Final Project: Personal Portfolio
Your final project is a personal portfolio site, published live on the internet. This is not a class exercise — it is a real artifact with a real audience. The site should represent you accurately and intentionally to the people who will actually see it: potential employers, collaborators, graduate programs, clients, or peers, depending on where you are and where you are going.
There is no required page structure, no required tech stack, and no template to follow. Those decisions are yours to make, and making them well is part of the assignment.
The Core Question
Before you write a line of code or choose a platform, answer this: who is this site for, and what do you want them to do or think after visiting it?
A design student building an internship application needs a different site than a business student establishing a freelance presence, or an art student documenting a studio practice. Your major, year, and intended career path should drive every structural and content decision: what pages exist, what work you show, how you present yourself, what contact information you include.
If you are not sure who your audience is yet, that is worth figuring out before you start building. Come talk to me. This kind of strategic thinking is something people hire professionals to work through, and I am happy to help you do it well.
Choosing Your Tools
For most students I would recommend a site builder over hand-coding, not because coding is harder, but because a site you can actually update and maintain after the semester ends is more valuable than one you have to rebuild every time something changes. RWU provides access to WordPress through rwu.me, which is a reasonable starting point for many of you. Squarespace, Wix, and other platforms are equally valid depending on your needs.
That said, some of you will want to hand-code, and if you have a clear reason for it, go for it. Full control over every detail is a real advantage in the right situations. Just go in knowing it requires more ongoing maintenance.
Whatever you use, the evaluation is the same: does the site do its job for its intended audience?
What the Site Needs to Do
The brief is open by design, but the site still needs to hold up against these questions:
- Is it live at a real URL and loading correctly?
- Does it load without errors on both desktop and mobile?
- Is it clear within a few seconds what you do and who you are?
- Does the content reflect genuine thought about your audience, not placeholder logic?
- Does it meet basic accessibility expectations: semantic structure, sufficient contrast, keyboard navigability, meaningful alt text on images?
Accessibility is expected throughout. It is not a checklist item to add at the end.
Deliverable
One live site at a public URL, submitted by the deadline posted on the semester page.
The URL you submit should be stable. Do not change hosting or domain after submission.
A Note on Scope
Portfolio sites have a way of growing indefinitely. A focused, well-executed three-page site is more impressive than a sprawling eight-page site with half-finished sections. Decide on a scope you can finish well, and finish it well.