Most project descriptions get written last, in a hurry, once the work has been signed off and the images chosen. That is understandable. It is also why so many portfolios read like internal notes: accurate, detailed and completely unpersuasive to anyone who was not in the room. The work may be excellent. The description is what decides whether a stranger keeps reading. What follows are the faults that come up again and again, and how to fix them without rewriting everything from scratch.
Opening with the process instead of the problem
A typical opening runs something like: We began with a four-week discovery phase, then moved through wireframes, prototyping and build. Every word of that is true, and none of it gives the reader a reason to care. It asks them to be interested in your timetable before they know what was at stake.
Try leading with the problem. Customers were abandoning the booking form at the payment step. The client needed a checkout that worked on a phone, in a hurry, on a train. Now the wireframes mean something.
A quick test: cover the first two sentences and read what is left. Can a newcomer still tell what the project was for? If not, the opening is doing the wrong job.
Name the constraint
Constraints make work legible. A three-day turnaround, one photographer, a brand palette that could not be touched, a print budget that ruled out foil. Saying so shows judgement. It is not an excuse, and readers rarely take it as one.
Writing for people who were not in the room
Three sorts of reader arrive at your portfolio. A hiring manager skimming six of them before a meeting. A potential client comparing you with two other studios. A peer who found you through a link and has ten seconds to spare. None of them knows the client's internal history, the acronyms your team used, or why phase two was delayed.
So set the scene in a line or two. Who was the work for, roughly what scale, and what was your part in it? If four people worked on the project, say which four things were yours. I art-directed the shoot and built the type system; a colleague handled motion. That single sentence answers the question a reader is already asking.
Jargon and internal shorthand
Some vocabulary sounds like precision while carrying none. The usual offenders, with plain alternatives:
- Frictionless experience — try three screens instead of seven, or whatever the actual change was.
- Bespoke solution — say what was custom and why it needed to be.
- Robust design system — a component library the team could extend without me.
- Stakeholder alignment — we agreed the scope in one workshop and did not reopen it.
- Iconic, seamless, world-class — cut, unless you can point to the thing that earned the word.
Internal names are just as bad. Project Bluebird, the Phase 2 rollout, the Tuesday review. They mean nothing outside the building. If a codename matters to the story, explain it once and then drop it.
None of this is an argument for dumbing anything down. Technical readers appreciate precision. The problem is language that imitates precision without doing the work of it.
Word counts that work against you
Descriptions fail at both extremes. Too short reads as thin: Brand refresh for a London bakery. What changed? What did you actually do? A reader cannot tell whether this was a logo and a paper bag or a full identity across twelve shops.
Too long is the more common fault. Nine hundred words about a single poster, half of it restating the brief and the other half listing deliverables, buries the two good sentences somewhere in the middle. As a rough starting point, a portfolio tile needs somewhere between sixty and one hundred and twenty words, and a full case study usually lands between five hundred and nine hundred, depending on how much there is to say. Treat those as a working range, not a rule.
The principle underneath is simpler: match the length to the complexity of the project. A small job written short reads as confidence. A small job padded out to three hundred words reads as a shortage of better work.
Cut the last sentence of each paragraph
Go through the description and try deleting the final sentence of every paragraph. Most survive. Several improve. The sentences that disappear are usually the ones restating what the previous sentence just said.
Leaving out the result
The work was well received tells a reader nothing. Neither does the project launched on time, which is a project management note rather than an outcome.
If you have figures you are allowed to share, use them: conversion, sign-ups, sales, time saved, copies printed. If you do not, describe the change in behaviour or the decision that followed. The client rolled the format out to four more regions. The campaign ran for a second year. The first print run sold out and went back to press.
Be careful not to overclaim. Attribute honestly, with the team reported or by their measure, and if the numbers are confidential, say so and describe the shape of the outcome instead. A modest, accurate result invites trust. An inflated one invites doubt, and a reader who catches you at it will read the rest of the page differently.
Calls to action that ask for nothing
Plenty of portfolios end with Get in touch in the footer of every page. Others end with nothing at all, as though the reader will work out what to do next.
A call to action should match the reader and the moment. Someone halfway through a case study is further along than someone who has just landed on the homepage.
- Match the action to the stage. A portfolio tile can invite a look at the full case study; a case study can invite a project enquiry.
- Be specific. Send me a brief and I will tell you whether I am the right fit beats Let us chat.
- Offer one route, not four. A single clear action works better than a menu of email, form, phone and three social profiles at equal weight.
- Put it where the reader finishes, not only in the footer.
A ten-minute edit pass
Before you publish, run the description through this once:
- Read the first sentence aloud. If it is about you or your process, move it down.
- Highlight every abstract noun and every adjective you cannot defend. Delete half of them.
- Check the length against the complexity of the project. Cut anything that repeats the brief.
- Find the result. If there is not one, write a single honest sentence about what changed.
- Read the call to action. Does it tell someone exactly what happens next?
None of this takes long, and none of it requires new work. The projects are already finished and photographed. All the description has to do is get out of their way.
Photo: freephotocc / Pixabay
