The best student portfolio examples share three traits: they show process (not just polished results), they lead with the strongest work first, and they respect a hiring manager's time. Many hiring teams want to see how you think throughout a full research or build process, even if the final result is not perfect.
These 12 portfolios span UX design, engineering, journalism, marketing, earth sciences, and liberal arts—most built by students, two by early-career professionals whose Lovable-built portfolios show what's possible when you treat your site as a product. Each one earned attention from employers or recognition from university career programs. More importantly, each one gives you a specific approach worth modeling for your own field and goals.
1. Gloria Lo's Portfolio: Best for UX and Product Design
Her site at glorialo.design uses bold headlines, interactive hover effects, and a three-tiered introduction: a headline that hooks, a pitch that explains, and an About page that deepens. She also integrates video content and employer testimonials, which most student portfolios skip entirely. CareerFoundry highlights how she "has mastered the delicate art of brevity" while still conveying the most important information.
Platform: Custom personal website.
Watch out for: Testimonials are powerful, but only if they're real. If you don't have employer quotes yet, use metrics or quantifiable outcomes to demonstrate impact instead of fabricating endorsements.
2. Cameron Wolfe's Portfolio: Best for Academic Engineering Research
Cameron Wolfe demonstrates how to organize technical depth without overwhelming reviewers by separating project documentation into distinct Projects and Research categories.
His Journeys portfolio separates work into "Projects" and "Research" categories, a structure that DartWrite examples identify as particularly strong for engineering students. The guidance notes this portfolio is more focused on engineering work with detailed technical walkthroughs in each section, giving reviewers a clear path to the most relevant content.
Platform: University-hosted WordPress site through Dartmouth College's Journeys platform.
Watch out for: University-hosted sites often disappear after graduation. Plan to migrate your content to a personal domain before you lose access.
3. Caleb Ixca's Portfolio: Best for Designers Who Want Their Site to Function Like a Product
Caleb treats his portfolio as a product build, not a presentation—and it shows.
His site at calebixca.com was built entirely on Lovable and features a split-screen layout: introduction on the left, a live AI chatbot on the right trained on his case studies, career history, and methodology in his own voice. He used Agent Mode—autonomous AI development with independent codebase exploration, proactive debugging, real-time web search, and automated problem-solving—to build the underlying structure, then connected OpenAI's API through Lovable's Supabase integration to power the assistant. The result is a portfolio that answers recruiter questions without Caleb in the room. He documented the full build process in a Medium article that doubles as a case study in AI-assisted design.
Platform: Lovable (free tier available; Supabase integration required for chatbot functionality).
Watch out for: An embedded AI chatbot raises the bar on accuracy. If your assistant gives a wrong answer about your experience, it damages trust faster than a typo would. Fine-tune on your own content before making it public.
4. Arizona Ruggles' Portfolio: Best for Marketing Graduates
Arizona Ruggles' portfolio shows a clean way to present campaign work with an emphasis on outcomes.
Her portfolio uses a black-and-white palette with subtle personal touches, presenting campaign work in a results-focused format. Sky Society notes her professional presentation demonstrates effective strategies for students with limited experience.
Platform: mktgportfolio.com (hosts student marketing portfolios created through the Sky Society accelerator program).
Watch out for: Marketing portfolios need numbers. If you can't share exact client metrics, describe objectives, your process, and qualitative results so reviewers still see strategic thinking.
5. Joey D'Anna's Portfolio: Best for Mechanical Engineering and CAD Students
Joey D'Anna's CAD portfolio shows skill progression through coursework, with a final project featuring CAD models of a light-up dog leash powered by a dynamo generator. The documentation is clear, and the presentation looks professional.
Platform: Personal website.
Watch out for: Engineering portfolios need exploded views and full technical documentation, not just renders. Demonstrate you understand manufacturing context and engineering methodology, not just 3D modeling.
6. Sofie Vickers' Portfolio: Best for UX Research
Sofie shows how an unconventional academic background can become a strength when it's framed around research skill.
Her site at sofievickers.com leans into data visualizations—bar graphs, pie charts, and competitor analyses—alongside design deliverables. Springboard notes her emphasis on research expertise through quantitative data and competitor analyses demonstrates strong UX research skills that set her portfolio apart.
Platform: Webflow.
Watch out for: Webflow has a steeper learning curve than drag-and-drop builders. Budget extra setup time if you've never used it, or consider AI-powered alternatives like Lovable that give you similar design control through Visual Edits—direct UI manipulation that lets you click and modify interface elements in real-time without writing prompts.
7. Stephanie Diep's Portfolio: Best for Business Students with Diverse Marketing Experience
Stephanie shows how to present varied marketing experience without looking unfocused.
Her Canva portfolio uses clickable icons that jump to different marketing specializations: brand marketing, event marketing, SEO and copywriting, social media, and email marketing. This navigation lets hiring managers self-select the experience most relevant to their open role.
Platform: Canva (free tier available).
Watch out for: Template-based platforms can result in portfolios that look similar to classmates' work. Customize colors, typography, and structure enough to create visual distinction, particularly if you're using the same platform as peers.
8. Shannon Sartain's Portfolio: Best for Science Research and Graduate School Applications
Shannon shows how to turn academic research into a coherent career narrative.
Her Journeys portfolio organizes earth sciences projects with clear context by explaining her contribution, linking to relevant papers and presentations, and reflecting on skills developed. Per DartWrite guidance, effective science projects should contextualize the work, explain your contribution succinctly, and reflect on skills developed.
Platform: University-hosted WordPress.
Watch out for: Research portfolios should translate academic jargon effectively, since screeners may include non-specialists alongside domain experts.
9. Josie Allison's Portfolio: Best for Breaking Design Conventions with Creative Visual Storytelling
Josie proves portfolios can be memorable while still being usable and user-centered.
Her site at itsjosie.com features unconventional case study presentations with playful visual elements and full blog post format writeups. Designlab describes her work as "a breath of fresh air." In a sea of grids and sans serif, her approach stands out while remaining easy to navigate.
Platform: Custom personal website.
Watch out for: Breaking conventions works when your design skills justify it. If your visual execution falls short of the creative concept, a clean minimal layout will serve you better.
10. Moritz Oesterlau's Portfolio: Best for Showing Design Process End-to-End
Moritz makes reviewers feel like they're there for every design decision.
His site at moritzoesterlau.de walks through complete case studies—from competitor analysis through wireframing to usability testing—with enough detail that reviewers understand his thinking at each stage. CareerFoundry describes the experience as feeling like the reviewer is in the room with the designer throughout the process.
Platform: Custom personal website. Personal websites offer maximum creative control but require more technical setup. Students without coding experience can use Lovable or Wix for similar results.
Watch out for: Detailed case studies can become walls of text. Elizabeth Lin's portfolio shows how visual artifacts—Post-it notes, survey forms, prototypes—break up prose and prove your process visually. Use them at every stage.
11. Will Dzierson's Portfolio: Best for Developers and PMs Who Want to Show Technical Range
Will built a portfolio that does what most resumes only claim: it demonstrates how he thinks, in real time.
His site at dzierson.com was built on Lovable with a Supabase backend and OpenAI embeddings. Visitors get a clean project and case study layout on the front end, plus a live AI chatbot that answers questions about his work—trained exclusively on content he provided, so it stays accurate. He documented the full build in a Medium walkthrough, covering the database tables, embedding setup, and the prompt-hinting buttons he added to guide visitors who weren't sure what to ask. The back end—authentication, database, RAG pipeline—was set up entirely through Lovable's Chat Mode: an interactive collaborative interface for planning, debugging, and iterative development with multi-step reasoning capabilities.
Platform: Lovable with Supabase and OpenAI API.
Watch out for: RAG-based chatbots require clean, well-organized source content. If your project descriptions are vague, the chatbot's answers will be too. Write your case studies before you build the assistant, not after.
12. Rachel Hsu's Portfolio: Best for Writers and Liberal Arts Majors
Rachel makes it immediately clear what she does by structuring her site around a single identity: writer.
Her Journeys portfolio uses homepage framing to prioritize her writing identity, then branches into specific genres and projects. DartWrite examples highlight this as a model for how to structure a site around the identity, work, or story that's most important.
Platform: University-hosted WordPress.
Watch out for: An identity-first frame works best when you're confident in your direction. If you're exploring multiple career paths, a project-based structure gives you more flexibility.
How to Choose Which Student Portfolio Example to Follow
Match your portfolio approach to three factors: your field, your career stage, and how much you need to stand out.
Match to Your Field
If your field values visual presentation—design, marketing, architecture—model Gloria Lo's brevity, Josie Allison's creative approach, or Stephanie Diep's interactive navigation. If your field values process and methodology—engineering, research, UX—follow Moritz Oesterlau's detailed case studies, Cameron Wolfe's project-and-research structure, or Shannon Sartain's thorough research documentation. Developers and PMs who want to show technical range should study Caleb Ixca and Will Dzierson's approach: portfolios built on Lovable that function as live products, with AI assistants trained on their own work.
Match to Your Career Stage
Students early in their journey can follow Joey D'Anna's approach of demonstrating foundational CAD skills through coursework. Students closer to graduation should follow Arizona Ruggles' model of professionally presenting completed work with measurable outcomes.
Match to Your Differentiation Need
Consider what everyone else in your program is using. If your classmates all submit Squarespace or Canva portfolios, a custom-built site signals resourcefulness. Tools like Lovable let you use vibe coding to build a polished portfolio with full design control. Use Visual Edits to adjust layout and styling directly, or describe what you want in Agent Mode—autonomous AI development with independent codebase exploration, proactive debugging, real-time web search, and automated problem-solving—and let AI generate it.
No coding required, and the result looks custom-built because it is. If you do code, you can extend the generated codebase, customize components, or integrate APIs. It's real React code you own.
Across all these examples, the pattern holds: curating 3–5 strong projects matters more than using flashy platforms.
Ship Your Portfolio This Weekend
The most common portfolio mistake has nothing to do with design, platform, or content. It's never finishing.
You don't need a perfect portfolio to get interviews. You need a shipped one that makes it easy to understand what you did, how you think, and what role you want next.
Pick the example closest to your field. Choose 3–5 of your strongest projects. Build this weekend, submit next week. With degree requirements dropping across many roles and NACE's Job Outlook 2026 rating the graduate job market as "fair," showing what you can do matters more than listing what you studied.
Start from Lovable's portfolio templates and ship a portfolio that matches the patterns above, then keep iterating. Here are three concrete builds that map directly to the examples in this list:
- A UX case-study portfolio with a homepage grid, one-scroll summaries, and "process" sections that include research artifacts—modeled after Gloria Lo and Moritz Oesterlau.
- A research-and-projects portfolio with separate navigation for papers, lab work, and engineering builds, plus downloadable PDFs and citations—modeled after Cameron Wolfe and Shannon Sartain.
- A product-style portfolio with a live AI chatbot trained on your case studies, built on Lovable with Supabase and OpenAI—modeled after Caleb Ixca and Will Dzierson.
Traditional custom dev work can cost $2,000 and take weeks. Templates are faster, but they often look identical to classmates' sites and make it hard to present work the way your field expects. Build your portfolio with Lovable to ship something custom this weekend—then refine the layout with Visual Edits or extend the codebase if you want to go deeper.
