How to Create an Instructional Design Portfolio in 2026

An instructional design portfolio is a simple website that shows one to three polished projects, including one flagship project that walks through your full design process. It is the single most important asset for landing an instructional design job or freelance client, because hiring managers look at your work before they take your resume seriously.

The bar in 2026 is higher than it was a few years ago. Hiring managers scrutinize portfolios harder, a few deep projects beat a wall of shallow ones, and an AI-enabled project is the clearest differentiator for getting interviews. This guide covers all of it: real examples, the exact build process, and how to add AI work without it feeling like slop.

Instructional Design Portfolio Examples

The best instructional design portfolios share the same skeleton: a hero section that says who you are and what you do, followed immediately by a featured flagship project. The examples below show what that looks like at every career stage, from first portfolio to established freelancer.

Portfolio	Background	What to get inspired by
Devlin Peck	Freelance instructional designer turned founder	Deep write-ups that spell out exactly what you did on each project
Cath Ellis	Freelance eLearning designer	Device mockups that make projects look professional
Sabrina Gonzales	Freelance learning experience designer	An energetic vibe and AI expertise
Shekinah Terry	Teacher for 11 years, now ID II	AI learning-solution work featured on the portfolio
Davis Rideout	Teacher turned instructional designer	AI design projects that generate interviews
Maggie Teper	Career changer, first ID role	A real nonprofit client project as the centerpiece
Amanda Nguyen	Learning experience designer	Personality-forward design next to big-brand work

If you want a guided tour before we get into the specifics, I walked through more than 20 portfolios in this video:

My eLearning Portfolio

Since you're already on my website, you can start with my portfolio page.

My portfolio used to be full of eLearning projects, but as I've went deeper into software development, it highlights some of my latest projects. It covers how I am building enterprise learning software that lets learning teams build AI-powered simulations, an internal operating system for my businesses, and a private career school, Peck Academey.
For my write-ups, I've tried to balance length with depth, incorporating screenshots and numbers to keep people's attention and show off what my team and I have achieved.

Cath Ellis

I've drawn inspiration from Cath Ellis' portfolio since I broke into the field, and I suggest you do the same. It's full of work samples, mockups, and live projects laid out in a visually appealing grid.

Take note of how Cath uses mockups to show off projects on actual devices. This looks far more professional than plain screenshots, and it's not super difficult to replicate.

Sabrina Gonzales

Sabrina Gonzales is a freelance learning experience designer whose portfolio does almost everything I recommend in this article. It leads a memorable hero section, includes modern eLearning that leverages AI, and keeps the structure lean: portfolio, about, and contact. There aren't any filler sections or guesswork about where to click.

Shekinah Terry and Davis Rideout

Shekinah Terry spent 11 years teaching before landing an Instructional Designer II role at Advent Health IT. Her portfolio featured early work with AI learning solutions, and that positioned her well in a competitive market. Davis Rideout combined his teaching background with AI design work, and his portfolio started generating interviews as a result. Their stories back up the pattern I keep seeing: AI work on a portfolio gets attention.

Both are graduates of Peck Academy, my licensed career school for people transitioning into instructional design. Portfolio work has been the core of it from the start; the first program I ever ran was a portfolio bootcamp built around one goal, helping people create a strong portfolio to land better opportunities. Today an advisory committee of 10 independent industry experts reviews the curriculum, and every student builds an AI-integrated flagship project in Storyline 360. You can browse more graduate portfolios in the student showcase.

Maggie Teper

Maggie Teper landed her first instructional design role at True Group after building her portfolio around a real nonprofit client project. That one real project, plus a polished site, opened the door to designing training for major clients like McDonald's. If you're worried that concept projects alone won't be convincing, Maggie's path shows the fix: find one real problem and solve it.

Amanda Nguyen

Amanda Nguyen's site shows how much personality a portfolio can carry. High-end projects for big brands sit alongside quirky animated illustrations, and the whole thing feels unmistakably hers.

Both sites prove the same point from different directions: a portfolio should look like the person behind it, not like a template with a name swapped in.

Look Outside of L&D

You don't need to limit your inspiration to instructional design portfolios. Web designers, graphic designers, and product designers all use portfolios to land work, and their methods transfer. Search "best minimal portfolios" or "best portfolio websites" and borrow layout ideas freely. Your portfolio exists to make a hiring manager want you on their team, and that job is the same across creative fields.

How Many Projects Should Your Portfolio Include?

Include one to three deep projects: one flagship project that shows your full design process, one or two supporting projects that show range, and ideally one project for a real client. That mix consistently outperforms a large gallery of shallow samples. Hiring managers judge you by your best work, not your total output (imagine that they'll judge you based on the worst project on your portfolio, and that will show you were the quality bar is).

Here's what each project type needs to prove:

Project type	What it proves	Example artifact
Flagship project	Full command of the instructional design process	Hosted Storyline 360 scenario plus an in-depth write-up
Supporting project	Range and specific technical skills	AI-generated eLearning, animated video, needs assessment
Real-client project	You can deliver under real constraints	Debranded work project or a nonprofit project
AI project	Modern skills and judgment	Custom GPT or an AI practice simulation embedded in a course

A note on supporting projects: if animation fits your style, Vyond is worth a look. It's a pricey tool, but its asset library is so cohesive that you can build projects quickly without spending all of your time searching for (or generating) visual assets.

If you're stuck on what to build, start with this list of project ideas for your eLearning portfolio. I also cover how to choose between ideas in this video:

How Do You Build a Flagship Portfolio Project?

Start with a real performance problem, design the solution on paper, build it in Storyline 360, then document every decision you made along the way. The process below mirrors how eLearning actually gets made on the job, which is exactly what your flagship project needs to demonstrate.

1. Start with a performance problem

   Pick a problem caused by a gap in skill or knowledge, because those are the problems instructional design can solve. Draw on your own experience: maybe your teacher colleagues struggle with tense parent conversations, or professionals in your office can't use Outlook effectively. Then imagine the specific "client" who would ask you to fix it (the principal, the office manager). A concept project framed around a client and a performance problem reads completely differently than a project framed around a topic you felt like teaching.

2. Identify the right solution

   The best solution fits the audience and the problem, not your portfolio wishlist. If the audience is distributed and busy, a self-paced eLearning module makes sense; if they meet in person daily, maybe it's a workshop plus a job aid. You need to be able to justify the choice. Combining interventions, like a short scenario-based module plus a reference job aid, shows real consulting judgment. For the design thinking behind this, see my guide to designing effective eLearning.

3. Write a text-based storyboard

   Draft learning objectives, then outline, script, and storyboard the full experience with programming notes but no visuals. If you're not the subject matter expert, interview someone who is. Then get feedback from colleagues, friends, or family and apply it. This mirrors the SME review cycles you'll run on the job.

4. Mock up the visuals in Figma

   Design your title slide, a content slide, and a question slide in Figma before you touch an authoring tool. Your first design will almost never be your best design, and iterating on mockups is far faster than iterating on a built course. Get feedback on the mockups too.

5. Develop it in Storyline 360

   Build the end product in Articulate Storyline 360, matching your mockups. Storyline is still the most-used eLearning authoring tool and the baseline competency most employers screen for, which is why your flagship belongs here rather than in a simpler tool.

6. QA it and host it live

   Test every interaction as if you were a picky client, then get a second set of eyes on it. Publish the project to a live link: you can host it free on devlin.host, the project hosting built into my devlin.ai platform, or publish your Storyline project to the web.

7. Write up your process

   The write-up is almost as important as the project. Cover the problem, your role, the tools, the decisions you made, and the results. Include Figma screenshots, a few storyboard pages, and screenshots of tricky Storyline triggers. This is what convinces a hiring manager you can work in a production environment.

Should Your Portfolio Include an AI Project?

Yes. An AI-enabled project is currently the clearest differentiator on an instructional design portfolio. People still get hired without one, but AI skills on a portfolio are standing out to hiring managers and helping people get hired more easily. There are three practical routes:

1. An AI practice simulation inside a Storyline course. This is the pattern our most AI-forward students used to pave the way: a traditional Storyline 360 course with an AI-powered practice conversation embedded inside it. One project proves you can handle the standard tooling and the modern practice layer. Full disclosure: I built devlin.ai to make exactly this easier. You describe a scenario in plain English and get a working voice or text simulation that embeds in Storyline, Rise, or any LMS, with AI scoring and transcripts reporting back to the course. The Starter plan for aspiring IDs and portfolio-builders is $9/month ($6/month paid annually), so a working AI simulation is within a portfolio budget.

2. A custom GPT. This is the easiest entry point, and it has a track record. Someone in our community watched my video calling custom GPTs the best starter AI portfolio project, built one, and landed a part-time role where the whole job is AI-powered instructional design. Multiple Peck Academy students have since used custom GPTs to get hired faster. Some built them as sample project assignments during the interview process, and that project made the difference in sealing the deal.

3. A Claude Design build. Claude Design, from Anthropic, lets you generate polished interactive pieces and even full websites quickly. It's great for speed. But using it to skip Storyline 360 entirely would be a grave mistake: Storyline is still the baseline competency. The standout move is extending your baseline skills with AI, demonstrating both speed and judgment.

How Do You Get Real-World Experience for Your Portfolio?

Adapt debranded work from your current job, take a small freelance project, or solve a real problem for a nonprofit. When a hiring manager asks whether any of your portfolio work was for a real client, you want to say yes.

If you've done any instructional design work in your current role, you may be able to create a redacted variant: swap in fictional branding, imagery, and placeholder content while keeping the real interaction design and decisions intact, then describe the client generically. Check your employment agreement first.

No work to adapt? Look for a small, beginner-friendly project on a freelance marketplace, or offer a hand to a more experienced freelancer once your portfolio shows what you can do. Volunteering for a nonprofit works too, and it's a path with proof: Maggie Teper's nonprofit client project was the centerpiece that carried her into her first instructional design role.

What Should Your Portfolio Website Include?

Keep it minimal: a hero section followed immediately by your featured projects, plus a short about section and a clear way to contact you. My recommendations here have become more refined over the years, and they've converged on simplicity. Hiring managers come to see your work, so don't include extra sections for the sake of including extra sections.

A few secondary elements earn their place:

• A photo of yourself. People trust a site more when they can see the person behind it.
• Testimonials. Ask peers, previous employers, and mentors to comment on the skills you use as an instructional designer. Social proof beats self-description.
• A simple logo or consistent branding. Optional, but it makes your site memorable.

Everything else is a candidate for the cut list. If you want to see how these recommendations played out in practice, look at how my own portfolio site evolved over the years.

Which Tool Should You Use to Build Your Portfolio Website?

Any modern site builder works, but Claude Design is the winner for 2026 and beyond. Pick whatever gets you live fastest, because hiring managers judge the projects, not the platform. When I first taught portfolio building, I deliberately avoided locking people into one website builder and pointed each person to their chosen tool's own tutorials instead. That's still my advice: pick one, then go straight to its documentation.

Option	Best for	Trade-off
Site builders (Squarespace, Wix, Google Sites)	Getting live in a weekend with zero code	Template look, limited customization
Claude Design + devlin.host	Fast, custom HTML sites without hand-coding	Newer workflow, requires human review of output
Custom code	Full control plus front-end skills that pay off later	Slowest path by far

The Claude Design route deserves a note since it's new. You describe the site you want and iterate on generated HTML, then host it free on devlin.host (the Starter plan adds a custom domain). Our team has recorded two walkthroughs of this workflow: a Claude Design portfolio tutorial and a live build session replay.

Whichever tool you choose, make sure the site looks good on mobile and desktop before you share it. That's the one piece of generic web advice worth keeping.

How Do You Get Feedback on Your Portfolio?

Get real reviews before you send your portfolio to hiring managers. Feedback is the difference between a portfolio that looks finished and one that gets interviews.

After reviewing hundreds of portfolios, I can tell you the #1 mistake new instructional designers make: including all of their work instead of their best work.

One polished project is better than ten mediocre ones.Devlin Peck

The second pattern is quieter and more painful. I've seen people apply for a year straight without landing interviews because their portfolios only showed Rise or PowerPoint projects. Nobody had reviewed their portfolio and told them the work wasn't demonstrating the skills employers screen for. A single feedback conversation could have saved them months.

So get eyes on your site: peers in ID communities, mentors, former colleagues. Ask specifically what they'd cut, not just what they like. And to calibrate your own eye, watch real eLearning portfolio reviews to see what reviewers flag again and again.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a portfolio website, or can you use Google Slides or Notion?

You can share a portfolio as Google Slides, Notion, or a one-page Carrd site, and people have gotten interviews that way. A simple website still wins: it hosts clickable projects cleanly, shows presentation skills, and looks like the professional deliverables hiring managers expect. Since modern builders get you live in a weekend, the cost of doing it right is low.

Is a Rise-only portfolio enough to get hired?

It's fine to include a Rise project to show you can produce a clean eLearning asset, but a Rise-only portfolio won't land you a job as effectively as demonstrated Storyline 360 skills. Storyline remains the baseline competency most employers screen for, so make sure at least your flagship project shows it.

Have portfolio expectations changed in the last few years?

Less than people assume. When someone asked me this in 2025, my answer was that the format, design, and expectations haven't really changed in my experience; we're just doing more of what already works. The two real shifts are that AI projects now stand out and help people get hired more easily, and it's easier and faster than ever to bring a site online with Claude Design and devlin.host.

How do you show confidential work in your portfolio?

Rebuild a redacted variant: replace branding, imagery, and proprietary content with fictional stand-ins while keeping the interaction design and your decisions intact, then describe the client generically (for example, "a national healthcare company"). Check your employment agreement first, and never link original files.

Do you need a PDF version of your portfolio?

No. Hiring managers want a link they can click, and a PDF buries the interactivity that makes your work worth looking at. Put your website URL at the top of your resume and in your LinkedIn profile, and let the live projects do the talking.

Next Steps

Publish the site, put the URL at the top of your resume and in your LinkedIn profile, and iterate based on feedback. A portfolio is never finished; it gets sharper with every review and every application cycle.

Remember that the portfolio is one phase of a larger process. When we rebuilt our free instructional design roadmap in 2025, we broke the transition into four phases: finding fit, building foundational skills, building a portfolio, and landing the role. If you want the whole picture, start with the full roadmap to becoming an instructional designer. And once your portfolio starts generating interviews, prepare for what comes next with these instructional design interview questions.