By Art Director John “The Wingless” Burnett. Industry leader in Game UI Education.
User Interface Game Design Course & Resource for public education.
Tags: Game Industry, Career Change, Game UI Artist
Introduction.
Dear God, If you are a Game UI Artist working on your Portfolio, stop right there.
Some of my network are as veteran as they come (shoutout to my Bungie crew) – but for the rest of you – it may have been a minute since you had to update your Portfolio.
I’ve seen / fixed / judged more junior, career-jumping and UX-adjacent Portfolios than I can count in my Game UI Design Mentorship. In fact, I consider myself an expert on Game UI Portfolios from sheer volume alone.
After half-a-decade Mentoring, I’m convinced there are 6 cardinal sins you must avoid in your Game UI Portfolio to have a fighting chance.
This is intended for Game UI UX Designers, but obviously *any* Creative Portfolio can benefit from a quick read!
Mistake #1: Colossal Case Studies.
The Studio is not looking at your UI Portfolio to hire a writer, and if they were, they’d hire the writer that knows a picture is worth 1000 words and they damn sure would hire the writer who knows brevity be-
The longer the text, the more chances the Art Director’s attention will wane and begin to hastily gloss over your words – then gloss over all of your hard work.
Make your images tell the story of your process and trim the writeup to context, challenge, and lessons.
Mistake #2: Hiding Skills and Programs.
Some roles are dependent on knowing a specific program: your Figmas, your Unreals, your QBasics – soforth and whathaveyou. Place your Tech Stack front and center, and if you have keyword-hot skills the job is asking for, make sure those are featured prominently.
Advanced Meta: If there is a UI UX vacancy, the odds that they have the expertise to identify a good UI Artist is low. So they’ll likely revert to looking for skills and programs *they think* a good UI Artist should have.
Mistake #3: Too Much Fluff in your Portfolio.
Fluff, in this case, is obvious bloat in lieu of substantive content. Examples: you have one entire screen for a handful of (small) logos. You have pages on Accessibility… ideas. You show a HUD with a few meager widgets and call it a day.
There are very specific ways to “add more water to the milk” in a Portfolio – but it’s vital to never add an abundance of bloat; Art Directors can see right through that (thinkin’ you slick for that? tsk tsk). Add modals, state changes, and call-outs instead.
Things that aren’t too much of a mistake.
Conversely, there are some things you can play fast-and-loose with on your Game UI Portfolio. Are these best practices? Absolutely not. Will they cost you a job?
…Probably not!
NO CONTACT INFORMATION
Realistically, you’ve gone through an online application, an intro interview and a second round by the time your Portfolio comes into play. They’ve BEEN having your email and phone number for some time.
Obviously, it costs you nothing to put your damn email in there. But there is one unfortunate reason why you might not want to put your phone or email up: scams.
One of the lesser reasons fake companies post jobs is collect huge amounts of resumes and sell that data off. The most salient part of that data? Free phone numbers and email to spam you to death.
NOT THAT MANY PORTFOLIO PIECES
Ideally, you should present yourself as skilled, versatile, articulate and broadly traveled in your career.
But even the most distinguished of Game UI Careers distill down to a few dozen cases, they themselves distilled to 9ish images apiece.
That means even the Big Guys have slim, svelte Portfolios that are all about substance over quantity. The stark reality is, most Art Directors have made up their mind about you by the time the light hits the back of their retina. No need to belabor your talent, simply showcase your breadth & depth… and what looks good in a grid.
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Mistake #4: The Portfolio is NOT designed for the Art Director.
These poor Art Directors have to look at a mobius strip’s worth of Portfolios, and from their perspective, each one is worse than the last. Pretend like it’s your first day on the job; make it easier for your boss to do *their* job.
Dirty Trick: pick your strongest case study and place it first in the grid – then give it a unique border. It’s very likely the Art Director will click on this (and it’s just as likely they only have one click in them!). Control the flow directly to your best work – and you’ll control their overall impression of you.
Mistake #5: Not Showing Your Process.
It takes no effort to Ai Gen a completed HUD these days (even though it sticks out like the sore thumb on Atlas himself), and even a human-designed screen doesn’t tell them much beyond “it’s better than what I can do.” You need to show Process.
Organized Market Research, Rough concepts, Wireframe development, how you zigged and zagged to get to the final deliverables. Even a final screen likely has modal changes and various small state changes – all vital to show. For Game UI, they need your ingenuity *slightly* more than they need your labor.
Mistake #6: Edginess outside of your Portfolio.
Ironically, the world outside of your Portfolio is just as important as the content inside of it. If your social media presence is… *sassy* – or you can’t stop being political on a professional platform – The Corpos are gonna find out, choom.
Scour your socials and sanitize it for visitors. I would aim for a Marvel/Disney level of brand safety: you can swear all you want, just not at anyone in particular.
More things that are probably okay…
Again, this isn’t me giving you the green-light to do these, but you don’t have to belabor these points. Making a Game UI Portfolio is grueling – so conserving your time is crucial.
NEVER HAD A GAME JOB BEFORE
I know this one is particularly scary for students and game dev hopefuls, but I bring you a Benediction!
While an Art Director will supersede you in favor of somebody more experienced (and they would be bad at their job if they didn’t), UI Artists in the Game Industry are exceedingly rare. The Unicorn’s Unicorn. They don’t just want UI Artists, they ache for them.
But if you are Junior, definitely let your Art Director know your limitations. You do not want to be presumed as a veteran UI Artist if you need guidance! Definitely look into a Mentorship so you look and sound like you know what you’re talking about!
NOT SHOWING OFF YOUR PERSONALITY
But my brand! My self-expression! I want them to see my personality! The odds are very high you’ll actually end up designing something that looks like a digital yard sale.
Your personality is poorly demonstrated in a Portfolio, anyway. The interview is the primary way a studio can assess you as a culture fit – a rather large factor for Video Game Studios (and a crucial judgment for small indies)
Having a plain white-rice looking Portfolio will never hurt you. A kaleidoscopic mind-bending digital presence is unlikely to help.
Let’s Sum Up
Kill the Wall of Text: Art Directors are not looking to hire a novelist. Long case studies get skimmed or ignored entirely. Let your images do the heavy lifting and restrict your text to three concise pillars: the context, the challenge, and the lessons learned.
Put Your Tech Stack Front and Center: Recruiters and hiring managers often lack the design eye to judge raw talent, so they rely on software checklists. Make your tools (Figma, Unreal, etc.) and industry-specific keywords impossible to miss right at the top.
Swap Cheap Bloat for Real Depth: Don’t water down your work with empty pages of placeholder logos or abstract “accessibility ideas.” If you need to expand your portfolio, showcase depth by detailing dynamic modal transitions, button states, and functional UI call-outs.
Direct the Art Director’s Single Click: ADs look at hundreds of links a day. Make their job easy by putting your absolute strongest case study first in the grid and using a visual cue—like a unique border—to bait their attention and secure that crucial first click.
Expose Your Zig-Zags (Show Your Process): Anyone can render a flashy, static HUD. Prove you aren’t just prompting an AI by documenting your market research, rough sketches, wireframes, and layout iterations. In game UI, your problem-solving is worth more than your labor.
Sanitize Your Public Socials: Your portfolio doesn’t end at your domain name. The corporate hiring pipeline will search your social media accounts. Keep your public presence clean, professional, and brand-safe—don’t let a toxic post on a professional platform torpedo a job offer.
Authority Resources & Industry Insights
To elevate your UI/UX portfolio and anchor your case studies against professional gaming and tech standards, integrate these industry-leading reference hubs:
- TheWingless.com – My alternative personal site with a treasure trove of UI Game Design Blogs.
Game UI Database – The premier repository for analyzing real-world game interface patterns, screen layouts, and component states from hundreds of shipped titles.
Figma Best Practices & UI Design Guides – Leverage official, standard-setting workflows for building clean design systems, component libraries, and interactive high-fidelity prototypes.
Epic Games Unreal Engine UI Documentation – Study official guidelines for implementing UI within Unreal Engine using UMG (Unreal Motion Graphics) to ensure your tech stack matches production realities.
Interface in Game Database – Explore a curated, searchable collection of video game HUDs, menus, and typography systems to reference for competitive market research.
