Inspirational Part 2: Handcrafted Portfolios.
Posted in Inspiration
There are tons and tons of both Design Company Portfolio sites as well as those by Freelancing Designers out there. But in recent times, more and more of them have chosen to display their work only through “mold-services” as I call them, like Behance and Tumblr.
While I think they provide a great service for designers to share their work via a large platform which are user-friendly and easy to browse for people scouting around for designers to hire, I still feel that it has slowly started a decay of the creative forms of work presentation.
So I have chosen 5 design portfolio websites (3 companies & 2 freelancers) who, in my opinion, have some mind-blowing handcrafted next-level stuff going on.
2Advanced Studios
Let’s start off with the probably most mythical design studio in the history of web design. They just recently launched their new site after 5 years(!) of anticipation from geeks across the globe. They sure took their time, but man, it’s a masterpiece. I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve always despised pure Flash sites. Except for when it comes to 2A, because when they do it, they do it SO well.
Forever Heavy
Allow me to introduce to you, Nick Coates from Greensboro, North Carolina! This youngster has some serious talent. He released the first version of his portfolio last year and actually redesigned the entire thing no more than 6 months later. The end result was a fantastic custom made eyegasm, which also includes a very well written editorial like blog. Only downside is, he hasn’t been updating it since January. But there’s still plenty of inspirational material to browse through on his site.
Carsonified
There is no lack of creativity when it comes to Ryan Carson and his crew at Carsonified. Their site displays wonderful color schemes and loads of beautiful illustrative work. Mr.Carson is also the creator and founder of the famous Think Vitamin project; a great resource for designers and developers.
Cuban Council
I’ve followed their work for over 10 years. These guys have been a huge inspiration to me for a very long time. The guys at Cuban Council who brought us the legendary “Designer’s Lunchbox” aka k10k.com back in the day and they’re actually the crew behind the Facebook logo, believe it or not. This year they came out with their new site and it is nothing short of extraordinary.
Crssrd
Meet Emelie Crassard, a Graphic/Web Designer from Lyon, France. I first stumbled upon her little web-cottage quite recently and I was very impressed with her work as well as her own site. It’s in French, but the graphic content is what we’re focusing on here anyway. I bet you’ll be just as blown away as I was, when you take a journey through her world of design. Astonishing stuff.
Inspirational Part 2: Handcrafted Portfolios.
Crssrd.com is just splendid ! thanx for the list
Yes, she is truly something else.
And thank you for publishing the article!
Thanks, really nice list! Didn’t know many of them. I especially liked Forever Heavy – lovely colour scheme too.
Thanks Claire.
Yes, Nick Coates is a brilliant designer. His ideas and his palette choices are very inspiring!