2026 Creative Director Survey
Sixteen years later, I'm wondering if the portfolio survives AI
TL;DR - I’m hosting a survey about the role of the portfolio in 2026, following a similar effort from 2010. The results of this new survey will fuel a SXSW pitch. Anyone in marketing, design and advertising can and should take it. Takes about 5 minutes; completely anonymous. Thanks in advance for your response!
How does a creative person prove what you can hire them to do?
We’ve called the current answer, the device, the means a “portfolio” – portare (to carry, from the Latin portāre) and foglio (sheet or leaf, from the Latin folium).
And I’m wondering now if the portfolio as we know it is obsolete.
This past spring I reaffirmed my advice to graduates, and any creative professional, that yes – yes, you absolutely need a portfolio. My gist then, and still, is simple: Your portfolio exists so the people who already believe in you can prove it to someone else. Over time the device itself keeps changing; but the problem – compressing a whole creative person into what a stranger can absorb – never has.
I started my own contraption with color copies affixed to cardstock, cut with an X-acto knife to fit inside a hollowed-out book. Literally, my “book,” get it? But what constraints: Access to printing, only one actual book, all those FedEx charges. Then the Internet evaporated most of those constraints; and new conditions appeared. Your Insta account could simply be your portfolio.
But now we’re living amidst AI, generative search, and new questions about what a portfolio actually means, and what role it actually serves. I recall sentiment from creative director Andy Spade when we brought him to speak at the Minneapolis AdFed in the early 90s. In short - ad portfolios failed to capture the totality of a creative person. How does a book capture their stage presence, their ability under fire, or their work habits over a stress-filled pitch weekend? Maybe a website or a social media presence addresses some of that.
When a new technology can research, discern, and potentially answer a creative hiring manager’s questions…do we still need the portfolio as we’ve come to know it?
So I’m asking the people who’d know - that’s you
16 years ago I asked people like you similar questions. Worth noting – back then, 66% crowned the ability to curate the most important skill.
What artifacts must a portfolio circa 2026 evangelize?
If you could ask one question of a candidate’s entire body of work — every project, draft, and dead end — what would you ask?
What skills define successful creative leaders in this new age?
It closes August 14.
In 2010, 72 people answered in 72 hours. I’d love for this crowd to embarrass them. I’ll publish the findings here either way, SXSW gods willing or not.
So good. The question of whether the portfolio still survives AI, sixteen years on, is exactly the one worth sitting with.