20 Best New Portfolios, August 2018

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August 06, 2018
20 Best New Portfolios, August 2018.

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Our Secret Reptilian Overlords, I asked for more color in last month’s article, and you have delivered. It’s August, now, and to distract myself from the oppressive heat, I have gathered some 20 of these more colorful designs together for your perusal. So as you might guess, there’s a fair bit of variety this month. There’s still some good old monochromatic minimalism for those of you who like that, so never fear. There’s just a bit more balance, this time around. 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.

karlssonwilker

The karlssonwilker agency site is a blow to the eyeballs. Whether or not that’s a good thing is going to be down to personal taste; but I literally can’t remember the last time I saw an actual animated kaleidoscope effect used on the Web. I definitely can’t remember the last time I saw one used this well. There’s also a rather interesting use of flowchart-style layout on the About” page. Yeah. Flowcharts. Platform: WordPress 01-wilker

iconwerk

iconwerk

is the first icon designer portfolio that I’ve seen in a while. It’s a meta work of genius. Before you can click on individual projects, you’re given a grid of images that contain icons, clients lists, and other snapshots of their work, but also kind of look like icons in their own right. That’s right, they put icons in your icons, so you can look at icons while you look at icons. Platform: Static Site 02-iconwerk

Humbert & Poyet

Humbert & Poyet

is an architecture firm, so expect a lot of the usual: animation everywhere, elegant serif type, and text overlapping onto other elements. As is usual though, it’s all about how these elements are combined. In this case, the result is a visual treat that is greater than the sum of its parts. Platform: Static Site 03-hoxton

Juicymo

Juicymo

is a mobile app developer, and their site goes all in on the flashy visuals you might expect from them. We get gradients galore, a lot of diagonal lines (a personal favorite of mine), rounded corners, and overall it’s just bright and colorful. Really, it’s as if Web 2.0 and flat design had a baby. This makes it stand out, and I rather like it. Man, I never thought I’d miss rounded corners. Platform: Static Site 04-juicymo

bcwebwise

bcwebwise

combines minimalism with nearly seamless animation integrated into its entire UI. It genuinely feels like the animation is a part of the interface, rather than something tacked on to make the whole experience feel a bit more flashy. What’s more, everything from their branding to their animation is specifically designed to represent their approach to design, which they call FishSenseTM”. And sure, that might sound a little silly, but every part of the experience is designed to keep the concept swimming around in your head. And since FishSenseTM is apparently defined by instinct and a holistic approach to design, this works all too well. Platform: Static Site bcwebwise

Jveb Studio

Jveb Studio

uses light animation and background illustration to fantastic effect. With a clearly modern-yet-artistic style, this is a simple-looking site that nonetheless has a fair few moving parts under the hood. Give it a look. Platform: WordPress 06-jveb

Buzzworthy Studio

Buzzworthy Studio

showcases their projects with a list of names, like many sites do nowadays. Overall, their style is clean, playful, and very marketing-friendly, which works for them. Animations is clearly emphasized, but not overwhelming, and I particularly like the way they use color. Platform: Static Site 07-buzzworthy

Fortnum & Fox

Fortnum & Fox

also embrace the dual-color background, but takes more of an earth-tone approach for the most part. But instead of only using this theme on the home page, the site doubles down on the dual-background theme, featuring it prominently when displaying portfolio items. As presentation sites go, it looks elegant and fancy. It takes some inspiration from print design, without feeling trapped by its inspiration. Platform: WordPress 08-fortnum

Eric Van Holtz

Eric Van Holtz’ portfolio

goes big and bold with both color and type, combined with a light dash of animation, and a penchant for those diagonal lines I like so much. It’s a design that doesn’t hold back, and so is memorable. Platform: Static Site 09-eric

Salva Lopez

Salva Lopez’ portfolio

seems to embrace the split website” theme as well, with all of his photography organized in personal” and commissioned” categories. It’s a simple site with little text and lots of galleries, but that’s basically what you want from a photography portfolio, no? Platform: WordPress 10-salva

2xElliott

2xEllliott

is a design consultancy, so their site’s aesthetic embraces that sort of corporate-elegant feel we’ve come to expect from that sort of agency. There’s a heavy emphasis on imagery, art direction, and not using more pages than you have to. By that I mean that clicking on navigation items like News” or Contact” will open up a side panel to show that content, since there’s not enough of either to warrant their own pages. It’s a bit JS-dependent for my taste, but I otherwise like the approach. Platform: WordPress 11-2x

Canopy Films

Canopy Films’ site

takes a highly grid-based approach to showing off its videos, and the grid itself is… animated? I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how that’s done; but it’s actually a pretty cool effect. And that’s coming from Mr. I‑wish-sites-depended-less-on-animation. The rest of the site is fairly clean and modern, and is just generally worth a look. Platform: Static Site 12-canopy

JOJX

JOJX

goes for that dead-simple minimalism that was everywhere in last month’s article. Since it’s a portfolio site for directors, that works just fine. It’s just you, some navigation, a video, and a title. What more do you need? Platform: WordPress 13-JOJX

Humble

Humble

takes much the same approach to showing off its video portfolio as JOJX, above. They use more color, though, with a bit of asymmetry and element overlap thrown in. It’s an excellent example of how two designs that are very similar on paper can have wildly different personalities. Platform: WordPress 14-humble

David Collins Studio

The David Collins Studio site takes me way back to like, a month or so ago, with its serif type, and minimalist collage approach to the art of the portfolio. It’s simple and elegant, and fairly effective. Platform: Static Site (?) 15-david

Barkas

When you first load this portfolio up, it kind of feels like a spreadsheet that’s much prettier than it ought to be. As someone who kind of likes spreadsheets to begin with, that’s actually a compliment. I’m not a huge fan of the cursor change, but otherwise it’s a good-looking portfolio that gets straight to the point. Platform: WordPress 16-barkas

Pigment

Pigment

shows off their work in a decidedly modernist fashion, with lots of white space and good old black borders. I do find their two-column approach to the actual portfolio items interesting. It looks like a good way to prioritize some of your work while not quite hiding the rest of it. I also kind of like the way it looks like most of the content is floating” above the rest of the page/​background. It’s an effect you don’t often see in such a relatively flat design. It’s depth without any trace of skeuomorphism. Platform: WordPress 17-pigment

Pierrick Calvez

Pierrick Calvez’ site

is pretty much peak minimalism, but it’s good-looking for all that. I appreciate the way the zoom function works on individual portfolio images, and the typographical style of the whole thing. Platform: Webflow 18-pierrick

U‑P

U‑P

is hard to classify. It’s so reminiscent of the Wild West days of the Internet that it’s almost brutalist. And yet, it looks good in a way that is sometimes a little cramped. Despite its design roots, it follows fairly modern usability conventions. It works, even if it sometimes seems like it shouldn’t. That’s always impressive. Platform: Static Site 19-up

Dexter Navy

Dexter Navy’s site

is an odd duck, and I quite like it. Some photographers and videographers have collage-style sites. Others do that preview-on-hover-over-the-title” thing. This one manages to combine them both in a riot of color and movement that still manages to feel purposeful. The photography and video are mixed together delightfully. I also quite like the horizintal-scrolling image galleries for each project. Platform: Static Site 20-dexter

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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