Today: Rishi Mudaliar

Rishi Mudaliar’s portfolio is a playful, personality-filled showcase that blends visual charm with thoughtful, grounded UX work.

Based in New York, Rishi has already gained experience at the Met Museum and through a collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation — two names that speak to both cultural sensitivity and rigor. His background shows a designer who’s as comfortable building structured digital experiences as he is expressing ideas through playful visuals and interactions. You can tell immediately that he enjoys the craft — and that he cares deeply about the presentation of his work.

The portfolio itself is a joy to explore. It’s clean and minimal at first glance, but every scroll reveals layers of character — from pixel-art accents and subtle hover interactions to carefully considered typography and color. Rishi’s tone is consistent throughout, carrying a quiet confidence that feels personal yet professional.

For early-career designers wondering how to inject personality without compromising clarity, Rishi’s portfolio is a strong example. It shows that individuality, when handled with restraint, can make your work more memorable — not less.

The Good

Personality done right

The first thing you notice about Rishi’s work is how much of him is in it — and how tastefully that’s handled. The lowercase headings, the pixel-art touches, the playful tone: they’re all unmistakably personal, yet never distracting. These aren’t gimmicks; they’re signals of authorship. They tell you that there’s a real designer behind the portfolio — someone who crafts details deliberately. Even functional elements like the resume hover animation have personality, turning something mundane into a small moment of delight. It’s a perfect example of how individuality can coexist with clarity and professionalism.

Consistent visual storytelling

Rishi’s sense of visual rhythm carries into his case studies, which are beautifully consistent without ever feeling repetitive. Each project has its own flavor — appropriate to its context — but the overarching presentation is unified through typography, spacing, and tone. What stands out most is how he uses visuals to explain thinking. In the Met case study, for example, he overlays the UI with small green dots you can hover to reveal design annotations — a clever and meaningful use of interaction that pulls you into his process. Elsewhere, transitions, mock-ups, and visual cues are used sparingly but effectively to guide attention. The result is a portfolio that feels alive, considered, and highly readable — no easy feat for a multi-project setup.

The Potential

Decluttering and hierarchy

While Rishi’s storytelling instincts are strong, his case studies would benefit from some simplification and more deliberate hierarchy. At times, the flow gets weighed down by visuals that don’t add much — spreadsheets, Figma boards, or research diagrams that can’t really be read even when zoomed in. They interrupt the pacing rather than supporting it. The goal should always be to help a reader scan the story quickly and still get the substance.

Visually, the typography sometimes competes with itself. Bold serif quotes, sans-serif subheadings, and heavy paragraph weights create friction and make sections feel denser than they are. Easing the typographic weight a little and adding white space between sections would make the stories breathe — and make Rishi’s otherwise good storytelling far easier to follow.

The second part of this is narrative structure. Headings like The Problem, The Process, or The Goal feel generic, and that genericity makes the case studies read more junior than they are. The work itself is far stronger than that. Descriptive, story-driven headings — the kind that summarize an insight or decision rather than labeling a section — would immediately lift the perceived maturity of the portfolio. With that small change, the excellent visual storytelling he already does would shine through unfiltered.

Structuring the visual-design work

Rishi also includes a visual-design project — his award-winning poster visualizing the ethical leanings of large-language models. It’s an impressive piece, beautifully executed and clearly worth showcasing. But its placement — directly after his Met case study — breaks the narrative of his portfolio slightly. You move from UX case study to pure information design, then back to UX again.

There are two easy ways to solve this. One is structural: move the visual-design work into its own section lower on the page, so the main case-study sequence stays cohesive. The other is narrative: reframe the project to emphasize its relevance to his product-design practice — for instance, by explaining how his visual-communication skills help him make complex information more digestible in interfaces. Either approach would help clarify who Rishi is at a glance, so a recruiter doesn’t misread his focus or close the tab too early.

Final thoughts

Rishi Mudaliar’s portfolio is an excellent reminder that personality and professionalism don’t have to be opposites. His work is confident, curious, and fun — but it’s also grounded in thoughtful design craft. The refinements he needs are mostly structural: a lighter touch on content, clearer hierarchy, and a slightly more deliberate framing of his visual-design projects. Everything else — the tone, the voice, the creativity — is already working beautifully. It’s a portfolio that feels human, and one that shows exactly why thoughtful individuality will always stand out.

Rishi’s portfolio wasn’t done with Framer. But it very well could have been.

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 love Rishi’s playfulness but wonder how he achieved a lot of the interactions, don’t fret. Framer has the power to do all of this in a whim.

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.

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