How To Create A Free Art Portfolio Using Instagram 

Earlier this week Ji Lee, a Communication Designer at Facebook, set up an Instagram account that serves as a free art portfolio. It’s pretty brilliant and with his blessing, we’ve outlined how to do the same — even if you’re a moderate Instagram user, it’s an easy, accessible, organisational hack to make your talent known.

Screenshot: Ji Lee Instagram

Step Up An Instagram Account

It’s simple! Set up an Instagram account to act as the hub for your portfolio site.

Upload An “About Me” Image

Before sharing your art, the first image on your account should act as an introduction — think of it like an “about me” page. It is, of course, optional — but every portfolio should have some personality. Lee’s (seen below) is pretty simple; it includes his photo, name and a caption that doubles as a resume.

———————————————————————— EDUCATION Parsons School of Design BFA in Communication Design, New York ———————————————————————— JOBS Facebook: 2011 – Now Google: 2008 – 2011 Droga5: 2006 – 2008 Saatchi & Saatchi: 1999 – 2003 Frankfurt Balkind: 1995 – 1999 ———————————————————————— TEACHING School of Visual Arts: 2008 – 2014 Parsons School of Design: 2001 – 2002 ———————————————————————— EXHIBITIONS • Cooper-Hewitt: Graphic Design Now • Museum of Art and Design: Otherwordly, New York • International Design Biennale: Amsterdam • The New York Times Gallery: Word Play • Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts, Germany • The Eisner, Milwaukee • Boston Society of Architects: Stereotype, Boston • Murphy & Dine Gallery: Small is Beautiful, New York • Sangsangmadang Gallery: Picnic on the City, Korea • Lisbon Design Biennale: Catalysts, Portugal • Jan van Eyck Academie: Latent State, The Netherlands • Anonymous Gallery: Joy Ride, New York • International Design Week: Icograda, Torino • Museum for Graphic Design: Dialogue, The Netherlands • UICA, Art Prize: Grand Rapids, Michigan • Raduga Mall: Play, St. Petersburg, Russia ———————————————————————— SPEAKING • 99% Conference • Creative Mornings by Swiss-Miss • MIT, Roflcon • MIT, Future of Entertainment Conference • MoMA, Public Art for Youth • The Guggenheim Museum, Thinking Like • Harvard University, Cyber Activism and Culture Jamming, Cambridge • Stanford University, Ideas for a Better Internet Summit • Columbia University, Creative Technologies Symposium, New York • Massachusetts College of Art & Design, Guest Lecturer, Boston • Seoul University, Guest Lecturer, Seoul • Hongik University, Guest Lecturer, Seoul • AIGA, Gain Conference, New York • AIGA, In-The-House III, New York • The Art Directors Club, Designism, New York • Type Director’s Club, New York • Offset, Dublin • Design Indaba, Cape Town • The World Knowledge Forum, Seoul • 3M, Inspiramov, São Paulo • Pro Arte Russia, Workshop, St. Petersburg • FILE, São Paulo • Golden Tag, Oslo • Experimenta, Amsterdam • Creative Industries Conference, Berlin • FID, Costa Rica • Scuela Politecnica, Milan • Sofia Design Week, Bulgaria • Dynamic/MTL, Montreal

A post shared by Personal Projects by Ji Lee (@jileeprojects) on Mar 5, 2018 at 4:55pm PST

Outline What You Want Featured In Your Art Portfolio

This is where the process becomes a bit more detailed. You should have a sense of what you’d like to feature in your portfolio before you begin uploading, so organise your thoughts accordingly. Do you want a section dedicated to branded projects? Editorial endeavours? Logos? Exhibits? Whatever your artistic skillset is, make sure you have an idea of what will require its own dedicated page (we’ll get to that in a minute) and what could be featured in a single Instagram post with multiple images.

. • Word as Image, 2011 • Word as Image (Animated Version for iPad), 2012 All available on Amazon. • Univers Revolved, a 3D Alphabet, 2004 • Talk Back, The Bubble Project, 2006 All available on Amazon.

A post shared by Personal Projects by Ji Lee (@jileeprojects) on Mar 5, 2018 at 5:38pm PST

Upload Images to be Featured in a Single Instagram Post (With Multiple Slides)

Let’s say you want to feature a project in your Instagram portfolio that requires no more than 10 images. You can do it in a single post! (Once you get past 10 images, you need to take the next step, which we’ve outlined below.)

Upload the project or section images (like you would in any other Instagram post with multiple photographs), making sure the first one is labelled according to how you’ve chosen to title the topic. Lee’s example, above, for “Books,” uses the caption field to describe each image individually. You could choose to do the same.

. Tap the image ???? Then click the tag ???? My 75 years old grumpy dad was getting ill and missing his three kids who lives far from him, so I decided to teach him how to use Instagram so he can draw for them everyday. What started as a family project, went viral and now he has 300k followers and a new career at 75.

A post shared by Personal Projects by Ji Lee (@jileeprojects) on Mar 5, 2018 at 11:34pm PST

Set Up Separate Instagram Accounts for Ongoing or Larger Projects

Let’s say you want to highlight your drawing talent and don’t want to limit yourself to the allotted 10 images in Instagram’s multiple photo feature — or you expect to regularly update your drawing portfolio. In that case, your best bet is to create a separate, dedicated Instagram account.

Once you’ve done that — and uploaded whatever best illustrates your talent — you’ll want to upload a few drawings to your main portfolio account, just like you have been: the first image labelled and then a few examples. Tag the first, labelled image, linking it to your dedicated drawing Instagram. Use the caption field to tell users to tap the image and click the tag for more.