Josie Allison Portfolio
Bold visual storytelling that defies the "safe and minimal" UX portfolio cliché — combines playful design with rigorous design thinking to stand out.
Location
Portland, Oregon
Credentials
- Degree in Graphic Design
- Degree in International Studies
Skills
What makes it work
A breakdown of the choices that make this portfolio stand out.
Personality as a differentiator in a sea of minimal white portfolios
The overwhelming UX portfolio archetype is: white background, sans-serif type, hero image, three case study thumbnails. Josie's portfolio is emphatically not that — and after a recruiter's 40th identical portfolio, hers is the one remembered.
Controlled boldness — personality without chaos
The key distinction between Josie's portfolio and one that simply looks messy is control. Bold colour choices are consistent. Type choices are intentional. The energy is high but the system is coherent. That balance is the actual achievement.
Brand identity work visible in the container
Designers who do branding work can demonstrate it through their portfolio design itself. Josie's portfolio is her best brand project — it communicates her design vocabulary before a single case study is opened.
What UX Designers can take from this
Specific, actionable tips to apply to your own portfolio — no generic advice.
Your portfolio IS a design project. If you use a Squarespace template unchanged, you've already communicated something about your design ambition.
Personality is an asset, not a liability. Controlled boldness — consistent colours, intentional type, coherent energy — is what gets you remembered after a dozen identical portfolios.
If you do branding and UI work, let the portfolio's own brand be the opening example of your skill.
Risk tolerance in a portfolio signals risk tolerance in work. Companies with strong design cultures reward it; conservative companies filter it out. Both are good outcomes.
Motion design (even short micro-interactions on hover) adds a layer that static screenshots cannot. Even one animated element shows you think in time.
Case studies
Eight numbered case studies lean on civic and nonprofit clients — United Way of Greater Los Angeles, Rehousing L.A. Together — and the United Way rebrand splits into branding, website, and motion chapters. Josie Allison shows the identity system the screens live inside, not just the screens.
VCA Animal Hospitals Resource Hub
UX design for a public resource hub on VCA's website: veterinarian-backed pet-health content organised into a searchable library. The work was done with Clever Creative and VCA's internal team, from site mapping and user flows to developer handoff. Working with VCA's SEO team, Josie Allison mapped content across four topic categories with species (Dogs, Cats) as a second axis. Topic-first and species-first entry paths both work, and species selection appears at the category level so users don't hit dead ends and species URLs stay indexable. Because VCA's existing design system couldn't carry the project, she built a new, documented one for the hub.
This is the rare portfolio IA write-up that deals with a real tension — browsing users versus SEO indexability — and resolves it in the navigation model. Building a scoped design system when the client's own was unworkable shows ownership beyond the screens.
Dual navigation axes: topic-first and species-first, with species selection surfaced contextually
IA planned jointly with VCA's internal SEO team
Persistent nav bar called out as the most-iterated component
New design system built from the ground up, documented for plug-and-play use in future phases
United Way of Greater Los Angeles Rebrand & Website
New brand and website for United Way of Greater Los Angeles, written up as branding, website, motion and social design chapters. The brand deepens UWGLA's original colours, takes graphic elements from the United Way logo and from the visual language of activism, and lets typography shift between bold and refined. The team ran UX discovery, auditing and analysis, then built site maps and information architecture for a 50+ page site.
It shows one identity carried across print-style social layouts, animation and a large information-heavy website. Hiring managers at agencies and nonprofits want that breadth from one designer.
Graphic elements pulled from the United Way logo itself, then animated across web and collateral
50+ page site structured from UX discovery, audits, site maps and IA
Balances modularity against brand expression at scale
Chaptered case study: branding → website → motion → social
Tangere: Art Marketplace Concept
A concept Josie Allison owned from start to finish: an art marketplace for up-and-coming artists, positioned between exclusive high-end art markets and oversaturated sites like Etsy. An open card-sorting study showed participants grouped art by style, medium or subject depending on the piece, so the navigation lets users explore by all three. A user flow traces six mini-personas with different entry points, and the brand and UI kit are built to frame the art rather than compete with it.
The card-sorting finding directly produces the navigation model, which is the research-to-structure link most UX portfolios only claim. Owning both the brand and the product shows the same identity-plus-interface range as her client work.
Open card sort: participants mixed style, medium and subject, which led to three-way filtering
User flow built around six mini-personas with different entry points (e.g. arriving from an Instagram ad)
Daily-rotating featured pieces designed to spotlight artists regardless of following
Adjustable 1/2/3-column grid for different browsing modes
Rehousing L.A. Together (LAHSA Campaign)
An awareness campaign launched by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) in response to the annual homeless count. It is meant to humanise the numbers by centring people with lived experience. The site gives each person's story a full-screen horizontal 'spread' with quotes, photography and audio, followed by the count data in accessible data visualisations and a vertical jump navigation. Josie Allison's team also gave creative direction for close-up portrait photography.
Civic and social-impact work with a clear editorial idea: narrative first, data second, in a layout built to honour each story. It shows judgment about tone on a sensitive subject.
Full-screen horizontal story spreads combining quotes, photography and audio
Homeless-count data paired with accessible data visualisations
Creative direction on up-close portrait photography as the hero of the brand
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