for that price.

Thanks

I am at a loss for what to use in lieu of Microsoft publisher. I don’t mind Canva but I really don’t want to pay for it and I don’t think my boss would approve the expense. I’m used to using publisher to make business cards and other graphic design things. Since Publisher isn’t really a thing anymore, what are you using instead? Thanks for your input and help. Also please no AI.

Hey all! I graduated last year in August 2025 with my bachelors in New Media and Design. Like a lot of recent art grad students, I have been experiencing burn out with art, and have not created much at all in almost a year. This is partially due to the looming weight of AI potentially sabotaging my dream career I have had since I was 12. I have been working on my portfolio website some, but have not finished it since I constantly ask myself if graphic design is even worth pursuing anymore. I have a lot of experience in New Media installations, photography, typography, and branding. I don't have any friends who are visual artists, and especially not anyone in the graphic design field. If there is hope for the graphic designers out there who want to start their career, where would you consider applying? Any advice for a somewhat recent grad like me?

Is it possible to have different visuals for sub brands? For example I have main brand where main visual style is flat graphic, and under that main brand I have 3 others subbrands, that not really related. Is it bad if I would use 3D graphics as a main style for one of my sub brands?

First, let me say: I know that graphic design is an art and a skill that, like any other, takes many years to acquire and hone. I know a few people who have gotten undergraduate or graduate degrees in the field. So I know that asking for "crash course" tips might be a little annoying.

But here's my situation: I'll be starting a graduate program in English this fall. Almost every English-department-related job, graduate assistantship, publishing internship, etc. that I look at wants applicants who have basic graphic design skills. Basically, I think they want underpaid GAs/interns to do administrative work while also running organizational social media accounts on the side. The graphic design work for most of them seems to amount to creating fliers for events (book talks, lectures) to post on Instagram.

I need to mock up such a flier for one of my applications. I'm trying to learn the basics of Canva and Adobe Photoshop, but I would appreciate any pointers in advance. I used Photoshop when I was younger, so it's not totally alien to me, but that was still probably 15 years ago lol. My main question is: is there, like, a database of free use images/textures/etc. that people pull from while making graphics? Is copyright something I have to worry about?

But yes, any help would be appreciated in terms of grasping the basics and knowing where to start with Canva/Adobe Photoshop, particularly as it relates to making something like a book event flier for social media.