Welcome to the fourth installment of the Folio review Series
Today a designer is almost unemployable without an online folio of their work. I have even heard of one or two employers who refuse to accept anything other than a cover letter and a URL to their folio (which includes their resume)!
One of the most common dilemmas among design graduates and even seasoned designers is how to host their online folio, where to host it and which online folio solution will give them the best exposure.
There are a plethora of solutions that you can use. In this series I will go through the Pros and Cons of the various solutions available. I will also provide an info on the general look and feel, features, ease of use, customization possibilities, help and other features worth a mention.
There are two main categories that Online Folios fall into – Free, Pay and a hybrid of both. Each one has its Pros and Cons that change dependent on what you want to get out of your online folio and how you want to represent yourself.
We all love to get something for nothing so first up for critique are the Free Folio solutions.
The five free options I am going to be looking at in this series are – Coroflot, Carbon Made, Fig Dig, Behance (behance.net) and Wordpress.
Part 4 (Behance) Currently Reading
Part 5 (Wordpress) Coming Soon
“Founded on the principle of ‘Productive Creativity’, Behance is a company that designs products and services that empower the creative world to make ideas happen.” Behance.net is just one of Behance’s products. They also have Action Method, Behance Magazine, Creative’s Outfitter, Creative Index, Advisory Services and the 99% conference. To join Behance.net you must Request an invitation from them as they are only “extending invitations on a selective basis at this time”. Once you click on Request an Invitation you must enter a bit about your creative work. I didn’t enter that much information and didn’t really ’sell’ myself – I still got an invitation. Leading me to suspect that this invitation only business is more of a basic deterrent to keep unwanteds out (they aren’t just going to get people signing up for a folio and then never doing anything with it) and keep the quality level high.
Look & Feel
Behance.net is a clean site that well and truly for-fills the Behance teams idea that “you don’t have to be a computer maverick to have your creative work on the net.” The site is quite a bit more complex than most folio sites. It has many layers of functionality, such as a form of groups called circles and various other features that allow you to not only network with other creative professionals but also collaborate with them. There is also a Tips exchange where you can exchange tips of course and Joblist – where you can browse employment positions.
Features and ease of use
Gallery
Here you can view projects, people and teams from across the Behance.net network. You can also create watchlists that ‘watch’ projects and people who fit the criteria you specify. It also allows you to see the most recent, most viewed, most discussed and most appreciate projects on the network. These can be viewed in specific time periods and creative fields.
My Home
The nerve center of your folio and profile, you can use this area to update everything, see recent activity, view the latest polls and resources & promos, check your profile statistics and send messages and view feedback.
Circles
Basically these are like groups. You can have an inner circle, your friends ad colleagues and invited people and the you have wider circles that you can create and others can join. Pretty much allowing you a way to connect with other like minded people or creatives in your discipline on Behance.net.
Tip Exchange
Pretty self explanatory, want to share tips or tricks with the behance.net community then do so here. You can also add your own knowledge to other peoples tips.
Joblist
Pretty much a listing of employment positions and opportunities.
More Behance
The Behance team don;t just have Behance.net, they also have a plethora of other sites including Behance.com, Behance Mag (An online magazine), Behance Outfitter ( A shop selling Notebooks, Action lists and all manner of things to keep creatives productive) and Philosophy ( You can see all about Behance).
Customization
On Behance.net instead of only having an image and a brief description for your portfolio you can create folio pages. On these pages you can include text, images and even videos. You can comment on others portfolios and pages, as well as share them add the owner to your watchlist. In terms of what the portfolio surrounds look like, apart from setting the background colour, the rest is pretty stock standard. However the site certainly doesn’t detract from the work by being too flashy or complex.
Help
Behance.net has the best FAQ section of any of the Folio sites reviewed. Its excellent.
Extra Features worth a mention
They make it easy to report bus, give feedback or make a suggestion with a nice big red button on the right hand side of each page.
Pros
1. Clean site design
2. Ability to network with and engage with other professional
3. Excellent stats
4. Plenty of other services apart from just folio hosting
5. Custom name URL for folio. Eg: http://behance.net/designdroplets
Cons
1. banner ads on the right hand side of every page – but hey its free so can’t complain too much
Other
I don’t have a lot else to say about Behance.net apart from its a great portfolio hosting platform and you should give it a go, and that I will have to try out and review some of their other products.
Please take the time to leave your thoughts or advice in the comments. And share the article with others who might enjoy it or benefit from it.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This isn’t plugged enough yet, but there is a free no-ads version:
http://www.behance.net/davestein/frame
Dave,
Thanks for dropping by Design Droplets and taking the time to comment. Thanks for the advice on that particular Behance.net feature.
Hey thanks for the write up. I had all the fields completed on figdig, ready to hit enter but had a sketchy feeling. I read your write-ups and found what I wanted. Thanks!
Hello… I’ve had design droplets on my bookmarks bar, but not only till recently I had the time to dig through. I just want to thank you for this excellent space you have, a lot of posts really helped me to learn more, about industrial design, and design thinking in general.
About behance, I’ve tried it as well as coroflot, wordpress, flickr, and a couple more… Behance was the best so far in not only creating a beautiful, simple folio, but also with the community of creatives it creates.
There is also cargocollective[dot]com… It’s amazing, check it out and add it to the review list, because to me it’s the only place where non-web savvy designers can easily create good looking sites.