20 Best New Portfolio Sites, December 2017

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December 04, 2017
20 Best New Portfolio Sites, December 2017.

Jingle those bells, people! It’s December, and Santa brought you portfolio sites. This month’s theme generally seems to be minimalism with a splash of geometric decoration. I mean, there are quite a few design styles represented here, but I’m starting to spot a new/​old trend coming on. Well hey, a new trend would be just in time for January. Anyway, have a scroll down the page, and enjoy. Note: I’m judging these sites by how good they look to me. If they’re creative and original, or classic but really well-done, it’s all good to me. Sometimes, UX and accessibility suffer. For example, many of these sites depend on JavaScript to display their content at all; this is a Bad Idea ™, kids. If you find an idea you like and want to adapt to your own site, remember to implement it responsibly.

Nathan Riley

Nathan Riley

brings us a small, classically dark website with some beautiful background effects. It’s just these effects that make the stylish-yet-familiar layout pop. Unfortunately, they’ll be all but invisible on un-calibrated screens. Even so, the important stuff stands out, and looks just plain good. Oh, last complaint: the contact info could and should be way more prominent. 001

Rainfall

Rainfall

has taken a fairly common modern minimalist design, and made it stand out by mastering the art of going from colorful to monochromatic again almost seamlessly. The transition from one color theme to another feels nearly seamless. 002

Nick Vandermolen

Nick Vandermolen’s portfolio

is dark, classy, and generally gorgeous. It also can’t decide whether it wants to be a magazine or a PowerPoint presentation. Okay, I’m kidding. Mostly. You can clearly see the influence of both of those media formats in the general layout and aesthetic sensibilities. Even so, the experience is coherent and pretty. Also, the navigation is kind of what thirty percent of web designers were trying to do with frames in 2003. It’s a real trip. 003

Mensch

Mensch

is an oddity that just barely sits on this side of the portfolio” category. You see, it’s a consultancy/​team building company with a focus on making the world a better place. Portfolio items tend to be things like We developed a program to help former child soldiers become small business owners.” If it weren’t for those portfolio items, however, it would just be a brochure site. And visually, it looks like one. It’s all white space and clean lines, with just a splash of background video. 004

Vintage

Vintage

is on the list largely for the visuals. Not only is it just plain stylish with its geometric theme, the animations have actually managed to impress me a bit. That’s rare. 005

Effectlab

Effectlab

might be the first Greek website I’ve reviewed. Well, Google Chrome tells me it’s Greek, anyway. It’s all Gre… I’m not going to make that joke. Anyway, the Greek type looks darned beautiful. It’s so beautiful, I’d say it takes the stylish-if-familiar layout to another level. The light graphical and animated touches are great, too. 006

Zachary Johnson

Zachary Johnson

has what is perhaps the penultimate evolution of the modern minimalist layout. It’s clean, it’s sexy, it’s smooth. I love the way he used pastels. My only criticism would be the part where his text goes over his actual work. I have to admit, with the rest of the site doing so well, that’s just puzzling. We have big screens, and the people who have small screens are used to scrolling. Let us read the text. 007

Dixon & Moe

Dixon & Moe

is one more site on this list that embraces the minimalism plus geometry” theme. In this case, the minimalism borders on brutalism, but is saved by good typography and white space. It’s also got little touches that make it look a bit like, I dunno… a technical manual? A set of diagrams? Like, all of the major elements on each page are given a letter/​number designation. Go take a look. It’s cool. 008

Kuudes

Kuudes

is a fantastic example of the beauty of plain old organization. There’s a minimum of fancy tricks on this site, with most of the effort going in to just organizing a fair amount of information (for a portfolio site). 009

Léo Guenoun

Léo Guenoun’s portfolio

is very, very minimalist. Everything is text until you click your way into a portfolio piece. Then it’s pretty much just images. I’m sensing a theme, here. 010

Fore Design

Fore Design

embraces textbook modern design, and thus joins this month’s minimalism plus geometry club. My favorite bits of the site would have to be the case studies, and the design of the blog articles on desktop screens. They also seem to make a point of using real people’s names where they can. Whether it’s on their team page (duh), in their portfolio pieces, or on their blog, they seem to emphasize a human connection when and where they can. 011

Anne Thai

Anne Thai

embraces the classic white space and huge text style of site. She has to, because this is possibly the single longest one-page portfolio I’ve ever seen. Thankfully, it comes with two sets of navigation. Her work is presented artfully, and color is used to let you know you’re looking at a new project in a way that makes sense. 012

Skinn Branding Agency

Skinn

brings us more classic white space and huge text. It’s not terribly original, but it is well-done. Trigger warning for people who like headings and titles to be capitalized. This site mostly doesn’t do that… 013

Maciej Herbert Rodzik

Maciej Herbert Rodzik

brings us back a few months to the days of post minimalism, but just a little. Aside from a little asymmetry and element overlapping, this one is simplicity itself. It’s also one of the few sites that overlaps the project title with the project images that doesn’t overwhelmingly impact readability. I approve. 014

Zeus Jones

Zeus Jones

wins the award for being the second site on this list to have the initials ZJ”. It’s a branding agency, and the site sure as heck looks like it. Every part of the otherwise fairly standard design has clearly been made to fit a theme. Note the just plain beautiful typography. 015

Monopo

Monopo’s site

is perhaps a bit presentation-effect-heavy for my taste; but I love their use of color. Also, I must admit that anyone who can make circles work as a design theme automatically gets points from me. With the web being as box-shaped” as it is, I can always appreciate making a theme out of any other shape. 016

Rowan Made

Rowan Made

is, without mincing words, a fairly typical example of hipster minimalism. It’s all about that artisanal feeling. Nonetheless, it is perhaps one of the finer examples of hipster minimalism that I’ve seen in a while. Plus, I’m a sucker for well-crafted typography on pretty much any site. I’d only try to make the text headings stand out a bit more, maybe. The headings are styles in a way that assumes the reader is going to be reading as opposed to skimming. Never make that assumption. 017

Studio Mast

Studio Mast

spices up a fairly simple layout with little touches that are reminiscent of an art gallery. This idea is represented everything from the general aesthetic style, to the hover effects on images, to the controls on the home page slideshow. It’s a subtle way of calling your own work art without looking too pretentious. It’s a clever touch that doesn’t get in the way of usability. I like that kind of clever. 018

Maksim Karalevich

Maksim Karalevich’s site

is all minimalist and full of… not random geometric shapes. Cool. In fact, there’s an animated signature on the home page. Even more cool. Another thing I quite like is the way some elements are styled to make the whole thing look like a gigantic chat log. It’s not something you see very often. 019

Andy H. Wei

Andy Wei

brings us full circle with more of that minimalism and random geometry combo in a lovely near monochromatic site that lets his paintings have all the color. There’s a hint of post-minimalism here and there, but it’s used for emphasis, which I really like. My favorite bit has got to be the little graphical flourishes. They’re all painting-themed, so it sets exactly the right mood. 020

Ezequiel Bruni

Ezequiel Bruni is a web/​UX designer, blogger, and aspiring photographer living in Mexico. When he\‘s not up to his finely-chiselled ears in wire-frames and front-end code, or ranting about the same, he indulges in beer, pizza, fantasy novels, and stand-up comedy.

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