#058: 5 Tips for Crafting the Perfect Portfolio with a HUG Artist Profile

April 09, 2024

Would you like to sponsor our weekly newsletter and reach 12,000+ artists and art lovers? Get in touch.

๐Ÿค— This week's edition of Creator Royalties provides you with tips to optimize your Portfolio through your very own HUG Artist Profile!

Scroll down for our usual rundown of weekly artist grants and opportunities, as well as art drops.

We are giving away free memberships to HUG! Share this with a friend using your unique referral link below to get yours today.

5 Tips for Crafting the Perfect Portfolio with a HUG Artist Profile

For creators, the portfolio is an incredibly powerful tool to showcase both your work and experience. Acting essentially as your calling card, portfolios when done well can grab the attention of prospective clients, collectors, and curators and help propel your creative career forward.

To make it easy for you to craft the perfect portfolio, HUG has redesigned our Artist Profiles so that your work can be discovered, enjoyed, and celebrated better than itโ€™s ever have before.

Here are some tips for you to optimize your portfolio on HUGโ€ฆ all for free!

#1: Use the Featured tab

The Featured tab of your HUG Artist Profile acts as your landing page, and can even be a replacement for an artist website. Use it to promote yourself, your breadth of work, or even an entire upcoming series of works!

Since the Featured tab is the first thing that will help others visualize who you are as an artist, use it as an opportunity to tell a cohesive narrative of your work.

For instance, notice how Shreya Bhan portrays a vibrant and dynamic color palette in all 4 images that she picked here.

๐Ÿ’ก HUG Tip: Your Featured tab does not have to be static. Change it often to keep your Profile fresh or to showcase your latest endeavors front and center.

#2: Organize Your Portfolio with Galleries

Galleries are not just for organizing your work. They are for telling your story and for representing both your range and point of view as an artist.

Use Galleries to group your works by anything from collection name, medium, client types, theme, blockchain - get creative and do it in a way that makes your heart sing!

For instance, Choen Lee uses one of her Galleries to house the interviews she has done in order to give viewers a sense of her media accompmlishments.

๐Ÿ’ก HUG Tip: The order of your Galleries matters! Reorder them based on what you feel is most important foe others to learn about you. Your first few Galleries should have the most relevance to your current artistic vision and objective.

#3: Show Us The Best of What You Have

Your Portfolio can house both onchain and offchain work. Feel free to import even things like sketches from your Instagram or work that has been collected as digital tokens on the blockchain from your wallet.

While your latest uploads will be added to the top of your Portfolio, you can also drag and drop each item to curate the view you would like others to have.

Need inspiration? Check out photographer Ashton Tenko and how he presents his stunning cityscapes in his Portfolio.

๐Ÿ’ก HUG Tip: Think of your HUG Profile as a visual pitch for your work. Ask friends to view your Profile with a fresh set of eyes so you can get feedback on the visual identity you are presenting, which is part of your personal brand.

#4: Keep Your Portfolio Fresh & Updated

Your Portfolio should never be static. Always remember to come back and add new work as you make it. Keeping your Profile fresh is crucial as it is a testament to your evolving skills and talents, and allows you to keep demonstrating your latest work as the forefront of your artistic practice.

The HUG Artist Profile has also been optimized for mobile, as can be seen from Colombian artist YuZapataโ€™s Portfolio.

๐Ÿ’ก HUG Tip: Need a reminder to update your HUG Profile? Try habit stacking - a productivity technique where you combine two or more habits together to make them easier to remember and implement consistently. For example, challenge yourself to make sure your HUG Profile is up to date every time you browse or apply for our open calls.

#5: Augment Your Portfolio with Conversation & Interaction with Your Followers

Aside from our updated Portfolio tool, donโ€™t forget about our existing features! You can leverage written updates (which get emailed to followers each week to cut through the noise of social media) to inform followers of what you're up to, your latest achievements, and more. This will also help your Featured tab shine bright with new content regularly.

Explore how Aestrild is using our Updates feature to get into the practice of sharing about her work consistently.

๐Ÿ’ก HUG Tip: Another thing you can do is to invite others to leave you a review on HUG. These act as testimonials for others to get a better idea of you and your work. And, trust us, reading your own reviews will always brighten your day!

Closing thoughts

Want a great excuse to start updating your Profile this week?

To celebrate #PortfolioDay, HUG is excited to announce a contest for the best HUG Portfolios to celebrate the launch of our newly designed Profiles.

$250 will be awarded to the best Portfolio in each of the following categories, alongside features on our social channels & newsletter:

Give us some feedback! What do you think about this week's issue?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Artist Grants and Opportunities

๐Ÿ“ฃ Open Calls have arrived on HUG! Visit thehug.xyz to discover your next Open Call opportunity, from grants to gallery showcases, and more.

Want to host your very own Open Call? Submit your interest here.

  • ๐Ÿ’• Art to commemorate Mental Health Awareness Month Get exhibited in Dream Hotel Los Angeles and Dream Hotel New York City by sharing your art inspired by mental health. Learn more and submit here.

  • ๐Ÿ“บ Calling AAPI artists for art on Amazon TV, Samsung TV, etc. Get your work showcased to 700,000+ monthly active users on smart TVs everywhere. Learn more and submit here.

  • ๐Ÿ“š Publish your own solo art book Work with our publishing partner Snap Collective to design and bring your work to print in an art book worthy of any coffee table and library. Learn more and submit here.

  • โ˜๏ธ Get access to Celoโ€™s $150,000 USDC Creator Fund Get awarded with a number of 1000 USDC grants from Celo, a new NFT marketplace powered by RaribleX. Learn more and submit here.

  • ๐Ÿ’ฐ HUG is offering $500 USD grants to two artists each month in exchange for artwork to raffle off to our community. Learn more and meet all our HUG Visionaries here.

This Weekโ€™s Art Drops

๐Ÿค— Have an upcoming art drop youโ€™d like to share? Or an upcoming exhibition or opportunity for your fellow artists? Make use of our Artist Updates feature on HUG, or email [email protected], so we can share it with our 12K+ readers.

Did you know that these are just 8 of hundreds of art drops on HUG? Get a full list of this weekโ€™s art drops from HUG here.