The first in our fall Portfolio Showcase comes from art director, designer, and letterpress maker Alison Yard Medland. For a closer look, click on the screenshots to visit the respective area of her portfolio at alisonyard.com.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Born and raised in the small wonder state, I graduated from the University of Delaware in 2006 where I studied advertising, graphic design, and art history. After a lengthy love affair with Gilah Press + Design, a small letterpress house in Baltimore, I joined Discovery Creative as an Art Director. There I hatched 360° campaigns for Discovery Channel and Science Channel. I’ve since moved on to brighter pastures as an Art Director at Pappas Group. I currently reside in the District of Columbia with hope in my heart, a Joe Pernice novella on my nightstand, and a C&P Pilot in my basement.

How long have you had an online portfolio?
I created the first version of alisonyard.com in 2006 when I was fresh out of school and job hunting. It was absolutely atrocious, but it must have been decent enough to somehow get me a job. It’s since been re-designed (thank god).

What was your design process?
I decided to use Indexhibit because I loved what I saw on their featured participants and how many beautifully designed sites use it. I also really love how simple the content management is, especially for someone like me who’s really not all that web savvy in this day and age. I knew my site didn’t need to be anything fancy, just a simple design and simple navigation for flipping through portfolio work, so I used a pretty basic theme and (like most designers seem to be doing lately) made a few simple changes to the code to suit my needs.

Do you have any advice for other designers about creating online portfolios?
I think it’s really easy for designers to struggle with simplicity vs. branding themselves. My feeling is, if it’s a portfolio of work done for a wide range of clients, the designers “brand” should sit back and let the work come forward. If it’s meant to be less formal, a place where you show your work but also have things like your blog, tweets and miscellany, that really you just want other designers to check out and drool over, then I think there’s more room for branding yourself and having fun with it. If there’s any time when branding yourself is most important, and really you can go as far as you like with it, it’s right out of school. At that point you’re not likely to have a ton of real pieces in your portfolio that are gonna knock people’s socks off, it’s more about you, who you are, and whether or not you have a point of view. If you can really nail yourself as a brand and own it, that’s gonna be your best point of take off.