Today: Michelle Irby

Michelle Irby’s portfolio is a polished and promising showcase for freelance (product) design.

A Berlin-based interaction designer, Michelle has shaped her portfolio around the realities of freelance work — and that makes it an especially useful example for anyone taking this path early in their career. Unlike portfolios aimed squarely at full-time roles, her site blends clean presentation with a clear articulation of services, pricing, and process. It’s not just a gallery of projects — it’s a sales tool.

Let’s take a closer look at what Michelle is doing well — and two areas that could make her portfolio even stronger.

The Good

A clean, modern presentation that feels professional

From the first scroll, Michelle’s site looks the part. The surface-level experience is polished: scrolling cards, smooth marquees, neat pricing tables, and well-structured typography. These patterns feel familiar in the best sense — like something you’d expect to see on a high-quality landing page.

Inside her case studies, the foundations hold up. Headings are scannable. Sections are well broken up with visuals. And many of the mock-ups feel crisp and considered. All in all, it’s a portfolio that communicates competence and craft from the outset.

Blending personal positioning with a clear freelance offering

Unlike most early-career portfolios, Michelle’s site doesn’t just show her work — it explains her services. She outlines what she offers in plain language, backed by pricing cards that set expectations and lower the barrier for potential clients.

That clarity matters in freelance. Clients often aren’t designers themselves, and Michelle’s straightforward framing helps translate her skills into business value. It’s also worth noting how she pairs this with an availability note — something she could lean into even more by specifying when she’s next open for projects (a subtle way to create urgency).

The Potential

Tighten positioning for clarity and consistency

Right now, there’s a bit of disconnect between how Michelle describes herself and what her portfolio shows. She calls herself an interaction designer, but her projects span UX research, service design, brand work, and UX/UI design. Meanwhile, her services list includes web design, which isn’t strongly represented in the portfolio itself.

That breadth isn’t a weakness — in fact, it’s an advantage in freelance. But the language needs to match. Calling herself a product designer may be clearer, with services broken down underneath. Likewise, her tagline — “solutions driven by empathy and data” — could be sharpened. Data is tangible. Empathy is harder to prove. A stronger approach might be to explicitly frame herself as a designer focused on consumer-facing experiences, which her case studies already support.

Elevate case study presentation — polish over process dumps

While the surface structure is strong, the deeper you go into Michelle’s case studies, the less polished they feel.

The project cards on the homepage aren’t visually consistent — one mock-up shows a hand-held phone, another is a clean standalone screen, and another sits on a desktop. That lack of cohesion makes the set feel less intentional.

Inside the case studies, the issue is more pronounced. Early sections start well, but then give way to oversized Figma boards, unreadable sticky-note clusters, and long unannotated screen dumps. These elements don’t tell a story — and more importantly, they don’t sell her work.

For freelance, presentation is everything. Clients aren’t judging depth of process so much as whether the end result looks good and feels usable. Instead of showing the full “noodle salad” of prototypes, Michelle would be better off recording snippets of key flows, placing them in clean mock-ups, and supporting them with a line or two of context. The work itself is solid — it just needs to be presented with the same polish as her homepage.

Final Thoughts

Michelle’s portfolio is a strong foundation for building a freelance career. It’s clear, clean, and already does something many early designers overlook: it frames design as a service offering, not just a set of projects.

The next step is consistency. By sharpening her positioning and bringing the same polish to her case study details that she’s already achieved on the surface, Michelle can turn a good freelance portfolio into a truly competitive one.

Freelance clients judge fast — often on the first impression. With a little more cohesion and emphasis on visual presentation, Michelle’s portfolio won’t just look professional. It will look irresistible.

Guess how Michelle made her portfolio? Yeah, it was done with Framer.

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.

All those nice transitions and scrolling effects that just elevate the experience in Michelle’s portfolio are very easy to achieve in Framer. It’s never been easier to deliver high quality outcomes than in 2025 with Framer.

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.

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.

How I can help YOU

Do you want your own portfolio reviewed in-depth with a 30-minute advice-packed video review? Or do you require mentoring to figure out a proper strategy for your job search?

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• Book an in-depth portfolio or resume review with me

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• Book a quick 15 min chat to ask a question and see if we vibe