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No matter, whether it’s your first or the 50th client pitch, it’s your portfolio that is going to be the most impactful factor to seal the deal. The architecture portfolio is the most influential tool for the students or the professional architect to show themselves and their works to potential clients. The architecture portfolio is the reflection of one’s character, attitude, and views of the world. An impressive portfolio is like a successful elevator pitch, which helps the prospective client and employer to get interested in your work, within a fraction of seconds!
YOUR PORTFOLIO = YOUR TRIUMPH CARD
But the question is, what should you keep and what should you keep out of your portfolio? Whether you should have a digital or a physical portfolio or both? Should you go for hand sketch or software skill preference or both? What should be the limit of the description to have in the portfolio? There is n number of questions that can pop up while you start working with your portfolio, regardless of which state you are at. And this article guide will help you out get all your questions answered!

What a Portfolio Should Contain?
If you are a Student/ Intern, then your portfolio should be a reflection of your ability to think, how you approach your design. Feel free to brag about your academic as well as co-curricular works.
If you are a Junior Architect with 1–3-year experience, then your portfolio can be a good mix of academic work and professional experience. Let it reflect your design sensibilities which you have developed over the years of professional work and show how will it match the client’s office’s style.
If you are a Mid-Level Architect with 3-10-year experience, then you should be accustomed to your industry and comprehend it’s working. The goal of your portfolio ought to be to showcase your niche, arrange your classy projects, feature your award-winning projects and have a distinct design sensibility, and present your works in a stand-out manner.
If you are a Senior Architect with more than 10-year experience, then your portfolio ought to reflect your vast and versatile experience. The intent should be to show how you have led projects of various scales, from pre-design through construction phases, and show your developed thought process.

Before beginning your portfolio, you should recall that, you can’t have a ‘one size fits all’ approach to your portfolio. To make a greater impact, focus on the audience you are fostering the portfolio. Fitting your portfolio to your forthcoming boss or customer’s necessities can build your odds of coming out on top.
What are The Types of Portfolios?
There are mainly two broad types of portfolios, which architects usually follow, one, a snapshot of selected works to attach with the CV to prospective clients, and the other, a complete portfolio to show during the interview.
Paper Portfolio
There is a delight in seeing the photo-realistic representation of your unique drawings and models. Additionally, printed portfolios can be perfectly bundled. However, it has the weakness of being expensive as it needs to get printed with each alter in the portfolio.
PDF Portfolio
A PDF Portfolio bodes well for when you need to keep it fresh and clear!
Portfolio Hosting Sites
Portfolio Hosting Sites accompany excellent portfolio-building capacities and are an extraordinary choice to make your web-based portfolio. Issuu and Behance are significant names in this field.

Portfolio Websites
Having a site implies you can draw in more rush hour gridlock to your image and can get more leads. You can purchase a domain and decide to get your website designed by an expert. Again you can utilize website building platforms like FolioHD, Portfoliobox.net, Krop, squarespace.com, format.com, cargo. site and Pixpa, which are suggested for senior architects.
Portfolio Apps
For iOSs only, applications like Morpholio let you grandstand your portfolio effectively and scrutinize others’ works.
How to Create the Portfolio?
- Choose only your best and most relevant work.
- Select appropriate drawings and images.
- Choose a format.
- Create a portfolio template.
- Arrange in a visual format.
- Create a front cover.
- Create a file.
- Create a cover letter.

Must DOs for Portfolio
- Let the cover image communicate everything, to assist you to stand out.
- Adding a visual outline of the project at the start is a great thought, so the viewer realizes what’s in store and can likewise leap to the part they are keener on.
- Make the best image of the project, the hero. Try not to give equivalent significance to all the images in one project, else the viewer will not have easy visual navigation.
- Have a reasonable break between each project, so the viewer can process each project. Adding all projects consistently will be an over-burden of data.
- Photograph your models and the built structures well (it pays to put resources into a DSLR camera). Every single detail matters when you are addressing yourself in the most ideal manner conceivable. Spectacular models can look horrendous if not caught well.
- Sketches add a personalized touch and mirror your point of view. Simultaneously, technological prowess also showcases your futuristic outlook. Thus, it’s ideal to have a blend of hand drawings for certain projects and feature technology/software utilized (like BIM programming, Holo Lens) for quite some time.
Must DON’Ts for Portfolio
- Not too long and not very short. The thought is to compile the best of your work and put it in an effectively readable manner.
- Don’t sort your portfolio from the oldest project first to the recent last.
- Don’t recur similar projects. Pick up the best one.
- Let the portfolio file size not surpass 10 MB.
- Don’t add more than 100 words to a page. In case there are more words, break them into sections or spread them across pages. Try to cut back on words as much as possible.
- Don’t get carried away with colors in your portfolio. In case you don’t know, pick monochrome. Better classy than looking like a color attack.
- Don’t be inconsistent in your illustrations and layout from one page to another.
- No more than two typefaces.

25 Things You Should Remember Before Working on Your Portfolio
- Check out architecture portfolio examples. Do complete homework.
- Listen to your audience. Know that, to whom you need to present your portfolio, and comprehend their work style.
- Choose an architecture portfolio template that best suits your project theme.
- Put your skills in graphic design to good use.
- Give more illustrations and less text.
- Specialize in your field. For instance, you could have expertise in interior designing, you may be a specialist in choosing the floor plans, the framework, the arrangement of different components of the design, and so forth. When you know what you are best at, it becomes simpler to look for customers just as cut an extraordinary corner ever. Who knows, you might make it into the architect ‘s Hall of Fame.
- Create an engaging CV, as it is the first page of your portfolio so it has to be impressive, to create an enduring impression.
- Show just your chosen best projects. Particularly, the one which best matched the office’s portfolio.
- Be clear and honest concerning your contributions to each project. Regardless of whether you were an intern, but what you’ve truly done, “detailing frames,” “preliminary project concepts,” “compatibility”, “supervisory work”, etc. This shows your experience.
- Less is more. Thus, keep it simple and short as much as possible. Long presentations and text tend to debilitate and befuddle the peruser and occupy them from the principal reason for introducing your abilities and character in the brief time frame.
- Don’t neglect your team projects. Being informative, adaptable, and contributing to the team with a specific role given, is a profoundly appreciated skill in big firms and organizations.
- Create an impressive website. You should attempt to go past a general blog-style site and instead strive for a design that exhibits your work with the greatest possible level of demonstrable skill.
- Categorize your projects into collections. An incredible architecture portfolio will include a variety of projects that are organized by the type of work, materials, area, and other details. Curating pictures of your work into coordinated collections will help forthcoming clients sift through your portfolio more effectively to find precisely the thing they’re searching for with less exertion.
- Subtly show your soft skills alongside your hard skills. If required, add them under a special segment on your resume. However, do not enroll them on your cover letter as that isn’t what it is going after.
- Just say “no” to stand solitary resumes. Never just send your resume without a portfolio of your work.
- Add a nice cover letter. The text in the body of the email is significant. It ought to be brief and appealing. No large addresses. Regardless, this is likewise an area to be somewhat less unoriginal. Fair and graceful letters are superior to extremely formal letters.
- The inclusion of technical drawings can help, however can likewise distract. Presenting a portfolio isn’t that equivalent to submitting construction drawings. You don’t have to clarify everything completely, with plans for all the floors and sections. But it’s important to get the general idea of the project (the concept) and to show your abilities. If you are called for an interview, then take something nitty-gritty. Counting numerous drawings, and especially, numerous technical drawings, can just keep your portfolio down; It occupies the important room.
- Follow the ‘rule of third’. Present your 1/3rd of academic works, 1/3rd of your professional work, and 1/3rd of your works.
- Your portfolio’s presentation is as important as its content. So, keep an eye on creating a visually appealing portfolio.
- Include a ton of personal information. Let the viewer know you well and your skills. Add all your multidisciplinary works.
- A long portfolio isn’t superior to a short one. Remember that, at first the portfolio will be taken a gander at for close to one moment before being passed on.
- Pay legitimate attention to fonts, typeface, and grammar. The text may be negligible and short however botches in spelling, grammar and punctuation are effectively spotted. Continuously utilize a spelling and grammar corrector before presenting your portfolio. Your plans and thoughts may be incredible and imaginative however an incorrectly spelled text looks amateurish. Do whatever it takes not to try too hard with text style styles, or you will need consistency and request. Pick among 2-3 typefaces (Comis Sans is forbidden!) and change sizes to stress where you want it. The assortment is fine as long it doesn’t think twice about lucidity and neatness.
- Don’t disregard hand drawings. Utilize your drawing skills. Utilizing technology in the design process is necessary and consistently needed in job positions. Nonetheless, having the option to convey through quick sketches and drawings is as yet a need. So, if you are good at sketching or model-making by hand, don’t hesitate for even a minute to include it in your portfolio.
- Don’t be fear the blank spaces. Over-burden portfolios with pictures, texts, and renderings are normally ill-fated to be disregarded. It is desirable to have a larger number of pages with less content per page than utilize every last trace of your page to fit everything in there. Keep your background clean and don’t utilize a distractive color that will take the consideration from your projects.
- Update your portfolio frequently. A decent choice is to update it every six months or at least yearly.

Some Bonus Portfolio TIPs
For Students/Interns
- The focus of your portfolio ought to be on your ability to think.
- If you have any sort of built work, kick start your portfolio with that project.
- Research on Issuu and Behance to get an idea of how others have portrayed their works.
- Hand sketches are required to be included.
- Don’t forget to include the explorations to highlight your interests outside of your architecture work.
- Showcase your graphic skills, software skills (be it CAD, 3D modeling software, or Building Information Modelling – BIM), and the technical understanding of architecture concepts
- If you have any published works, research, and awards, feature them prominently.
For Junior Architects
- It’s all about your skills as a young professional – the more you know and add, the better it is.
- Don’t forget to give credits to those who supported you in the project, feature your contribution.
- Don’t forget to include descriptions about your perspective on the design process, rather than just factual notes.
- Don’t include the projects you are not proud of.
- Comprehend at least one work which you made without the use of a computer.
For Mid-Level Architects
- Focus on presenting your best work, instead of all work.
- Hire a professional photographer for your team.
- Show your work as per the region, it can reflect how well you understand the different contexts across the globe.
- Showcase your logical thinking as well as your architectural knowledge.
- Feature the latest technology you used.
For Senior Architects
- Be a marketer.
- Let your website do the communication.
- Include positive client testimonials.
- Hire a professional photographer in your team who understands your vision.
- Put resources in personal branding.

Most Importantly, always tell the truth. Try not to develop or overstate anything in your portfolio or resume. Trustworthiness is the best. You can even find work, however, lose it a while later because you lied. Reality comes out rapidly. Just be yourself!
You’ll put sweat, blood, and tear in your portfolio, and briefly, in time it might seem like the main document on the earth. Your portfolio will be perhaps your most noteworthy resource as an architect and it might just be the tipping point to getting into that extraordinary alumni program or handling a temporary position with that stunning firm!
Citations
- Snaptrude.com. (2021). Tips & Tricks of Architecture Portfolio used by Successful Architects. [online] Available at: https://www.snaptrude.com/blog/tips-tricks-architecture-portfolio-successful-architects
- Arch2o.com. (2021). 10 Tips for Creating a Winning Architecture Portfolio. [online] Available at: https://www.arch2o.com/tips-winning-architecture-portfolio/
- Kovalchenko, Anna. (2018). 8 Tips for Creating a Better Architecture Portfolio. [online] Available at: https://essenziale-hd.com/2018/10/10/8-tips-for-creating-a-better-architecture-portfolio/
- Archisoup.com. (n.d.). Architecture Portfolio Guide. [online] Available at: https://www.archisoup.com/architecture-portfolio-guide
- Kogan, Gabriel. (2016). 12 Tips for Making an Outstanding Architecture Portfolio. [online] Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/780996/12-tips-on-making-an-architecture-portfolio
- Foyr.com. (n.d.). Architecture Portfolio. [online] Available at: https://foyr.com/learn/how-to-create-best-architecture-portfolio/
- Blog.buildllc.com. (2014). A Student’s Guide to the Architectural Portfolio. [online] Available at: https://blog.buildllc.com/2014/04/a-students-guide-to-the-architectural-portfolio/