That time a senior designer told me to ditch my fancy mockups

I had this whole portfolio full of these super polished, flat-lay style mockups with plants and coffee cups and all that. Then a senior designer at a meetup in Austin looked at my Behance and said people hiring want to see the raw interface, not a styled photo of a laptop. I thought she was just old school and ignored her for like six months. After 30 job applications with barely a callback, I swapped everything for clean screenshots with brief annotations. Got three interviews within two weeks. Has anyone else found that stripped-down portfolios actually get more attention than the artsy stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

gonzalez.phoenix14d ago

Wait, you were doing flat-lay mockups with PLANTS and coffee cups? Like actual styled photography of your designs instead of just showing the interfaces? That's wild, man. I thought people only did that for Instagram or Dribbble just to get likes, not for actual job applications. I honestly can't believe it took you sending out 30 applications before you realized that was the problem. But hey, good on you for finally listening to that senior designer, even if it took six months of getting ghosted to make the switch. Three interviews in two weeks after changing it up just proves she was right all along. Nobody hiring wants to see a staged photo of a laptop with a succulent next to it, they want to see the actual work.

seth_nguyen14d ago

Not just in design though, right? It's the same thing everywhere. People put all this effort into making their work look flashy for social media instead of just showing what it actually does. @gonzalez.phoenix probably sees it all the time with people overloading their portfolios with staged shots instead of clean case studies. You see it with chefs posting perfect plating shots but the food itself is cold by the time the photo's done. Musicians spend more time on music videos than the actual song. Everyone wants the aesthetic without the substance, but at the end of the day, somebody hiring just needs to see if you can do the job.