If you are a designer, wishing to attract clients, a Design Portfolio is a must for you. It helps you create new opportunities.
Be it Graphic design, Web Designing, 3D Designing, or any sort of design, your portfolio helps you communicate with new prospective customers. And when you create a fresh portfolio, that you will be sharing with the world, the most attractive, eye-catching part of that should be the Cover Page.
What is it?
A design portfolio cover page is simply the 'Front Page' of the portfolio, which will consist the glimpses of the nature of the contents inside, and it should convey the designer's idea to the customers in an appealing manner. Like these 2 here.
How to create?
Now coming to the main part.
Let me begin with the beginners. Let me say you are a student, or an entry-level designer, who does not have access to popular design tools like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Or even if you do, you do not have enough expertise to make a good cover page.
The best thing for you is to use the Oline cover page design websites. Like CANVA or FreeCoverMaker . They offer tons of ready-made, great cover page templates that you can use very conveniently. You will be able to choose several visual elements and text formats, to make a nice cover page for your portfolio. Once the design is complete, you will simply download the final version in your preferred file type.
If you know how to use the design tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, but are not so sure about your design skills.
The best places for you are the Cover Page Template providers. Like FreePik , Pinterest or Vecteezy . These sites provide numerous great templates in PSD or AI format, designed by professionals. Some templates are free to download, and some need payments. But they are worth it. Those templates are perfectly layered, that can be tweaked and customized as per your requirement, and you will be able to make a stunning cover page for your portfolio.
And finally, if you are quite confident with the design tools and your skills, here are some important Do's and Do Not's for you anyway.
The THEME is the key. Capture a prominent theme for your cover page that conveys the idea of the portfolio, and stick to that theme only. Never try to incorporate multiple themes on a single cover page.
The cover page is to compel the viewer into going through the portfolio. Never crowd it with too many details or images. A great theme, the owner's name, and a few introductory details will do best.
Your prospective clients are very busy professionals or maybe HR people. They will have very little time to look at your cover page. So try to carry a 'Personality' through the cover, that should attract them. That should make them think you and them are 'like-minded'.
The cover page MUST look like a product, a valuable piece in itself.
For Heaven's sake, make NO grammatical error or typo.
Try NOT to make it good, but tough to grasp as a whole, quickly. Like a Christopher Nolan movie. Make your portfolio cover page stunning, but simple.
I will conclude by providing you with some nice portfolio cover page designs HERE, for you to be inspired.