Today: Megan Yap

Megan Yap’s portfolio feels like stepping into someone else’s world for a while.

It’s whimsical, deeply personal, playful in a way most portfolios are too afraid to be, and somehow still incredibly polished. That combination is rare. A lot of portfolios that try to stand out through personality or interaction end up feeling like collections of gimmicks. Megan’s doesn’t. Everything feels intentional, cohesive, and unusually well crafted.

More importantly, the portfolio leaves an impression that goes beyond aesthetics. You come away with a very strong sense of who Megan is as a designer and what kind of energy she would bring into a team. That’s difficult to achieve, especially at a student level.

And honestly, it’s hard to compare this portfolio to many others. It feels like its own thing.

Let’s see what it makes it so unique and good.

The Good

A wildly playful portfolio experience that completely commits to the idea

Usually, I’m very critical of portfolios that delay getting to the work.

If there’s an intro animation, a loading sequence, or some elaborate interaction before I even see the projects, I’ll usually tell people to cut it. In most cases, that advice still stands.

Megan somehow makes it work.

The portfolio opens with an introduction sequence that includes sound, motion, interaction, and atmosphere. Already, that’s a risk. There are definitely people at very traditional companies who will open this and immediately think it’s too much or too different.

But that’s also exactly why the portfolio works so well for the right audience.

One of the strongest moments is the visitor card interaction. You enter your name, leave a signature or little drawing, and become part of this shared gallery of visitors. There are ASCII animations in the background, small details everywhere, and the whole interaction feels crafted with care.

It’s playful, but more importantly, it demonstrates interaction thinking at a very high level. You instantly understand that Megan deeply cares about how experiences feel.

And the impressive part is the depth of it. Some people put less effort into their entire portfolio than she put into this single feature.

That’s also what makes this such a good example of what designers can do right now with modern coding tools and AI-assisted workflows. This is not someone relying on a website template and dropping work into it. This is someone digging into the medium itself and shaping it around their personality.

There are small moments everywhere that reinforce this feeling. The little mascot wandering around the screen. The playful about section. Tiny interactions that reward curiosity without becoming distracting.

I genuinely spent more time in this portfolio than almost any other portfolio I’ve reviewed, simply because it was fun to be there.

And that matters more than people think.

A portfolio that stays in someone’s mind has an enormous advantage. Megan’s portfolio absolutely does that.

Strong fundamentals paired with real shipped work

What makes this portfolio especially impressive is that underneath all the personality and experimentation, the fundamentals are extremely solid.

The storytelling is clear. The case studies are concise. Headings carry the narrative. Visuals are curated carefully. Motion is used well to showcase flows and interactions instead of relying on walls of static screens.

Honestly, a lot of the things I usually spend time critiquing were already handled well enough here that they almost stopped standing out individually.

And then there’s the work itself.

Megan isn’t filling the portfolio with fictional redesigns. She’s showing actual products she shipped. Side projects with real users. Internship work tied to real teams and real constraints. That changes the entire feeling of the portfolio.

The GCal Wrapped project is a great example. Over 10,000 users across 200 universities and 90 countries is not a student exercise anymore. That’s a real product finding traction.

And that’s something I wish more junior designers understood: you can build things now.

The barrier is dramatically lower than it used to be. You do not need to wait for permission, a startup, or a perfect engineering team anymore. If you have an idea and enough curiosity, you can prototype something meaningful over a weekend.

Megan’s portfolio is proof of that mindset.

What also stands out is that the projects feel thoughtful beyond functionality. These are not “I built an app” projects. They feel crafted. The interactions, presentation, and overall polish make them feel enjoyable to use.

That combination of strong fundamentals and real shipped work makes the portfolio feel unusually mature.

The Potential

The impact deserves to be much more visible

Megan’s work clearly had impact.

The projects shipped. People used them. Some of them gained impressive traction. Her internship work also appears closely tied to meaningful product outcomes and real business goals.

But strangely, the portfolio often treats those achievements very quietly.

For example, the LingoFable app currently has strong App Store ratings and clear signs that users genuinely enjoyed it. That’s something worth surfacing immediately. I would honestly consider putting that directly onto the homepage preview or visualizing it prominently inside the case study.

The same goes for the internship work.

In projects like the Splunk case study, Megan talks thoughtfully about the process, the collaboration, and the rollout, but the actual impact often remains buried or understated. There are mentions of presenting work to thousands of people, but very little emphasis on what changed in the product itself, what metrics moved, or what the outcome ultimately was.

And that’s the one major missing piece here.

Because once you combine:

• this level of creativity,

• this level of execution,

• and visible proof of impact,

you end up with a portfolio that becomes extremely difficult to ignore.

Even small things would help. Visual impact badges. Tiny metrics modules. Quick outcome summaries near the top of the case studies. Anything that immediately communicates that the work didn’t only look good, it mattered.

The evidence is already there. It just deserves a much brighter spotlight.

Some layout and typography polish would improve readability on larger screens

The second point is much smaller, but still worth mentioning because the rest of the portfolio is already operating at such a high level.

On larger displays especially, some text containers become too wide, which makes sections harder to read than they should be. Certain buttons and layout elements also stretch more than necessary across the available space.

This feels less like a design issue and more like a final polish issue. Things probably just weren’t tested extensively enough across different screen sizes.

The same applies to spacing in parts of the case studies. At times, it feels like Megan was trying very hard to keep the scroll length compact, which occasionally causes sections to sit a little too tightly together.

Giving the typography more containment and allowing sections slightly more breathing room would improve the overall reading experience quite a bit.

And to be clear: this does not meaningfully hurt the portfolio overall. By the time these issues appear, the portfolio has already made such a strong impression that they feel more like tiny imperfections on something already excellent.

But because the work is operating at such a high level, those small details become more noticeable.

The Verdict

Megan Yap’s portfolio is one of the most memorable student portfolios I’ve seen in a long time.

It takes risks most people would never take, fully commits to them, and somehow still maintains an impressive level of craft and clarity throughout. That’s incredibly difficult to pull off.

More importantly, the portfolio feels deeply personal in a way that never becomes performative. You leave with a strong sense of the designer behind the work, and that’s exactly what makes it so effective.

The fundamentals are already strong. The projects are real. The interaction design is exceptional. The creativity is everywhere.

The biggest remaining opportunity is simply making the impact more obvious and polishing a few readability details across larger layouts.

Beyond that, this already feels like the portfolio of someone who is going to leave a very distinct mark wherever they end up.

If you’d like to craft a similarly impressive portfolio Framer is likely your best choice.

Still struggling to get your portfolio off the ground?

Don’t want to spend weeks learning yet another tool? Framer is my top recommendation for building your portfolio — fast, clean, and without the usual headaches.

If you’re just starting out (or even if you’re not), I think Framer is a perfect fit. Here’s why:

• Flat learning curve: The interface feels familiar if you’ve used Figma — plus, there’s a plugin to bring your designs straight in.

• Plenty of learning support: Framer Academy is packed with free tutorials, videos, and guides to help you go from zero to published.

• A huge template library: Tons of high-quality (often free) templates in the marketplace to help you launch quickly without starting from scratch.

• Free if you are a student: Although Framer already offers a generous free plan for everyone, if you are an enrolled student you can get Framer Pro completely for free!

And that’s just scratching the surface. I wrote more about why I recommend Framer here—but honestly, the best way is to try it for yourself.

Affiliate disclaimer: I only recommend tools I personally believe in. Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase — at no extra cost to you.

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