I’m in college and taking my final graphic design class where we are building our portfolios online. I’ve had my own site for a bit, and the way I organized it was just by putting my strongest pieces all together as a grid on my homepage. My professor wants me to organize everything into categories. However, a lot of my projects cover a few bases (ex. logo + print materials + digital). I don’t want to break these all up into separate project pages, as a lot of the portfolios I took as inspiration keep them all together. I also have a lot more pieces that fit certain categories, so my print design category looks stacked but I only have like 3 digital design projects. It just looks a little weird now.
Way back in college, during the medieval era, I remember thinking I should defer to the instructors. I didn’t necessarily think they were correct, but they were the experts, I was the student, and I could sort it out later as I gained more expertise.
After working in the field for nearly ten years, I returned to graduate school. I discovered that most professors were academics first, not practicing, real-world designers. These people were good teachers, but their graphic design viewpoints were those of somewhat naive academics rather than working professionals.
As for your portfolio, categorization can work well when the materials lend themselves to neat categories, but many things don’t. The important thing is to put your best work into your portfolio in a way that immediately impresses a prospective employer.
My online portfolio uses something similar to what you suggest: a grid of clickable images that open pages with similar work. Doing so puts the best stuff out front without needing to jam things into ill-fitting categories.
As PrintDriver said, do what your instructor thinks is best, get a good grade, then change it to what you think works best once this person’s opinion no longer matters in six weeks. Once you’re a working professional in the field, you’ll find much the same with employers and clients: sometimes they insist on less-than-good ideas. Sometimes, you’ll need to grit your teeth, bite your tongue, do the best you can under the circumstances, get paid, and move on to another project.
