To what extent can you include team work in your personal portfolio?
Back when I worked in advertising agencies as an idea maker and copywriter (creative), I cared a lot about my CV and portfolio (honestly, I wanted to include almost every project I worked on, as many things as possible).
But whenever I wanted to add something, I realised that many of those projects were team efforts and not entirely my own.
What made it even harder was that ideas are difficult to showcase in a portfolio.
Text isn’t exactly “sexy” when it comes to presentation.
From my perspective, graphic designers, animators, and video creators had a much easier time because their work was far more visual and dynamic. Because of that [and out of fairness], I never felt comfortable including their parts of the work in my own portfolio.
So now, looking back, I’m wondering:
To what extent can you include team projects in your personal portfolio?
How can you present work that may seem “less interesting” or harder to showcase?
And in 2026… does it still make sense to build a portfolio?
Replies
mailX by mailwarm
You can include team work, just be clear about what you actually did. Most projects are team efforts anyway.
I’d just keep it simple, say what the project was, what you handled, and what changed because of your work. For less visual stuff like copy, showing the thinking and results helps more than trying to make it look fancy.
And yeah, portfolios still matter, just not in a perfect way. Even a simple Notion page or doc works if it’s clear and real.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@daniel_nwankwo + I tried to incorporate one more thing: Results – but I do not know – because in creative things it very difficult to track them :D
mailX by mailwarm
imo the team-work tension kinda solves itself if u just credit what u actually owned (concept, headline, script) and skip claiming the visual stuff. anyone in the industry reads between the lines anyway
bigger shift for 2026 tho is that portfolios showing pretty work are losing to ones showing outcomes. 'this tagline ran 2 yrs and the client renewed 3x' or 'campaign drove X% lift in brand search' hits harder than any sexy deck ever could
that also fixes ur text problem bc once u frame entries as mini case studies (context > what u did > what actually happened) the copy becomes the most interesting thing on the page, not the least
so yeah portfolios still make sense, just less as art and more as receipts of value, financial or client satisfaction. everything else is kinda secondary now
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@saad_el_gueddari + this also differs (how we present things) based on the industry. So there are more aspects of that. :D
From general teamwork I separate my own tasks and what exactly I was responsible for.
What a question) Everything is important and not important at the same time. If you showed it = it existed. Didn’t show it, then explain it in words. Stayed silent everywhere = it never existed. Who knows what you did until you tell about it?
No paper - you’re a bug. Same with portfolio.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@julia_zakharova2 I like the second framing, because that's the part – to decide what is really important :D
Great question. I dealt with this exact tension in game dev before going solo.
My take: always include team projects, but be specific about your role. "I led the recall classification system" hits differently than "I worked on the app." People respect honesty about scope more than vague claims of ownership.
The "less visual" problem is real though. With Nibble, most of my best work is backend logic, data pipelines, regulatory parsing. None of it screenshots well. What's helped: show the outcome, not the artifact. A before/after, a metric like my recall insights page, hopefully soon a user story. The work doesn't have to look pretty to tell a compelling story.
As for portfolios in 2026, I think they've evolved more than disappeared. Building in public, a live product people
can try, even forum threads like this one - that's all portfolio now. It's just less curated and more real.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@maliikb It seems tho, that now portfolios are more about websits than PDFs :)
@busmark_w_nika For sure, a live product someone can try says more than any deck. Building in public is basically the self-updating portfolio :)
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@maliikb and more content to push, so it can earn visibility too :D
Had the same dilemma as a solo builder — every decision is yours, which makes it easier to own but also harder. There's no team to fill the gaps in skills you don't have.
Still, a working URL beats any PDF.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@manickavasagan yeah, PDFs are outdated, but when you have a website, it creates a better impression in overal.
When I had my short era as a graphic designer back when I was in university, I had the same struggle as well - sure, I made the design, but the full output was a mix of strategy, copy, and other roles that contributed depending on the project. I was using Behance for my portfolio, specifically because I could also add who collaborated on each project and what their contribution was.
I'd say that portfolios still matter, and showcasing teamwork projects makes total sense, as it allows you to give credit to those who helped bring the project to life 🫶
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@ruxandra_mazilu yeah, but as a graphic designer, I think that this role is one of the most crucial to give life to a specific project. Without visuals, nothing would be so appealing :D
We usually split the two things:
project: what it does, technologies used, scope;
my role: developer, architect, QA. I did this, I am proud of that. My task was to do that thing.
Yes, it make sense. When I go to new client and show him my CV, with 10+ projects with different complexity and scale, he sees a 'prove' that I know what I am doing ;)
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@stoyan_minchev Yeah, but as a developer, you probably have more to show than just an Idea maker who didn't even execute the visible part of it :D
You can include it, just be clear about your specific role. Nobody expects solo work in a lot of tech fields let alone advertising. Just describe what you actually contributed and not add fluff.
You should lead with thinking. Problem, insight, idea, result makes a better case study than any visual. And if something you wrote actually moved the needle, that number is your visual.
Yes, but the format matters less than the narrative. A clear story about how you think, on a personal site, LinkedIn, wherever, will always do more than a polished PDF.
Hope this helps you, Nika.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@raj_shekhar12 This is an interesting POV and probably useful for many out there in the creative industry. Thank you for your input! :)
For a developer it's even simpler: you can mention that you have been doing work for this or that product, but since it's closed code and NDA, there's not much you can share. From the other side, it's a bit complex, because in the ideal world every developer needs to have a Github profile with some fancy contributions to open-source or some fancy pet projects so that the potential employer could see and appreciate them