When most of your portfolio pieces are under NDAs

Graphic Design
#1

I’ve recently made a return to freelance and am a little unsure what to do with the pieces of work that I showcase on my website.

Most of my work these days is either:

  1. Work from my last two agency jobs (full-time)
  2. Freelance work outsourced by design agencies

Of course both of the above would be tricky to showcase on my website / Instagram / Behance. Not all of it is covered by NDAs, so it is possible that I may be able to showcase some of it if I ask, but probably not a lot.

So most of the work currently displayed on my site is quite old work for direct clients and some of it is a considerably lower standard to my more recent work. I’ve found myself removing pieces from there a lot more often than adding new ones.

Seeing as most of my work these days comes from design agencies, I’m tempted to just remove all of the work from my website and simply have a ‘request portfolio PDF’ link that people can use.

But I feel this could be disastrous to simply not showcase anything on my site. It could also alienate any potential direct clients.

Another idea is to design a load of fictional projects to showcase my skills, and then have a PDF link so that people can request to see my real client projects.

What does everyone else think?

#2

The idea of making the fictional stuff and then the PDF sounds about right. I don’t know how much traffic you get, but I expect it would be hard to get serious clients if your site had nothing. And you can’t be showing low quality stuff either…

You could combine it with stuff that you asked and they let you put up too. That way you’d have slightly less work to do (on this subject at least!).

#3

Thanks, I’ll probably go down that route I imagine!

#4

When it’s ready, let us know, we’ll go sneak a peek! :smiley:

#5