Set 01 · Portfolio · Designer
Designer portfolio, case by case.
A gallery of finished work answers the wrong question. A client already assumes you can make something look good — what they are actually deciding is whether you can be trusted with a problem. Three complete case studies, written out slide by slide: a brand identity, a packaging range, and a rebrand that was partly rejected.
SamplesThree, complete
FormatDeck — slide by slide
ReadingFree, no signup
LengthSix slides per case
Sample OneSix slides · Small business client
The standard shape, written out in full. Every slide below is one page of the deck, with the words that go on it.
Ayesha Malik
Brand and packaging designer · Karachi
Slide 1 — CoverEight words
DAAL & CO
Brand identity for a single-dish restaurant
Ayesha Malik · 2025 · Identity, menu, signage
The client, what you made, when, and your scope. A cover slide that says only "Project One" wastes the first thing anyone sees.
Slide 2 — The problem40 words
Daal & Co sells one dish. The owners had been told this was a weakness and wanted a menu-led identity that suggested variety they did not have.
The brief I was given: "make it look like a bigger restaurant."
The brief I proposed instead: make the one dish the whole point.
This slide is the single most important one and the one most designers skip. It shows you can hear a brief and improve it, which is what a client is buying.
Slide 3 — The thinkingThree notes
Sat in the restaurant for two lunch services. Roughly seven in ten customers were regulars who ordered without looking at the menu.
The competition — four multi-dish places on the same street — all used the same photography and the same red.
Specialism was the only available difference, and it was already true.
Evidence, not adjectives. Two lunch services and a street survey is not a research department, and it is enough — it shows the decision came from somewhere.
Slide 4 — The workImages, one caption each
Wordmark — a single bowl form built into the ampersand
Menu — one page, one dish, three sizes
Signage — dish name in Urdu at 400 mm, visible from the far pavement
Packaging — kraft container, one-colour stamp, no printed sleeve
Four images maximum, each with a caption saying what decision it shows. A grid of twelve mockups says you had twelve ideas and could not choose.
Slide 5 — What happenedNumbers, if you have them
Reopened under the new identity in March 2025.
Owner-reported covers up 22% over the first four months against the same period the previous year.
Packaging cost fell roughly PKR 14 per order by removing the printed sleeve.
Signage since photographed by customers often enough that the restaurant started reposting it.
Say "owner-reported" when it is owner-reported. An honest soft number beats an unattributed hard one, and clients can tell the difference.
Slide 6 — What I would changeTwo sentences
The Urdu wordmark was drawn after the Latin one rather than alongside it, and it shows in the weight relationship. On the next bilingual identity I drew both from the start.
Optional, and it is the slide that gets remembered. A designer who can critique their own finished work is a designer who will listen during a project.
Why this one works
- It reframes the brief on slide two. The client asked to look bigger; she argued for smaller and narrower. That is the whole value proposition of hiring a designer rather than a template.
- The research is proportionate and real. Two lunch services, four competitors. Nobody expects an ethnography — they expect evidence that the decision was not arbitrary.
- Four images, four captions. Each one carries a decision. The deck is a written argument with pictures, not a gallery with headings.
- The outcome is honestly sourced. "Owner-reported" is a stronger word than it looks.
- The last slide admits something. It costs nothing and it is the most persuasive page in the deck.
Sample TwoSix slides · Constraint-led work
A case where the interesting story is the constraint. When the budget or the printing process shaped the work, that is the case study — not the final artwork.
Ayesha Malik
Brand and packaging designer · Karachi
Slide 1 — Cover
HILAL SPICES
Packaging range, 14 SKUs
Ayesha Malik · 2024 · Structure, artwork, print liaison
"14 SKUs" and "print liaison" both do work. Scale and the unglamorous parts of the job are what a commercial client scans for.
Slide 2 — The problem
Fourteen products, one press, two spot colours, and no budget for a fifth pass or a die change.
The existing range used four different structures bought at different times. Shelf presence was zero because nothing looked related to anything else.
The constraint is stated as a number, not a complaint. Two colours and one die is a genuinely hard problem and any client who has printed anything knows it.
Slide 3 — The thinking
If colour is limited to two, the system has to be carried by something else. I used position: every pack has the same black band in the same place, and the product name sits in it at the same size.
Differentiation between SKUs comes from a single illustrated spice form in the second colour, changing per product.
One die, one artwork template, fourteen drawings.
A named principle — position over colour — that a client can repeat to their own team. That repeatability is what gets you recommended internally.
Slide 4 — The work
The system — all 14 packs photographed together on shelf
The template — one pack annotated with the fixed positions
The drawings — six of the fourteen spice forms
On shelf — photographed in the actual store, not a mockup
The annotated template is the slide procurement people stop on, because it shows the work can be extended without you.
Slide 5 — What happened
Range relaunched September 2024 across 40 stores.
Print cost per unit down 18% against the previous mixed-structure range, mostly from a single die and one press setup.
Three further SKUs added by the client's in-house team in 2025 using the template, without me.
That last line looks like lost work and is the strongest sentence in the deck. It proves the system held, which is what buying design is supposed to achieve.
Slide 6 — What I would change
The black band is 4 mm too deep on the smallest pack, where it crowds the net weight. It was signed off across all sizes at once and should have been proofed per size.
Specific enough to be credible — a millimetre figure, a named cause, a process fix.
Why this one works
- The constraint is the story. Two colours, one die. Making that sound like an interesting problem rather than a limitation is the whole case study.
- It names a transferable principle. "Position over colour." A client can carry that sentence into a meeting you are not in.
- The commercial number is the one that matters. Print cost down 18% speaks to the person who signs the invoice, not the person who admires the artwork.
- It shows the client succeeding without her. Three SKUs added in-house. It reads as confidence, and it is the best possible evidence that the system was real.
Sample ThreeSix slides · Difficult project
Every portfolio should contain one of these. It is the case that separates a designer from a gallery, and almost nobody is willing to include it.
Ayesha Malik
Brand and packaging designer · Karachi
Slide 1 — Cover
MEHRAN TRADERS
Rebrand — partially adopted
Ayesha Malik · 2023 · Identity, stationery, vehicle livery
"Partially adopted" on the cover. Saying it first removes any suspicion that you are hiding it, and it makes people read the rest properly.
Slide 2 — The problem
A 40-year-old family trading business, third generation taking over, wanting to look current to newer suppliers.
Two decision makers with opposite positions: the son wanted a clean break, the father wanted the 1983 mark untouched.
I was hired by the son. That turned out to matter.
The political situation is stated plainly and without blame. Every experienced client has been inside a project like this and will recognise it immediately.
Slide 3 — The thinking
I proposed keeping the original mark and rebuilding everything around it — new typography, a restrained palette, a proper document system — so the change was in the application rather than the symbol.
A second, cleaner route was presented alongside it because the son had asked for one.
Presenting both was, in hindsight, the mistake.
The judgement is visible: she saw the right answer, presented an alternative anyway to satisfy the person who hired her, and names it as the error.
Slide 4 — The work
Adopted — stationery, invoice and delivery-note system, email signature
Adopted — vehicle livery across 11 trucks
Not adopted — the redrawn wordmark
Not adopted — the signage scheme for the head office
Labelled honestly. Showing rejected work as if it were live is the fastest way to lose credibility, and it happens constantly.
Slide 5 — What happened
The document system and livery went live in 2023 and are still in use.
The wordmark was not changed, and I now think that was correct — the mark carried forty years of recognition with suppliers and I had underweighted that.
The client returned in 2025 for the packaging work.
She agrees with the client's rejection, on evidence. That is more persuasive than any success slide, and the return engagement proves it was not a fallout.
Slide 6 — What I would change
I would not have presented two routes. Presenting an option you do not recommend invites a decision you did not want, and it split a room that was already split.
I now present one recommendation, with the alternatives shown as things I considered and rejected, and the reasons.
A changed working method, not a feeling. This is what "learned from it" is supposed to mean.
Why this one works
- It labels rejected work as rejected. The single most trust-building move available in a portfolio, and it costs nothing but nerve.
- She concedes the client was right. Forty years of supplier recognition outweighed her redraw. A designer who can say that is one you can argue with safely.
- The stakeholder politics are named without blame. Father and son, opposite positions, hired by one of them. Nobody is the villain.
- The lesson changed the process. One recommendation, alternatives shown as considered. That is a concrete change a future client benefits from.
- The client came back. One line, and it resolves the whole case.
The six-slide shape
Every case study above uses the same six slides, and the order is doing the work. A portfolio that opens with finished artwork asks the viewer to admire something. A portfolio that opens with a problem asks them to think about whether you would be useful to them, which is the question they came with.
- Cover. Client, what you made, when, your scope. Four facts.
- The problem. What they asked for, and what was actually wrong. Forty words.
- The thinking. What you found out and the principle you decided on. Evidence, not adjectives.
- The work. Three or four images, each captioned with the decision it shows.
- What happened. Numbers where you have them, honestly sourced where you do not.
- What you would change. Optional, and the most memorable page in the deck.
Three cases done this way beats twelve projects shown as images. A client will read three and skim twelve, and the three tell them something the twelve cannot.
Numbers when you have none
Most design work is never measured. The client does not track it, or the result is tangled with a hundred other changes, or the project simply shipped and nobody looked back. This stops designers writing an outcome slide at all, which is worse than writing a soft one.
The fix is to say what you actually know, and attribute it.
Weak
The rebrand was a huge success and the client was delighted with the results.
Strong
Owner-reported covers up 22% over four months against the same period last year. No other change was made in that window apart from the reopening.
And where there is genuinely no outcome data, there are still facts: what shipped, how much of it, how long it has been live, whether the client came back, whether their team extended it without you. "Still in use three years later, extended twice in-house" is an outcome.
- Ask at handover, not two years later. One line in the final email — "if any numbers come out of this I would love to know" — gets answered surprisingly often.
- Attribute soft numbers. Owner-reported, client-reported, estimated. It reads as careful, not weak.
- Never invent a percentage. One fabricated number, found out, ends the conversation.
- Cost and time count. Print cost, production time, number of rounds — these are outcomes, and commercial clients often care about them more than reach.
Building and sending it
A portfolio has to survive being emailed, opened on a phone in a meeting, and forwarded to someone who was not on the original thread.
- Send a PDF. Not a link that requires signup, not a 400 MB file, not a platform that shows ads. Under 15 MB, or most corporate mail systems bounce it.
- Three cases, not twelve. Pick the three closest to the work you want next, not the three you enjoyed most.
- Put contact details on the last slide and in the filename. ayesha-malik-portfolio-2026.pdf survives being saved to someone's desktop; portfolio-final-v3.pdf does not.
- Keep a website too, and keep them the same. The deck is for sending; the site is for being found. They should carry the same three cases.
- Name what you personally did on team projects. "Art direction and packaging artwork; brand strategy by the client's agency" costs one line and protects you completely.
On credit specifically: overstating your role in a well-known project is the most common way designers lose an offer, because the industry is small and the person who actually did it is often two desks away from the person reading your deck. Being precise about your contribution reads as senior, not modest.
And one last thing worth saying plainly. A case study of a small, unglamorous job, written properly, is worth more than a beautiful image from a famous brand you touched for a week. The writing is the portfolio. The pictures are evidence for it.
The people above are illustrative examples written for teaching purposes.
Names, employers, registration numbers and figures are invented and should not be copied
into a real application — use them as a shape to pour your own verified numbers into.