Quick note from me
You freeze when someone asks what you do. It happens because you’re trying to fit every version of yourself into one sentence, and the more you add, the less it says.
The same thing happens in your portfolio. You write “Product Designer for startups”, then immediately want to soften it back to something safe, in case you’re ruling yourself out of work you could do.
As a hiring partner I can tell you the softened version is the one I struggle to place. I’ve done architecture, graphic design, UX, content, education and hiring, so I’m not going to tell you to become one thing.
But I do want to share 5 fixes that have helped me keep getting work as a generalist, so keep reading.
Story outline
Fix 01: Let your audience see themselves in your work
Fix 02: Split your work if you target multiple audiences
Fix 03: Select and organise your projects intentionally
Fix 04: Control the story arc, both written and visual
Fix 05: Build self-clarity
Fix 01
Let your audience see themselves in your work
A list of tasks makes you sound like every other designer. Pick the audience you want to work with and say it out loud, using whichever of these actually applies to you:
Startup or agency
Industry
B2B or B2C
Problem area
Domain
And you will be able to do for them branding, web design, UX, or anything else that you want to and would fit to their needs, and they would like to pay for.
A founder reading in your portfolio “Product Designer for startups” knows this sentence is about them. You will lose some roles this way, and I won't pretend otherwise. But you were probably losing them anyway, because nobody could tell from your portfolio site how you could help them.
Fix 02
Split your work if you target multiple audiences
Sometimes cutting down to one audience would lose you real work you want to keep doing. When that happens, don’t blend it all together. Make separate micro folios instead.
A micro folio can be done in different ways:
Go with separate files if you’re sending them out yourself
Go with sections or clear tags if people are finding you on their own
The goal is to find one common pattern for each audience and communicating it directly, so they clearly see their problems solved in your work.
Examples:
You show branding, web design and UX, but you organise the work into sections or tags by client type, B2B and B2C
You’ve got a fintech project and a healthtech project. Instead of leading with the industries, you lead with what they share, consumer products
Fix 03
Select and organise projects intentionally
Don’t show every project you’ve ever made and group them randomly. This can overwhelm and confuse your audience. Choose projects on purpose, based on something your audience actually cares about:
Problem area
User group
Industry or domain
The type of work you want more of
Questions I’d use here:
Is this my best work for this category?
Would I do this project again?
Is this project quite recent?
Your best or more recent work tells people what you were good at before, and that isn’t always what you want more of. If a project is strong but you’d dread repeating it, put it in an archive and move on.
Fix 04
Control the story arc, both written and visual
If you’re a generalist, there’s so much to cover that you can’t get into detail on any of it, so you write a bit about everything and end up with something generic.
Framing is what makes a broad story readable. So the real task here is prioritising, and cutting half your stories or more.
Vary the story arc. Start from:
problem
failure
conflict
Give each case study a different thing you solved
redesign
mobile app
design system
Lead with the problems
Define 1 key problem per story
Show problems relevant for your audience
Connect problenmswith solutions
Cut the fluff (filler words, details that don’t add to the main story)
Someone hiring you isn’t buying your process. They’re buying the fact that you’ve solved their kind of problem before.
Fix 05
Build self-clarity
All 4 fixes ask you to make a decision about what you’re claiming. That’s hard if you don’t know yourself well yet. Most of us don’t, because we do a lot of different things and we never stop to reflect.
Introduce self-reflection routine to your work day:
Journaling, even badly. Writing down what you did that week and how you felt about it
Personality and strengths tests, like Gallup Test, DISC Test or free 16 Personality Test
Tracking what you enjoy. Notice which tasks you lose time in
Paying attention to how you like to work. Alone or with people, long stretches or short ones, one thing at a time or several
Working out what you care about most. Craft, autonomy, money, impact, or the people you work with
None of this gives you a direct answer on how to position yourself as a generalist, but it will help you understand your preferences and strengths, and eventually find common career patterns. And that’s the whole challenge for a generalist.
I could write a whole issue on this. If you'd like that, reply to this email and let me know.
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Keep designing ✨
Aneta
