How Creatives Should Present Their Workflow

🛰️ Claudia thought hybrid-working schedules would save her: Two days at home for deep work and the invisible care work, wherever she could breathe. One day on-site to be seen. Although she kept over-delivering. She was seen less and remembered less. The promotions went to people whose jokes landed in hallways, not Slack. Her work traveled by email; their faces traveled by elevator. 🌓 Here’s the trap: working from home is both blessing and curse for women. The blessing is focus and flexibility for the invisible labor we carry. The curse is that we avoid the spotlight. We’d rather deliver quietly and trust merit to carry us, and we get passed over by people who were seen. 🧠 The truth is that people remember who they see, not just what they read. Being in a few key rooms still moves careers, even if it shouldn’t. The 9–6 badge-swipe culture punishes anyone doing school pickups, elder care, or real life. So don’t swing to either extreme, always on-site or always invisible online. Design your visibility like a workflow: pick the two moments each month when decisions get made, show your face there, and cover the rest with tight written receipts and short live updates. 🔧 So, how to design this now: 1. 🎯 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝘄𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗻𝗲𝗴𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀.    Forecast week and exec reviews.    Walk three specific people who need to know your work before the meeting with a one-minute “here’s the impact, here’s the ask.”     2. 🧾 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗶𝗽𝘁𝘀 𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹.    For every major deliverable, ship a 6-sentence note: problem → action → business result → risk removed → next bet → what I need from you. CC two people not in the room. If it isn’t written and witnessed, it isn’t yours.     3. 🗓️ 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆.    Publish your office rhythm: “Tuesdays I’m in for decisions; Thursdays I’m in for cross-team syncs; other days async, 2–4pm live window.” Leaders invest in what they can reliably find.     4. 🔁 𝗥𝘂𝗻 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘅𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗽 𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗲.    Pre-brief an in-room ally with your two lines and your ask;    Post-brief them for the echoes.    Rotate proxies so you’re not indebted and return the favor when you’re on-site.     🚀 Today Uma and I are running a 90-minute working session, “𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸.” Last chance to join us live and get the exact scripts, pre-wiring moves, and the one-page receipts template: https://lnkd.in/gte3PVrM 👊 Because remote can do the work, but only designed presence gets you the credit, the mic, and the raise.

If I had to build my portfolio from scratch today, I’d do it very differently than my first one. The goal wouldn’t be “show everything I made” it would be show how I think, and why it worked. 1️⃣ I’d build it with Base44 AI-powered way to spin up a clean, responsive portfolio that doesn’t use the same template as everyone else And it gives you a structure so it forces you to think about the narrative over the layout Most designers spend 80% of their time fighting with portfolio layouts. Base44 flips that, it handles the structure so you can invest in the thinking, not the plumbing. 2️⃣ Your portfolio is not a UI slideshow It should feel like a narrative with stakes, not a project scrapbook. The structure I’d use: Problem → Why it mattered → What I did → Why it worked. When someone scrolls your case study, they should understand: The context The tension Your decision-making logic The outcome 3️⃣ “Improved the experience” is a sentence anyone can write. Show the change. Metrics I’d focus on: 7 clicks → 4 30s faster onboarding (better guidance) less drop-off on step 2 (stronger UX pattern) These numbers tell a human story, someone’s workflow got easier, faster, clearer. You didn’t just design screens, you solved a problem. 4️⃣ A case study is not a journal entry. You don’t need: 15 photos of sticky notes Every wireframe variation Step-by-step screenshots of the UI changing Instead, highlight the why moments: The decision that shifted the direction The insight that unlocked the solution The trade-off you made and why This is what interviewers will ask about. Make it clear right there in the story. 5️⃣ If your portfolio isn’t usable, it undercuts your message. I’d build it like any product: Test the navigation Pay attention to what people click Look for drop-offs Iterate in public A portfolio that proves your UX thinking is stronger than one that only shows your UI skills. Portfolios aren’t about being “visually impressive.” They’re about being strategically interesting. When someone finishes reading, they shouldn’t be thinking: “Nice UI.” They should be thinking: “I understand how they think.”

Are you showing random mockups or telling a story? When I started in UX, I used my design work as filler: ↳ Mockups at a 45 angle so hiring managers had to tilt their heads ↳ Figma screenshots no one could read ↳ Blurry images ↳ Random screens buried behind paragraphs about the double diamond No one told me this was wrong. Dribbble looked like this. Medium case studies looked like this. I thought this was just how we do portfolios. Then I got into the industry. I started presenting to stakeholders and realised: my work is the main actor. How I show my mockups shows how I think. If I want users to use the product, I should be just as mindful about every screen I show in my portfolio. That's how hiring managers actually skim portfolios. When I see a designer communicating through visuals, especially a B2B designer, it stands out. Craft designers do this naturally. But many less visual designers skip it, thinking it doesn't matter. It does. Why? ↳ Many of us learn better through visuals ↳ A screen communicates faster than a paragraph ↳ It's more explicit, easier to understand How to do it: ↳ Show a user flow for context: Where does this screen live? ↳ Zoom in on details: Why that choice? ↳ Record a walkthrough: Static screens miss transitions ↳ Craft folks: design your whole portfolio as an experience Want a real example? Check out Mobbin for real screenshots and flows from leading apps. It's a great resource for design inspiration. The way they present mockups is readable, contextual, and high-quality, covering animations, user flows, and edge cases. Check out my student Zayan Ezziani's portfolio. I love how he plays with dynamic presentation. Showing flows, close-ups, explaining decisions, even including localisation screens (UI in languages other than English). That's how you show range. These details show you care. That's what we as hiring managers notice. This is storytelling, just visual. ❤️ Follow for the next episodes 📤 Share it with your design buddy 🏷️ Save Episode 11: Portfolio Mockups 👀 Check previous episodes: links in the comments — Senior-level examples shown in this carousel come from: https://shorturl.at/3QjwR by Mobbin https://zayan.design/ by Zayan Ezziani https://lnkd.in/esc8MV3M by Xiaoyang Hu You can check one example in my Framer template: https://lnkd.in/dtiHiKpb #UXPortfolio #JuniorUXDesigner #SeniorUXDesigner

The process is often more interesting than the final product. So why do we treat documenting our work like an afterthought? If you're like me, documentation feels like a chore...the administrative task that comes after the "real" creative work is done. We'd rather be in the brainstorm, in the making, in the flow state. But here's how I reframed it: if creative work is fundamentally about process, then documenting that process should be approached as its own creative challenge. I started treating documentation as a creative side quest. Instead of quickly snapping iPhone photos or writing generic project summaries, I treated the making-of as their own mini-projects. How can I show the energy behind the work, not just the output? What story does my process tell about my approach? Or, how can this make something uniquely creative on its own? Whether it's creating a visual pitch deck that's as compelling as the film it's proposing, or shooting behind-the-scenes content that captures the energy of collaboration, these become opportunities to flex your creativity Your process is your differentiator. The way you document it should be too. How are you turning your documentation into its own creative work?

My take on the future of creative production: After working with multiple media generation companies, I've come to a clear conclusion: the future lies in integrated workflows 💫 In the world of AI-powered creative content, simply using APIs is no longer enough. To truly scale and maintain brand consistency, we need a smarter approach: an end-to-end workflow (scripting -> story boarding -> asset generation -> post production). One example is a solution like DreamBoard (note: this is not an official Google product or mine, but a great example of an innovative solution). DreamBoard demonstrates the power of a cohesive workflow by combining the capabilities of multiple Google AI products, specifically Gemini, Imagen, and Veo, to create high-quality video ads. Here's why this workflow approach is so effective: -> Scripting & Ideation with Gemini: Instead of starting with a blank page, the process begins with Gemini, a powerful large language model. It's used for brainstorming and generating detailed scene descriptions and image prompts, establishing a strong creative foundation from the get-go. -> Storyboarding & Asset Generation with Imagen: Next, Imagen takes those detailed prompts from Gemini to create compelling, high-quality images. It can generate images from scratch or edit existing ones, which is crucial for building a visual storyboard that aligns with the brand's creative direction. -> Video Generation with Veo: Finally, Veo brings the story to life. It uses the scenes and images created in the previous steps to generate full-fledged video clips. This includes features like text-to-video and image-to-video generation, which are essential for creating dynamic content. By integrating these tools into a single workflow, DreamBoard tackles the complexities of video production, from concept to final product. This structured process allows for greater creative control over each scene, ensuring that the final video is not just a collection of AI-generated assets, but a cohesive and compelling narrative. This model serves as a strong reminder for organizations to think beyond individual API calls and to build robust workflows that enable creative teams to iterate faster, maintain brand consistency, and unlock new possibilities in the age of generative AI. #AI #GenerativeAI #CreativeTech #VideoProduction #Workflow #GoogleCloud Dreamboard repo-> https://lnkd.in/g_9-9ZCb

Our GOAT of a mentee Evan McKenzie dropped his first portfolio chapter that we worked on together and this is a perfect example to talk about workflow for concept art ! A lot of people are complaining that we "don't like 3D and want only drawing for Concept Art" Nope, it's just that most people use 3D wrong, so most artists applying to the mentorship with a 3D heavy workflow get rejected. But Evan gets it right. THIS is how you make a 3D-heavy workflow viable. Evan did not kitbash crap and called it a "design". No. We did a LOT of back and forth between 2D sketches and 3D softwares to develop every asset one by one and make sure these are compelling and unique rather than another generic wooden table. Of course it takes time, but this is how you bring a TREMENDOUS amount of value to the table with every single page of your portfolio. And at the same time, when the asset is done, it requires almost no extra work to be presented as a viable concept from every possible angle. I think Evan's process is close to perfect because : - He knows how to draw extremely well - He knows 3D extremely well - And most importantly, he knows how to combine the best of both to maximize efficiency. This is what every concept artist should aim at. There are way too many cultists wanting to do everything in 2D... and they miss some tools that could save them so much time and headache. And there are so many artists who want to do everything in 3D just because they think they can skip fundamentals thanks to that... and they end up over-relying on tools, plugins and gimmicks to just do pictures, and rarely creating fresh designs. Folks, you NEED fundamentals. These are not fun or quick to learn, But these are what will set you free artistically speaking. Be more like Evan. Evan, I'm SO proud of you buddy. This chapter is complementing the portfolio you already had before the mentorship SO MUCH by bringing tons of functionality, iterations and creative work to the table. Can't wait to see the next chapter !!! Go support his work and see it in hi-res there : https://lnkd.in/d2GegcWq