October 1, 201115 yr I am a mediocre web designer with no experience. But I want make my portfolio look very attractive. If I use professionally designed premium web template and customize a little bit and include it in my portfolio, is it a bad practice? Can employer know if I am using a template since there are millions of them available online to choose from?
October 1, 201115 yr If you're using templates then it's not your portfolio is it? It's a collection of work by other people. Not only are you conning potential customers, it!'s also illegal and unethical.. If I saw this I would report it to the template authors as not even free templates allow you to claim it's your own work. If you can't do the work yourself then don't advertise the service.
October 1, 201115 yr People looking at your portfolio want to see what you can do,and not always the finished product but a lot of the time they want to see your working process. Showing other peoples work does not show what you can do. As Mike says, don't advertise what you cannot do and if you can do it then do it!
October 1, 201115 yr On the other hand I did have a website featured in my portfolio to which I the template of the website wasn't designed by me, but in that case I wasn't advertising the the style of the website but the ability to working with a CMS frame work. Since I have made my own template because even that didn't sit too well with me.
October 1, 201115 yr Author If you're using templates then it's not your portfolio is it? It's a collection of work by other people. Not only are you conning potential customers, it!'s also illegal and unethical.. If I saw this I would report it to the template authors as not even free templates allow you to claim it's your own work. If you can't do the work yourself then don't advertise the service. No, my point is as I mentioned above that I won't be directly using the stock template as it is. I would be using template as a starting point like a framework and would be customizing it like changing text, pictures, background, color etc according to my needs using my own creativity. Here there's an article Brandon Jones who inspire to use templates in fast changing world of web: http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/general/are-stock-templates-good-or-bad-for-web-designers/ Edited October 1, 201115 yr by rahul dagli
October 1, 201115 yr On that thinking I'm going to paint my house and tell everyone I was the architect. Unless you're using a barebones template my point still stands.
October 6, 201115 yr If you were a web developer then using templates is not so bad because you're aim is to demonstrate how well the site is built and how well it functions. The design is just one part of that (Sorry if I'm stepping on your point a bit there Mike). However, if you are a web designer then it's all about the look you can make a website achieve, that's the role you perform, and using a template to carry out that role is not the way to do it. My advice would be to study many templates, analyse what makes them good in your eyes, and try to make them better. Produce as many mock ups as possible. When we look at designers we don't just look at the websites they've actually created, but the looks they can help us achieve. Mock ups are perfectly acceptable for that.
October 7, 201115 yr No. You should not be putting templates (that you didn't create) into your portfolio.
October 7, 201115 yr If the template you use comes with any kind of thought put into layout or colour you absolutely cannot use it then claim it as your own. Taking inspiration from other designers is fine, maybe you see a template with a great colour palette and want to use it. Great. Write it up yourself though. Really it should be a pride thing. There are plenty of barebones templates out there that you set you up nice to get to work. Check out HTML5Boilerplate. Edited October 7, 201115 yr by Glowbridge
October 10, 201114 yr As with all the above. You say you want to do it to impress an employer? You have to understand that if they see your work and you've used some pretty impressive templates, what happens when they pass a project onto their new, amazing and great designer (you) and you can design **** all and it looks mediocre? You'll be booted out the door. If you want to get clients then you're misrepresenting yourself as a designer. I think that can be filed under false advertisement? Passing off templates as your own is copyright infringement. Not worth it mate. Just get designing and practising instead of ripping people off
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