Chapter 24: Top WordPress Themes for Graphic Designer Portfolio Sites

Graphic designers often spend so much time on their clients’ projects that they forget to update their business site. However, an excellent online presence helps grow your brand by showing people what designs you’re capable of. Top graphic designers themes should include a portfolio area to showcase the work you’ve done as well as testimonials about your excellent skills. 

How We Get to the Results

If you search for graphic designer themes on Google, you’ll get around 60 million results. Fortunately, you don’t have to look through that many options. We’ve done the work of drilling down to the ones we think will work for most graphic designers. 

When we first begin our search for themes in this series, we add a lot of keywords and elements we feel are crucial in a theme, such as responsiveness, customization and affordability. Next, we keep only the ones frequently updated so you’re less vulnerable to hacking attempts. Once we have a shorter list, we start testing out each theme for user-friendliness. 

As the list narrows, we then look at all the elements of the theme from aesthetics to features to costs. We try our best to pick themes that are inexpensive as many of our readers are startups or small businesses on a budget. 

What to Look for in Graphic Designer Themes

Around 19% of the 254,000 graphic designers in the United States work as freelancers. You want a theme that not only meets the needs of a small business but that is easy to use and stands out from your competitors. 

Start by thinking about the industries you most want to reach as a freelancer. Finding a niche can spur you to bigger success through referrals. Here are some of the things your theme should offer:

• Gallery to showcase designs you’ve created
• Mobile friendly
• Excellent aesthetics, as your site may be the first impression a lead has of your work
• Good typography
• Highly customizable

Even if you choose to use a ready-made theme rather than creating your own, you’ll want one that offers customization options to show users what you can do. Add a logo, change the background and tweak typography for a unique look. 

Our Favorite Graphic Designers Themes Options

We’ve narrowed the options to our favorite designs. You may find you prefer something a bit different. We’ve tried to vary the selections to meet varied needs. Consider these a starting point. If one of our favorites below doesn’t work for your needs, use the things to look for list to seek out your own themes. 

Advance Startup

Advance Startup offers a crisp, grid layout that offers a logo, tagline and simple navigation bar. Under the header, you’ll find a spot to add your services. Some of the best features of the free version are customization options, responsive design, custom logo upload, social links and slides. You’ll get three template pages and up to four slides. 

Upgrade to the premium version for $39 or buy a license for premium features for all their themes for $99. You’ll gain three additional template pages, unlimited slides, a contact page and the ability to enable and disable sections. You can also add images of your work to the gallery and work within a custom CSS module. 

Hamilton

Hamilton is a 100% free theme supported and maintained by the WordPress.org community. It’s the first of our minimalistic themes, which we think help designers showcase their work without distractions. 

The theme has an impressive five out of five stars but only 13 reviews, so we decided to test it out on a mock site and see how well it functioned. While the features are limited, it is an excellent graphic design theme for free. 

You can add custom background color, choose dark mode, build a resume page and even incorporate infinite scroll. The theme works with block editor Gutenberg. The uniqueness of the design comes from the images you share. 

Multipurpose Portfolio

Multipurpose Portfolio offers bolder color options and a more modern design. The free version comes with responsive design, customizable logo, social media links, four slides and three template pages. It supports most third-party plugins. 

Upgrade to a premium version for $39 and gain an unlimited number of slides, six template pages, section enabler/disabler, more font choices, gallery, mega menu and custom CSS/JS. 

Advance Portfolio

Advance Portfolio has a bright look that pulls users in and makes them want to check out your designs. The theme offers several child theme options if you want a slightly different look than the one provided with the primary files.  

The free version is responsive and offers custom logo uploads. You can also add social media links, four slides and gain three template pages. Upgrade to the professional version for $39 and gain additional templates, unlimited slides, a gallery and other features. 

Our Winner: Perfect Portfolio

Perfect Portfolio theme wins out over all the others for its minimalistic design and the fact that you can use a lot of its features without upgrading. The theme is responsive, SEO friendly and optimized for speed. Some of the customizations you can implement include: 

• Site Logo 
• Custom CSS 
• Translation Ready 
• Social Media Integration 
• Portfolio Layout

When you upgrade, you gain access to a  number of beneficial features for a growing graphic design business.

• Ability to reorder the home page sections 
• Four additional portfolio layouts 
• Unlimited color 
• 600+ Google fonts 
• Resizing fonts 
• Changing the footer copyrights 
• Sample pages for About, Service, Resume and Portfolio 
• Unlimited sidebar options 
• Additional pagination styles 
• 67 Background patterns
  

Upgrade for $59 or buy a lifetime license and support for $149. You’ll also gain priority support. 

We like how this theme highlights the designer right at the top. You can easily showcase your top skills to reach your target audience. As you scroll down, users see portfolio examples and other areas such as services you offer. The paid commercial upgrades give you a lot of flexibility in layout. 

The simplicity of the design means the focus goes to your client work. It also gives each page a unique look even if another designer uses the same theme. You can take customization a step further by using one of their child themes like sleek portfolio. 

Finding the Perfect Graphic Designers Themes for Your Needs

Finding just the right look for your graphic designers themes that matches your personality and reputation as a professional takes experimentation. Try the themes above as a good place to start and get your site up and running. You can further customize them later or seek out a new theme that better suits your style.