When designers talk about finding work, the conversation often comes down to two things.
There's the pitch. A proposal built around a specific opportunity.
And there's the portfolio. A body of work that grows over months and years.
Though they often seem like separate conversations, I don't think they are. One helps you pursue a specific opportunity, while the other quietly shapes the opportunities that come your way. They aren't competing approaches. One is a single pitch you make once. The other is a pitch that never really stops.
A pitch has a date on the calendar. A countdown.
It begins when an opportunity already exists. There's a brief to understand, a problem to solve, and a limited amount of time to communicate why you're the right fit.
A portfolio works on a completely different timeline.
There's no single moment of judgment. Someone opens it at 11 PM on a Tuesday, scrolls for ninety seconds, and either reaches out or closes the tab. You're rarely there to explain yourself. There's no debate, no back-and-forth, just the work, standing alone.
Over time, that body of work begins to communicate something much larger than individual projects. It reveals what you're interested in, what you're consistently exploring, and the kind of work you'd like to keep doing.
That difference in timeline creates a different kind of pressure, too. A pitch asks you to convince someone quickly, with a deadline doing some of the work for you. A portfolio asks for something quieter and harder to sustain: discipline, applied consistently, with no one watching and no deadline forcing your hand.
A pitch asks: Can this idea win the room today?
A portfolio asks: Can this version of my work create opportunities when I'm not even in the room?
One of the biggest advantages of a portfolio is that not everything in it has to begin with a client brief.
I've come to realise that personal work serves different purposes.
Sometimes it comes from curiosity. Sometimes it's simply an excuse to experiment, learn a new technique, express an idea, or make something because it's fun. Those projects keep creativity alive and often lead us somewhere unexpected.
Other times, it's more intentional.
It comes from wanting to explore a subject, industry, or style of work we'd genuinely like to do more of. I don't think that makes the work any less personal. If anything, it becomes a way of showing the direction we'd like our practice to head in.
I've experienced this myself. A self-initiated design series exploring wildlife and conservation eventually led to collaborations in the same space. The project wasn't created for a client or attached to a proposal. It began because I genuinely enjoyed the subject and wanted to create more work around it. That work ended up showing my interests long before any opportunity appeared.
Another self-initiated illustration, created simply to explore a different visual style, unexpectedly led to a children's book project, something well outside what I'd call my expertise. It showed the client I could think outside my usual style, and that was enough to earn their trust. It reminded me that personal work can reveal possibilities we weren't intentionally pursuing.
I don't think any one approach is more valuable than the others. Curiosity helps us grow creatively. Intentional exploration helps us grow professionally. And sometimes, simply taking a chance on a style or idea outside our comfort zone shows a range we didn't know we had.
Together, they shape a portfolio that's richer than client work alone.
None of this makes a pitch any less important.
Sometimes a pitch isn't just about winning the next project. It can be a deliberate way of reaching out to a client or organisation whose work truly speaks to you. The right collaboration can introduce you to a new industry, build lasting relationships, and add meaningful work to your portfolio.
A similar thing happened with one of my long-term clients. A technical illustration and design project first came my way because of my portfolio. The client had already seen enough to know the kind of work I was capable of. But the project itself still needed a pitch. They needed to know I could understand the technical details specific to their product and translate them visually, something the portfolio alone couldn't prove. The portfolio got me into the room. The pitch strengthened that trust, and the project grew into a working relationship that has continued for years.
That's why I don't see the portfolio and the pitch as competing with each other. The portfolio starts the conversation, while the pitch builds on the trust that's already been established.
Maybe that's why the portfolio has started to feel less like an alternative to the pitch, and more like its foundation.
It's where we experiment without expectations, follow our curiosity, and deliberately create the kind of work we'd like to be trusted with. Over time, those choices become more than a record of what we've done. They become a reflection of where we're heading.
Pitches still matter, especially when there's a specific opportunity worth pursuing. But they happen at particular moments.
A portfolio keeps working long after the presentation ends. In a way, it functions like a pitch that never really stops, one that's always open, always being reviewed, long before you're ever in the room to make your case.
Looking back, I realise I no longer think of my portfolio as an archive of finished projects. I think of it as an ongoing conversation about the direction I want to keep growing in.