20 Best New Portfolios, April 2018

It’s that time again, readers. We’ve got a variety of sites, here: presentational and simple, colorful and nearly monochromatic. We’re also doing something a little new: we’re including the platform each site was built on, according to my best guesstimate.

At least the WordPress ones are easy… 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.

Reece Parker

We begin with Reece Parker’s illustration portfolio. It’s dark, it’s minimalist, and it has an amusing little animated Q&A that I enjoyed reading through. Now you know how I feel about depending on animation, and all (I am contractually obligated to mention it at least once a month), but this was charming enough to win me over anyway. The whole site pretty much sells itself with charm.

Platform: Semplice

Myles Lucas

Myles Lucas’ portfolio goes straight for the “Well isn’t that something?” approach with a slideshow that is comprised of, well… his name. One letter at a time. The rest of the site isn’t much more subdued, with a background that changes color drastically as you browse through the projects.

Platform: Static site

Théo Rosel

Théo Rosel brings us back yet again to that odd sort of minimalism that is packed with animation and interactive elements. Well in any case, the site’s design is elegant, clean, and pretty as you could ask for. My only note is that on the home page, you have to click and hold on the main slideshow to see the associated projects. This probably does wonders for preventing mis-taps, but it’s rather awkward for anyone who still uses a mouse.

There are dozens of us. Dozens!

Platform: Static site

Lettuce & Co.

Lettuce & Co. is one I’m kind of excited to feature, if only because we’ve never had an event planner portfolio in this series before (that I can recall). It’s minimal, but clearly sticks to the fancy-ish, serif-loving, classic event-planner style we’ve come to associate with weddings, especially.

Their past work is, of course, all about the photos, because how else would you do it? They use a lot of close-up detail shots to show how committed they are to said details, and I think it works.

Platform: WordPress

PROFI

Is brutalist web 2.0 a thing? Or is it just extreme minimalism with big text? Whatever the case, the designers at PROFI are masters of this form. I can appreciate just wanting to put your website up without worrying too much about the details normally associated with web design.

But oooh, on this one you hover over images to get text, rather than the other way around. What’s old is new again.

Platform: Static HTML

This Page

This Page is a digital studio with a pretty clear emphasis on video. Thus, the site is predictably presentation-like. Still, I absolutely love their use of color. One thing I can say for presentation-style sites: they’re usually not afraid to look as bright and cheery.

Platform: JavaScript App

Momkai

Momkai is the second Amsterdam-based studio on this list. New conspiracy theory: they synchronize their redesigns and/or site launches for some nefarious purpose. This one takes a fairly normal layout, and embraces pastels. Also animation. Nothing mind-blowing, but it’s pretty.

Platform: Static Site

Monica Lovati

Monica Lovati is both a person and a design studio, and they both have a name that just rolls off the tongue, man. Her/their website is another one that made it onto this list because it’s pretty. Go admire it for a bit!

Platform: Semplice

Bee Creations

I’ll be honest with you. I’d be extremely disappointed if Bee Creations wasn’t a black and yellow masterpiece. It leans more toward the black than the yellow in general, and it’s just so… aggressively modern. I do rather like the way they side-mounted header and navigation tie the site together, while case studies are allowed to be a lot more flexible with the art direction.

Platform: WordPress

Kasra Design

Kasra Design makes excellent use of a bold color palette, but tempers it with a more classic modern aesthetic and lots of literal white space. The use of photo composites all over the place definitely sets the tone, and helps to convey the agency’s personality.

Platform: WordPress

Voir(e)

Voir(e) is an atelier with a very, very distinct aesthetic style that ranges from the clothing they produce to the photos they use to showcase it to the colors of the website itself. I’d say that this site possibly wins this month’s non-existent award for most unified sense of style.

Platform: Static Site (with some AJAX, not quite a full-on app)

Film Truck

Film Truck is, as you might expect, a truck that goes down the street playing music and sells… wait, no. It’s a film studio. Like many sites nowadays, this one combines artsy minimalism with presentation-style UX. The color palette and small graphical flourishes do give it a distinct personality, though.

Platform: JS App

Zazu

Zazu goes for that bold, almost default-link-color blue (da-ba-dee-da-ba-die). And then they go for lots of white space with blue text. And then once in a while, they’ll throw all of those rules out the window, and engage in some honest-to-god art direction for their case studies. It’s been done before, but these people do it well.

Platform: Semplice

We Should Do It All

We Should Do It All is both their agency name and their mission statement. Their dedication to doing it all seems to extend to their portfolio, which is both text-heavy and image-heavy. They seem rather dedicated to telling whole story of each project, in a functional, simple, near-brutalist fashion. I actually rather like it.

Platform: Static Site

Kuon Yagi

Kuon Yagi is web designer and self-professed “markup engineer”. Now I don’t think we need another job title, but I have to admit that one sounds cool. The design is darned cool, too with a distinctly space-themed aesthetic, a .space domain name, and typography so pretty that I don’t care if a lot of the text is Japanese.

Platform: Static Site

Mustafa Celik

Mustafa Celik is an art director, and has taken full advantage of animation and typography to create an experience that is rather beautiful, on the whole. It does that thing where the navigation links are all over the place, but otherwise, it’s a darned good-looking site.

Platform: WordPress

Sophie Haig

Sophie Haig’s photography portfolio combines collage-style-design, hover-over-text-to-preview UX, and the exact same font used in every hair style catalog at the local barber shop. Okay, I’m half-kidding. I’ve actually been seeing a lot of vertically “squished” type lately. I’m not a huge fan, but it has been a change of pace, and I appreciate that. In this case, it doesn’t look bad at all.

Platform: Static Site

Anyonegirl

Anyonegirl is a simple yet stylish photography portfolio with a rockin’ 416 pages full of photos. Any site with that much content pretty much has to keep it simple for bandwidth reasons. Even so, there’s a distinct style present that I find appealing.

Platform: WordPress

Oak & Morrow

As much as I’ve been enjoying the web’s return to color, I must admit that Oak & Morrow’s nearly monochromatic portfolio is pleasing to look at. After that, their flair for illustration adds an extra touch of style to an already great site.

Platform: WordPress

Antfood

And we finish this off with Antfood, a distinctly presentational site with tons of color, solid type, and some fairly creative animation. They also do website audio the best way I’ve ever seen it done: it’s turned off by default. If you really, really feel the need to listen to your website, you can turn it on. They’re an audio studio, so you can hardly blame them for trying.

Platform: Static Site

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.