Portfolio School

96% of design hiring managers say the first thing they look at is the portfolio. Is yours up to scratch? Path Unbound’s Portfolio School is perfect for anyone with a background or foundational education in design. Take your skillset and create a polished, professional portfolio during our intensive portfolio course with the guidance of our acclaimed design instructors.

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Overview

We created our Portfolio School because time and again we hear design school graduates say they don’t have a portfolio of work they’re confident in. So often, traditional two or four year colleges will teach you the skills, but won’t help you distill and refine your best work into an employable portfolio—that’s where we come in.

This course is designed to help you focus on refining and elevating your work to a stand-out level. Our industry professional instructors will guide you through the most important things to consider when building your portfolio, and help you showcase the depth and breadth of your design skillset and knowledge.

What to expect in Portfolio School:

1

Build

4 Portfolio Projects​

Create and receive multiple rounds of feedback from our expert instructors on 4 new (or existing) portfolio projects.

2

Refresh

Existing Projects​

Inject new life and energy into stale projects and expand smaller projects with large cross-channel deliverables.

3

Work On

Real Client Projects​

Get paired with a company to create a new, real-world project. Prove your client-facing skills to potential employers.

4

Build A Unique

Personal Brand​

Build your unique personal brand not just for your job search but also as a foundation for your design career.

5

Build Your

Custom Website

Build your non-cookie-cutter portfolio website that will land your application in the “hell yeah” pile.

6

Cultivate

Career-Ready Skills

Learn to present your work, negotiate salary and manage clients before you even start your first design job

Student Outcomes

We’ve seen some incredible project transformations come through our portfolio school. Check out some of our favorite results!
Before After

Evleen Huang

Evleen Huang is a working designer who needed to improve her portfolio for better job opportunities. Under our guidance, she was able to uplift her portfolio to a refreshing new look that landed her a new job.

Donna Carroll

Donna Carroll is a dance instructor turned UX designer who completed a bootcamp elsewhere but dissatisfied with her portfolio. Under our guidance, she completely revamped her portfolio and changed her career outlook.

Before After
Before After

Kristina Bozhanova

Kristina Bozhanova was looking to transition out of print design for quite some time but unsure of where to start and how to structure her portfolio to land new opportunities. Under our guidance, she was able to completely transformed her portfolio to an elevated look  to better prepare for opportunities.

Carina Venet

Carina Venet is a multifaceted illustrator and designer. She was stuck in her job search and wasn’t getting callbacks until she joined Portfolio School and landed a new job after. 

Before After

Learning Paths

Portfolio Express

For students who passed our design assessment and already have at least 3-4 full-length portfolio projects but need guidance on polishing their work, personal branding and career strategies.

Week 1

1 x 60 Minutes: After student completes Intro to Portfolios, they schedule a 60 minute kick off to go through all their existing projects and create a list of refinements and evolutions they plan to do based on their instructors feedback and advice. 1x Written Feedback: Review updated design work of Project #1

Week 2

1 x 60 Minutes: • Review Project #1 in final Mock-Ups • Kick off Project #2 1 x Written Feedback: Review updated design work of Project #2

Week 3

1 x 60 Minutes: • Review Project #2 in final Mock-Ups • Kick off Project #3 1 x Written Feedback: Review updated design work of Project #3

Week 4

1 x 60 Minutes: • Review Project #3 in final Mock-Ups • Kick off Project #4: Client Project It’s ideal to have this meeting after the student has met with the client 1 x Written Feedback: Review design progress

Week 5

1 x 60 Minutes: • Review client project design progress Discuss logo approach and questions about personal branding 1 x Written Feedback: Review students’ logo process and design work

Week 6

1 x 30 Minutes: Review client project in final Mock-Ups 1 x Written Feedback: Review students’ brand guidelines

Week 7

1 x 60 Minutes: • Review students’ case study Review students’ website research and ideation 1 x Written Feedback:Review students’ sitemap and final website content

Week 8

2 x 30 Minutes: • Review website progress and provide tech help x2

Week 9

1 x Written Feedback: Review final portfolio website design 1 x 60 Minutes: Career Coaching overview, portfolio and case study presentation, questions, close out

Portfolio Kickstart

For students who passed our design assessment but don’t have any full-length portfolio projects or need to work on more projects in addition to guidance on personal branding and career strategies.

Week 1

1 x 60 Minutes: • Summarize Intro to Portfolio questions student may have Discuss students’ goals and objectives for their portfolio and decide which projects the they will complete Review Project #1 with them and explain overall process and expectations

Week 2

1 x 30 Minutes: Review Project #1 V1 1 x Written Feedback: Review Project #1 Progress

Week 3

1 x 30 Minutes: • Review Project #1 in Mock-Ups Answer Project #2 Questions 1 x Written Feedback: Review Project #2 V1

Week 4

1 x 30 Minutes: • Review Project #2 V2 1 x 30 Minutes: • Review Project #2 in Mock-Ups Answer Project #3 Questions

Week 5

1 x 30 Minutes: Review Project #3 V1 1 x Written Feedback: Review Project #3 Progress

Week 6

1 x 30 Minutes: • Review Project #3 V2 1 x 30 Minutes: • Review Project #3 in Mock-Ups Discuss working with real clients in prep of Project #4

Week 7

1 x 30 Minutes: Review project brief and help student plan and begin ideation 1 x Written Feedback: Review Client Project Progress

Week 8

1 x 30 Minutes: Review Client Project V1 before student meets with client 1 x Written Feedback: Review Client Project V2

Week 9

1 x 60 Minutes: • Review Client Project in Mock-Ups Discuss logo approach and questions about personal branding 1 x Written Feedback: Review Personal Logo and Brand Guidelines

Week 10

1 x 60 Minutes: Review both Case Studies Discuss website options, direction, next steps and answer questions

Week 11

1 x 30 minutes: Review Sitemap and Content 1 x 30 Minutes: Review Website Progress 1 x Written Feedback: Review Website Progress

Week 12

1 x 30 Minutes: Review Final Website Progress 1 x 60 Minutes: Career coaching

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Our Expert Instructors

Our team of instructors are great at what they do and teach well, too

Nina Shahriaree

UI/UX & Visual Designer

Aneri Patel

Lead visual designer

Sam Jacobs

Director of Design

Silvia Script

Senior UI/UX Design Lead

Get paired with a startup 
for a real-world project.

Get paired with a start up on a real-world project for your portfolio. We work with a diverse range of founders to ensure we pair students with a start up that aligns their goals and portfolio vision. Over the duration of four weeks you’ll design a project for your start up with the guidance of your instructor, schedule review and feedback sessions, learn to present your ideas, and hand over final deliverables to your client.

Our robust employer partnership component in Portfolio School has provided valuable connections for students new to the design industry. A growing number of students have been offered paid internships, contract, freelance, and permanent full-time positions directly from the startups they have worked with for their portfolio projects during the program.

Tuition

Are you from the U.S.?

If you are a legal resident of the United States, you can apply for a deferred payment plan with $0 down through our partner Meritize.

If you plan to use this financing option, you must apply with Meritize and receive approval first before applying for enrollment.

Are you from the UK?

Take advantage of our 12-month split payment program in partnership with Knoma just for legal U.K. residents upon approval.

If you plan to use this financing option, you must apply with Knoma and receive approval first before applying for enrollment.

Cohorts

Our courses run in cohorts four times a year and deadlines apply to all programs

Now Enrolling

Fall Cohort '23

Apply by September 10th, 2023 (regular deadline) to begin our Fall 2023 cohort. Late deadline: September 22, 2023

Winter Cohort '23

Apply by December 10th, 2023 to begin our Winter 2023 cohort.

Spring Cohort '24

Apply by March 10th, 2024 to begin our Spring 2024 cohort.

Summer Cohort '24

Apply by June 9th, 2024 to begin our Summer 2024 cohort.

FAQs

We require every student to sign an enrollment agreement which stipulates the suggested length of each course. We ask that students commit to the course period they agreed to when they enrolled. We do have flexibility that requires a separate written request from students if special circumstances arise that necessitates a course extension. We will evaluate each circumstance on a case-by-case basis. Our goal is to help students graduate as soon as possible so that they can reach their career goals in the shortest timeframe possible while remaining flexible enough to accommodate special circumstances. 

You should expect to produce a visually-polished and completely customized portfolio website with 4 portfolio projects, including 1 real client project, that have been reviewed, critiqued and iterated during your assigned coaching sessions.

 

Unlike many other programs, we emphasized on individualized coaching for portfolios. We hold students to the highest standards in terms of their work, especially the visual quality, the case study presentation and the storytelling of their personal brand.

 

Expect to have a stunning portfolio that wows anyone who comes across it, but you have to work hard under our guidance to achieve that.

We require that students either 1) already completed a design education program at another institution or by self-study, or 2) complete our School of Design certificate program first before enrolling in Portfolio School. You cannot produce the level of portfolio that we require for this program if you are starting from 0. Luckily, we have the exact design education program to help you meet the requirements of this program.

 

After a student applied to Portfolio School, we require them to complete a short design assessment to make sure they are fully-skilled in design foundation. If you did not pass the assessment, we will suggest you take our School of Design program, which is designed for students with 0 foundation or students whose design skills need improvements. 

If you already have at least 3 finished portfolio projects, we recommend the Portfolio Express track where you spend 6+ weeks learning no code website building tools, working on your personal brand, designing your portfolio website, building it yourself and receiving rigorous feedback for iterations.

 

If you already have a solid design foundation but do not yet have any portfolio projects, or if you are unhappy about your current portfolio projects and want to work on new ones, we recommend the Portfolio Kickstart track, where you have an additional 6-7 weeks to work on new projects under our guidance. You will also receive the bonus opportunity to be paired up with a startup founder for an optional month-long startup project if you choose to.

School of Design is our main design certificate program where we take students from 0 to 100 on learning how to be a great digital-first designer. We created a well-rounded curriculum that builds a solid foundation for students who do not yet have experience in design. The certificate program includes 9 courses with in-depth focus on topics that are most relevant to becoming a successful designer. We recommend students who have no design background to enroll in the full program and take all 9 courses, but if you already have some experience in design, you may choose to skip over some courses. We will help you determine your custom course package once you apply to enroll.

 

Each course in the School of Design program can be taken individually for students who would rather build their skillsets one topic at a time, but remember that you will pay more per course if you take courses individually rather than enrolling in the certificate program.

 

If you decide to enroll in our certificate program and receive a reduced workload recommendation from us, you will also receive a reduced tuition rate accordingly.

 

Portfolio School is for students who have either 1) completed School of Design or 2) completed another education program from another school or through self-study and now wish to create a uniquely outstanding portfolio to be competitive in their career search.

 

For most students who completed another program from another school, you probably feel unfulfilled or unsatisfied with the outcome of your portfolio, if you are looking at this page. If that is how you feel, then yes, you will benefit from this program. In fact, a large number of our students are in the same shoes as you! We specialize in "filling in the gaps" and helping students work on parts of their portfolio that they are not confident about.

We do not abandon our students after they graduate! We are always open to hearing your career journey after you completed the program. You can always purchase additional coaching sessions a la carte if you need more support after the program. We would also invite those students who want to share their stories with prospective students back for events, workshops and even as our podcast guests! So don't be a stranger.

To reference our complete financing and refund/dropout policies, please refer to the Tuition page for all details.

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Fall 2023 cohort is closed. Now accepting applications for Winter 2023!

Before You Go

Do you know that you can compete for a merit-based scholarship to reduce your tuition?