Hey and welcome back to a new week!

Small reminder that we are halfway through June and if you plan to participate in the Open Doors x Framer Student Challenge you still have about two weeks to submit your interaction!

In this issue:

• If You Are Doing Any Of These You Might Want To Change Course: I see a lot of time wasted with activities that seem meaningful in the job search but are a mere distraction with very little ROI.

• Kickstart Your New Portfolio With Me: I’m running another workshop on vibe coding with Lovable and this time we are going to go for my favorite subject: portfolios! As readers you get a nice discount!

• Christine’s Portfolio: Perfect proof that a simple structure works perfectly fine and can make an amazing portfolio.

Thank you for reading!

🏄‍♂️ VIBECODE YOUR NEW PORTFOLIO WITH ME IN LOVABLE

Your portfolio is one of your most important career assets, yet most designers spend weeks building one that looks like everyone else’s, wrestling with templates, second-guessing decisions, and never finishing.

​In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how to use Lovable to plan, design, and build a modern portfolio that's faster to create, genuinely personal, and high in quality. You'll work through visual direction, prompting strategy, and building real portfolio sections during the session itself.

​You'll leave with a working portfolio foundation, a reusable prompting workflow, and a prompt library to keep building confidently after the session.

Make sure to use FLORIAN25 for 25% off on the regular ticket price at checkout!

What I Would Stop Doing If I Was Job Hunting in Design Right Now 🙅‍♂️

I keep seeing the same pattern.

People are trying hard. They are updating things, tweaking things, watching advice, rewriting lines, changing tools, applying more, second-guessing everything.

And somehow nothing moves.

At that point, the problem usually is not effort.

It is direction.

So instead of another guide on what to do, I want to talk about what I would stop doing immediately if I were job hunting in design right now.

Because a lot of people are drowning in activities that feel productive while quietly keeping them in place.

I would stop applying to roles my work clearly does not support

This is still one of the biggest ones. I’ve experienced it so many times at this point.

If your portfolio says one thing and the job says another, I would stop trying to talk my way out of that mismatch.

Not because people can’t pivot. They can. Not because your work has to match every bullet point. It doesn’t. But there is a difference between a stretch and a fantasy.

If your work is mostly light consumer concepts for mobile apps and you keep applying to dense B2B SaaS roles focussed on web products, stop.

If your work is mostly graphic design and branding and you keep applying to product roles, stop.

If your work is mostly product design and you keep sending it to brand-heavy visual design roles, stop.

People do this because the market is tough and applying still feels better than admitting they do not yet have the right work.

I get it.

But if your materials are not making the fit believable, you are not playing a numbers game. You are burning time.

I would rather spend two weeks building or reframing one piece that moves me closer to the roles I want than spend those same two weeks applying into a wall.

I would stop over-optimizing for ATS

Yes, your CV should be machine-readable.

Yes, you should use normal section names.

Yes, your PDF should export properly.

Yes, some keywords matter.

Yes, you should lead with impact on your bullet points.

And then I would move on.

A lot of designers act as if the main reason they are not getting interviews is one missing keyword or some scanner score being too low.

That is not where most people are losing.

They are losing because:

• the portfolio is not strong enough

• the work is not aligned enough

• the profile / positioning is blurry

• the visual quality is not there yet

• the story across the materials does not hold together

ATS matters to the degree that you should not sabotage yourself.

That’s it.

Make the file readable. Take the obvious wins. Then stop pretending this is where the job search will be won.

I would stop rebuilding my portfolio on a new platform and pretending that counts as improvement

This one I’ve seen it so many times. And there is often so much time spent that could have gone into much more valuable things.

Someone has a weak portfolio, and instead of asking whether the work is strong enough, whether the curation is right, whether the storytelling holds up, they decide the real issue must be the tool.

So now they are rebuilding it in Framer, vibe code it from scratch or move from platform X to platform Y.

Sometimes that move is valid. If the current setup is truly blocking you, fair enough.

But most of the time, this is avoidance.

Because a mediocre portfolio rebuilt in a shinier tool is usually still a mediocre portfolio.

The tool does not create taste.

The tool does not create better project choice.

The tool does not create stronger storytelling.

You do.

So before changing platforms, I would ask:

Is this tool actually blocking me, or am I hoping the rebuild will magically upgrade the work?

Those are very different situations.

I would stop treating AI like a title instead of a workflow

A lot of companies now say they want AI-native designers. Many of them do not fully know what they mean by that. A lot of candidates respond by trying to sound AI-native instead of becoming it.

So now you get vague labels everywhere.

If I were job hunting right now, I would stop trying to sound ahead of the curve and put that energy into being visibly ahead of it.

Show what AI is doing in your workflow.

Did you build a prototype with Lovable? Good. Say that.

Did you use Claude Code or Codex to build something real? Good. Show it.

Did AI help you move faster on interactions, systems, prototypes, or outputs that clearly improved the work? Great. Put that in the project.

That says infinitely more than dressing yourself up in vague language.

And I would stop thinking I need some giant expensive course to become AI-ready. Most people need practice, not branding.

Take that “AI-native designer” out of your LinkedIn bio and post about a cool project you built with AI instead.

I would stop hiding my work until it feels perfect

This one is hard because perfectionism often disguises itself as standards.

And I’m sympathetic to standards.

But a lot of designers—and I personally struggle with this myself—are not holding work back because the standards are high. They are holding it back because they are scared it won’t land.

So they wait.

They wait until the portfolio is finished.

They wait until the side project is complete.

They wait until the interaction is polished.

They wait until the thing is “ready.”

Meanwhile, people with half the hesitation are out there posting experiments, sharing fragments, getting feedback, getting seen, and sometimes getting lucky in the process.

I am not saying become a content creator.

I mean this very literally: if you build something cool, show it. If you explore an interaction, show it. If you made a small tool, show it.

Do not make your portfolio the only place where your work exists.

That is one of the easiest ways to stay invisible.

I would stop believing the market wants broadness more than clarity

A lot of people still think they should present themselves as broadly as possible to maximize their chances.

So they become:

• product designer, brand designer, motion designer, strategist

• UX/UI designer, researcher, visual designer, developer

• or just “multidisciplinary” in the vaguest possible way

And then they wonder why nobody seems to know what to do with them.

Breadth is only an advantage when the quality holds up across that breadth.

Otherwise, it reads as uncertainty.

If I were job hunting right now, I would stop trying to look broad and start trying to look clear.

What am I strongest at?

What kind of work does that support?

What type of role becomes believable when someone looks at my work for 30 seconds?

That is the level I would optimize for.

I would stop treating the portfolio like storage

A lot of portfolios are still being treated as archives. Everything goes in. Every decent project survives. Every older version of the self gets a seat at the table.

The result is usually a mix of:

• old work

• mismatched work

• one or two stronger pieces

• and a lot of residue

That does not feel strategic. It feels unresolved.

If I were job hunting right now, I would become much harsher with what gets to stay.

Not because more work is bad, but because irrelevant work is expensive. It confuses people. It weakens the stronger pieces by sitting next to them. It makes the portfolio harder to trust.

The portfolio should not tell me everything you have ever touched.

It should tell me where you are trying to go and why I should believe you belong there.

I would stop expecting the market to be fair before I adjust to it

A lot of what is happening right now is not fair.

The portfolio bar is higher than many actual jobs require. Companies ask for things they barely understand. Job descriptions are stacked. Junior roles want too much. Hiring teams often do not know how to assess what they are asking for.

All of that is true.

And still, if I were job hunting right now, I would not spend too much time hoping the market becomes more reasonable before I respond to the version of it that exists.

You can’t change the rules of the game but you can change how you play it.

That does not mean agreeing with everything. It just means understanding where the actual pressure points are.

The market is telling you, pretty clearly, that it wants:

• stronger visual execution

• clearer positioning

• cleaner proof

• more visible initiative

• at least some AI comfort

• less ambiguity in who you are and what you can do

You can hate that.

You can also use it.

So what would I do instead?

If I strip all of this down, I think I would do four things:

• I would make my CV clean and machine-readable, then stop fiddling with it.

• I would make sure my portfolio lives on a surface I control and only shows work that supports where I want to go.

• I would use AI in ways that create visible output, not vague branding around myself.

• And I would post more of the good work, experiments, and fragments I’m already making instead of waiting until everything feels finished.

That is not a complete strategy. There are still the vague and hard-to-describe things like networking, outreach, timing, referrals, interviews, all the rest.

But if those foundations are off, the clever stuff people obsess over later does not matter much anyway.

A lot of designers are not blocked because they do not know enough.

They are blocked because they keep investing in things that feel productive while the more important work stays untouched.

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👀 Portfolio Showcase

Today: Christine Liang

Christine Liang’s portfolio has a simple structure.

A short hero. The work right underneath it. A small footer interaction at the end.

On paper, that sounds like the most basic portfolio setup possible. But that’s also why it’s worth looking at closely. Because Christine uses that structure well. She doesn’t overcomplicate the entrance. She doesn’t hide the work behind a huge intro. She gives you enough context to understand who she is, then lets the projects carry the rest.

And that context matters.

Christine positions herself as a product designer and front-end engineer, and the portfolio backs that up quickly. This isn’t just a line in the hero. It continues through the project selection, the personal project, the web development work, and even the way she brings in her previous background in electrical engineering.

That gives the portfolio a clear spine.

You understand very quickly that Christine can move from user research to production code, from product thinking to implementation, from design to engineering. That combination is valuable, and she presents it without making the portfolio feel heavy.

That’s it for this week—thanks so much for the support! ♥️

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?

I got you!

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

• Book a mentoring session with me

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

Keep kicking doors open and see you next week!
- Florian