Learn how to build a simple and easy to maintain portfolio website for your surface pattern designs and illustrations.

Having an online hub where you can send clients to browse your artwork is essential if you want to start pitching to companies and getting your artwork licensed.

If you have any kind of Adobe subscription, then you probably already have Adobe portfolio included as part of your plan. Using the Adobe Portfolio platform to build your website is a great way to get some extra value out of your subscription!

I'm going to go through the whole process of setting up a portfolio using the Adobe Portfolio interface from start to finish. We'll cover everything from your first login all the way through to hitting publish and sharing the link with clients.

It's really important to know that you don't need to be able to code (I certainly don't!) or have any existing knowledge about website design to take this class or use the Adobe portfolio interface. It's a really simple platform and very beginner friendly!

What You Will Learn:

Understanding the portfolio interface
How to choose a portfolio theme
How to set up an eye catching home page
How to add new pages and collections
How to organise your work into categories for filtering
How to customise the site to suit your brand with unique fonts and colours
How to adjust your site's settings and what they all mean
How to password protect your site if you want it to be a private portfolio

We'll be covering things in an intuitive order so that you don't get too overwhelmed! I'll cover one thing at a time, starting with the bare minimum that you need in order to get you to the point where you're ready to start uploading your own sell sheets to your website. Then you can come back and play with the settings and layout once the important parts are in place.

Why take this class?

Having a little home for yourself on the internet is a really important item to check off the to-do list if you want to move from an art hobbyist to a professional who is ready to start licensing or selling their art. You don't need to have an all singing and all dancing website. A simple and easy to navigate portfolio to show off your designs plus a contact page is all that you need, and if you follow the steps in this class, that's exactly what you'll have by the end.

You'll be able to pitch your designs to clients via email and include a link to your online portfolio so that they can see your entire body of work. You can link to your portfolio website from your social media bio links. You can even use your portfolio website as your main website if you want. I used an Adobe Portfolio website as my only website for several years.

This class is geared specifically to people who will be building a website to showcase their illustrations and surface pattern designs so I'll have lots of tips on displaying your art in collections, how to lay it out on the pages and how to add categories that reflect what an art director will be looking for. This class is for all skill levels.

What you will need:

You will need an Adobe subscription that includes Adobe Portfolio in your plan. You can check this by going to account.adobe.com and in the overview tab, you can click to see what is included in your plan. Adobe Portfolio is in the list of web apps that are included.

You'll also need some low resolution images of your artwork or Sell Sheets to upload to your portfolio. If you haven't already taken my class that teaches how to create simple sell sheets for your portfolio, then I highly recommend taking that class first as this class is designed to be a follow in step from that one.

Stacy Burch

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