Red flags in a web designer's portfolio
A portfolio is the one place where a designer chooses exactly what you see. That makes it useful, and it also means you need to look past the surface. These are the web designer portfolio red flags I would check before anything else.
Are these live sites or only pictures?
A screenshot can be anything: a concept, a draft the client rejected, a page that never went online. Ask for addresses and open them. A live site shows how the work behaves when real people use it, with real text and real loading. If nothing in a portfolio can be visited, ask why. Sometimes there is a fair reason. You should still hear it.
Does every project look like the same site?
Scroll through several projects quickly. If the layout is identical and only the logo and colours change, you are looking at one theme sold many times. That may be what you want, and it has its place. But it is not design made around a business, and it should not be presented as if it were.
How does the work look on a phone?
Open the live sites on your own phone, not on the large mock-up in the portfolio. Check that text is readable without zooming, that buttons are easy to press with a thumb, and that the menu opens properly. Try the Arabic version if there is one. Many of your visitors will arrive this way, so this is the view that counts.
Is the content real?
Placeholder text, stock photos used everywhere and invented company names suggest practice pieces, not delivered projects. Practice work is fine for someone starting out, as long as it is labelled. What you want to know is whether this person has taken a real business, with its awkward text lengths and imperfect photos, and still made a clean site out of it.
What exactly did the designer do?
A project can involve a brand designer, a web designer, a developer and a copywriter. Ask which part was theirs: the design, the build, or both. Ask why a page is arranged the way it is. Someone who made the decisions can explain them in a sentence. Someone who only assembled a theme will describe features instead of reasons.
Is there anything like my project?
A portfolio full of restaurant sites does not prove someone can build a store with a large catalogue, and the reverse is true as well. Look for work close to yours in kind: the same type of site, a similar market, the same language direction. If it is missing, ask how they would approach your case. The answer matters more than the gap.
How I handle it
I have delivered more than 210 projects since 2020, for clients across the Arab world, Europe and America. Ask me about anything you see in my work: what I designed, what I built and why it is arranged that way. Every project starts as a Figma design the client approves before the build, so there is a reason behind each layout. Tell me about your project and I will point you to the closest work I have.
New articles every day on our Facebook page: Learn with MK
Have a project in mind?
Tell me what you are building and I reply within 24 hours.
