How I Chose the Projects for My Master's Portfolio
- Jul 21
- 3 min read
When I started building my portfolio for the University of Edinburgh, I expected the hardest part to be designing the pages.
Spoiler alert: It wasn't. The hardest part was deciding what to include.
Don't get me wrong, designing the pages wasn't easy, either. But with nearly five years of professional work to choose from, I quickly realized there wasn't going to be a checklist or a magic number that told me which projects belonged in my portfolio. Instead, I had to create a framework that helped me make those decisions intentionally.
In my latest YouTube video, I break this process into three parts: understanding the assignment, curating the story, and designing the portfolio experience.
While every application is different, this framework helped me approach what initially felt like a very open-ended design challenge.
Part 1: Understanding the Assignment
Before I started selecting projects, I spent time reading through the portfolio guidance several times. Rather than treating it like a checklist, I tried to understand what the admissions committee was really trying to evaluate.
The requirements talked about conceptual development, lateral thinking, research methods, experimentation, process, and the thinking behind the work. To me, that suggested they weren't simply looking for polished visuals... they wanted to understand how I approached design problems.
That interpretation became the lens I viewed every project through.
Part 2: Curating the Story
Once I felt like I understood the assignment, I had another challenge. How do you narrow five years of work into just a handful of projects?
The question that ultimately helped me the most wasn't, "What are my strongest projects?"
It was:
What kind of designer am I?
Once I answered that question, I started noticing themes across my work. Branding, events, UX/UI, and personal projects naturally emerged as the categories that best represented both my interests and my professional experience.
From there, I listed every project that fit those categories and began evaluating how each one contributed to the overall story I wanted my portfolio to tell. One of the biggest surprises came after I narrowed my list to around eight projects and started gathering all of the assets.
As I collected process photos, sketches, deliverables, and research, I realized that some projects weren't nearly as strong as I originally thought. A few lacked enough process documentation, others overlapped too much with stronger work, and some simply didn't add anything new to the narrative.
Being willing to change my mind ended up making the portfolio much stronger.
Part 3: Designing the Portfolio Experience
Even after I had chosen the projects, there was still another design challenge to solve.
The portfolio itself.
Because I knew it would be experienced as a PDF (I knew this because it was explicity stated on the , I wanted it to feel like a cohesive experience rather than a collection of unrelated pages. That was my first design choice.
The graphic elements intentionally flow from one page to the next, creating visual continuity throughout the document. I sampled the background color directly from my headshot to subtly tie the portfolio together, and I selected typography that felt authentic to my own personality and design style. If you want to see what my portfolio pages looked like, click here to check out my portfolio video.
Looking back, I realized the portfolio itself became another opportunity to demonstrate my design thinking.
Looking Back
One of the biggest lessons I took away from this process is that I wasn't just choosing projects, I was designing an experience. Every decision, from the projects I included to the typography and layout, was another opportunity to communicate who I am as a designer.
If you're currently building your own portfolio, I hope this encourages you to think beyond simply showcasing your work. Ask yourself what story your projects tell together, and remember that the portfolio itself is also a design project.
There's no single "formula" for building a strong portfolio because every designer is different, just like each use case of your portfolio is going to be different. And what worked for me may not be exactly what works for someone else. My hope is that sharing my process gives you a framework you can adapt to your own goals, projects, and creative voice.
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