A portfolio as a departures board
Why I built my 2026 site like an airport flight indicator — and what it taught me about how portfolios should signal availability.
Most portfolios show projects as a grid. Mine shows them as a departures board — BOARDING, DEPLOYED, IN-FLIGHT. The metaphor isn’t novelty for novelty’s sake. A portfolio’s job is to communicate three things at once: what I’ve shipped, what I’m doing now, and what I’m available for. A grid covers the first. A board covers all three.
The problem with the grid
Card grids force every project into the same visual weight. The site I built three years ago doesn’t look meaningfully different from the project I shipped last month. To a hiring manager that’s noise — they’re trying to figure out what is this person doing right now, and a grid says here are some things they did, in no particular order.
A good portfolio answers the now question on first scroll.
Why the board metaphor works
A flight board has a fixed grammar:
- DESTINATION — the project name
- STATUS — boarding (live), deployed (shipped), in-flight (active engagement)
- GATE / DISCIPLINE — what kind of work it is
- TIME — when it happened or when it leaves
That grammar is also the grammar of how a hiring manager evaluates a portfolio. The format doesn’t add cognitive load — it removes it.
The “BOARDING” row is the trick. It signals availability without a cheesy “available for hire” banner. One row sits at the top, blinks gently, and points to /contact. Everything else points to past work. The hierarchy reads instantly.
What I’d do differently
If I rebuild this in a year, I’d:
- Make the board re-flap on scroll-into-view, not just once on load
- Cut the discipline column on mobile entirely (already does, but I’d promote a discipline tag inline with the destination)
- Add a “next departure” countdown to a real calendar event, not a static “Q3 2026” string
The point isn’t the metaphor — it’s the question the metaphor answers. What’s leaving the gate next? Every portfolio should answer that.