Build a portfolio by choosing the work, then writing the line under it.
A portfolio page fails when it tries to be an archive. It works when a stranger can see what you made, understand one decision, and know how to reply.
Choose an edit
Three to six pieces. If you cannot say why a piece is in the set, it is out. Developers: repositories you can explain. Designers: objects or identities with a still. Photographers: a series, not the contact sheet.
The role pages go further on each of those:developers,designers,photographers.
Put a sentence under each piece
Title, year, and what is actually true. “Brand identity for a lighting studio that still pours plaster” is a sentence. “Branding, print, digital” is a menu. On SayHi that sentence lives in a project block or a caption.
Maya Okonkwo
Weather, concrete, and the people who wait in both
Photographer working between London and Lagos. Large-format landscapes, night streets, and the in-between weather that does not make the postcard.
Selected work
Atlantic Edge
Cliffs at first light, fog still deciding whether to lift. Printed 30×40 on cotton rag. The path is real; I waited for a morning with no hikers.
Cast Concrete
A stairwell in Peckham that only works for twenty minutes a day, when the sun hits the mid-landing and the dust becomes a second architecture.
Maya’s pictures above are a fictional edit in the Portfolio template. The captions are doing part of the job. More of that reading is onphotographer portfolio examples anddeveloper portfolio examples.
Say who you are in less than a bio
Two or three lines. Where you work, what you are making now, the kind of job you want. The projects have to agree with the bio. If they do not, fix the bio.
Leave a way to reply
Email or the contact form. A portfolio that ends in social icons is a gallery with the door locked. SayHi’s form collects a name, an email, and a message. It does not take payment or book a call.
Publish one URL
The portfolio builder is the product page for this shape. The address is sayhi.page/yourname. Use it in a bio, an email signature, and the website field of any other profile. You do not need a second portfolio for each network.
Questions
How many projects should a one-page portfolio include?
Usually three to six. Enough to show range, few enough that each one has a sentence. Link out if a single project needs a long case study.
Do developers, designers, and photographers use the same structure?
The structure is the same: selected work, context, contact. The emphasis changes. Developers lead with projects and repositories. Designers lead with objects or a grid. Photographers lead with the edit and the caption.
Can a portfolio also be a link in bio?
Yes. The URL can be the one you put on a social profile. The page still has to show the work, or it is only a list of links.