22+ Creative online portfolio sites and image hosting applications
The following is a healthy collection of 21 online portfolio websites and applications. Some are free and some are paid. We have the usual suspects in this collection and also some lesser known portfolio solutions, at least to me anyway. I spent some time trying to discover alternatives to sites like Behance and Deviant Art to provide a wider audience reach for your work.
If you are aware of any other portfolio websites not mentioned below, please do let me know. I would like to keep this as a up-to-date resource for portfolio and image hosting websites.
Additional resources
Reencoded posted an article with some great new free portfolio websites : 10 places where designers can upload and host their work for-free
Increase your reach
I love portfolio sites and I like to have a presence in all the portfolio sites I can lay my hands on. I am a firm believer in getting your work ‘really’ out there and not just relying on usual options. Clients can be found anywhere, I have had clients approach me after seeing my work in places I had forgot I had a portfolio up.
Keep your external portfolios fed with your best work not necessarily ‘all’ your work, this can help reduce the time intensive nature of keeping portfolios up-to-date. Given the majority of the online portfolio websites are totally free like CargoCollective, Behance and Coroflot; there really is no reason not to sign up and take advantage of this marketing and promotional opportunity. Even for the services that have the ‘free limited plans’ and the ‘paid premium plans’ like Carbonmade; you can make use of the free service and just be selective with the work you upload.
Invest time in really expanding your horizons and help potential clients find your work. I use most of the sites listed below in one way or another, except a couple of the ‘paid only’ options like DesignTaxi. Where I use the site mentioned, I have provided my own URL and status of the portfolio. Fortunately, paid only solutions are the minority, so there are plenty of free options to take advantage off.
The following list has creative logo design in mind more than any other form of design, although most of the portfolio sites are multi disciplinary. I have categorised them into 3 financial categories : ‘Totally Free’, ‘Free and Premium’ and ‘Paid Only’.
Totally Free Creative Portfolios
http://jobrary.com/
ImJustCreative on Jobrary – Just getting started
Jobrary is a quick, simple, easy-to-use tool for creating and managing your Résumé & Portfolio.
http://logopond.com
ImJustCreative on Logopond – Almost up-to-date
http://creativebinge.com
ImJustCreative on CreativeBinge – Just getting started
http://designrelated.com
ImJustCreative on DesignRelated - Just getting started
http://behance.net
ImJustCreative on Behance – Up-to-date
http://coroflot.com
ImJustCreative on Coroflot – In Progress
http://figdig.com
ImJustCreative on FigDig – Just getting started
http://glossom.com
ImJustCreative on Glossom - Just getting started
http://crowdspring.com
ImJustCreative is on CrowdSpring but I am re-doing my portfolio
http://brandstack.com
ImJustCreative on Brandstack - In Progress
http://shadowness.com
ImJustCreative on Shadowness – Just getting started
Free & Premium Creative Online Portfolios
http://cargocollective.com
ImJustCreative on CargoCollective - In Progress
http://viewbook.com
ImJustCreative on Viewbook - Just getting started
http://krop.com
ImJustCreative on Krop - Up-to-date
http://deviantart.com
ImJustCreative on DeviantArt - Up-to-date
http://shownd.com
ImJustCreative on Shown’d - In Progress
http://flickr.com
ImJustCreative on Flickr - Up-to-date
http://carbonmade.com
ImJustCreative on Carbonmade - Up-to-date
Invite Only Creative Portfolio
Paid Creative Portfolios
The following portfolio sites will cost you money to join and upload your logo designs. LogoLounge is worth signing up if you are a serious logo designer, likely you are someone who relies on logo design to pay your mortgage etc. If you join, your logos will automatically be considered for future LogoLounge book volumes. This is a valuable source of marketing and exposure.
http://dripbook.com
ImJustCreative on DripBook - Up-to-date
http://www.designtaxi.com/
ImJustCreative on DesignTaxi - Nearly up-to-date
Bonus Portfolio Website
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Article Posted On: February 8, 2010 at 9.54 pm
Written By
In Categories: Logo design, Portfolio, inspiration
A FEW OPTIONAL EXTRAS
If you enjoyed this post or website in general, then please consider signing up to the free ImJustCreative Newsletter (the bright orange icon). You can also find me on Twitter, Redux, FriendFeed and FaceBook daily, dispensing the latest in design, logo and typography news. If your choice of blog platforms include Tumblr or Posterous, then you can also follow my breadcrumb trails there. And the neat looking 'lightning bolt' icon is for my CargoCollective portfolio and the pink heart is for FFFFound.
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Now that was incredibly helpful. It seems that I have a lot of work ahead of me to get caught up. Thanks for sharing this!
Graham, do you keep track of which of these portfolios generates the most traffic for you?
I am not fussy about monitoring actual stats. The only thing i am interested in is if work is actually generated. So on my online quote form, I ask the client to note where/how they found me. So it could be Google, Coroflot, word of mouth, Twitter, Logopond etc. This is the most valuable information. YOu can get too bogged down my thinking numbers and stats are important but they are not really relevant to the realisation of a actual lead. I could have 100 visits a day on my site portfolio and 1 visit in a week on some obscure portfolio site, but that one visit might be from a potential client wanting to work with me, opposed to just casual glances.
So this is why I focus more on expanding my reach opposed to obsessing about per site stats,
Hope that makes sense.
Nice list, thanks for sharing. I’m also using http://www.designerscouch.org/ – really good site!
[...] 21 Creative online portfolio sites and applications [...]
21 Creative online portfolio sites and applications…
The following is a healthy collection of 21 online portfolio websites and applications. Some are free and some are paid….
Great compilation, its going to be a lot of help to a lot of designers!!!
Nice list! and thanks for sharing.
Should check out http://jobrary.com., launch last week. Seems like lot more features coming up.
Thanks for the heads up on that one, have added it to the list. Cheers.
Thanks Graham for considering my suggestion!
But the image of Jobrary doesn’t display, can you please check? I think the path you provided is incorrect.
Thanks again!
Thanks for rounding these up Graham. I have hardly been online since the new year which leaves mne feeling quite out of the loop. I am sure getting familiar with some of these sites will help me in getting “back in the loop,” and you reminded me that I should make a visit to dear old deviantART. Lately I have been stuck on ColourLovers.com loving colors all day, lol I love the site, probably a little too much though and need to find new haunts as well! Cheers,
~Lauren
[...] 21 Creative online portfolio sites and applications [...]
[...] 21 Creative online portfolio sites and applications [...]
[...] 22+ Creative online portfolio sites and image hosting applications [...]
[...] 22+ Creative online portfolio sites and image hosting applications [...]
Another approach worth considering is to show case your work in hi res on an online zooming canvas with http://www.ahead.com.
Am personally just playing around with it now but love the advanced layout tools, the possibility to display almost all file formats and that I can embed it anywhere also on Facebook.
Example
http://www.grey-kbh.dk
http://ahead.com/c49LnIM_vjj58QM6oRmWzk/dv-wk-BVDhiBzqpITNTc_y
Not seen this, will check it out. Thanks for the heads up.
Great post, thanks for sharing all of these great links.
Graham, I certainly respect how syndicated you are with all of these portfolio sites (and with many of these social sites everyone frequents). I try and do the same.
I’d like to ask if there’s a noticeable benefit to updating a wide range of sites for you. Would love to know if “expanding your reach” through the use of many portfolios as opposed to a few has truly lead to worthwhile client relationships.
Good question, going to tackle that in a short post later today… :)
Great stuff thanks for the share
Thanks for sharing this awesome article.
Nice List