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A potential employer is buying all of you β your values, your interests, your attitude, even your quirks. This lesson shows you how to write an 'About Me' that reveals your character and future value, not just your education history.
Your portfolio has two jobs. The first is to show what you can do. The second β and this is where most people completely drop the ball β is to show who you are. A hiring creative director isn't just filling a skills gap. They're adding a human being to their team. And that changes everything about how you should write your 'About Me' section.
Let's fix yours.
Most people treat their 'About Me' like a second rΓ©sumΓ©. They list their degree, their graduation year, maybe a few software skills, and call it done. It reads like a Wikipedia stub about a person nobody cares about yet.
Here's the thing: the creative director reading your portfolio already knows you went to school. They can see your work. What they can't see β what no piece of work can fully communicate β is what kind of person you are to work with, what drives you, what makes you interesting at 3pm on a Tuesday when the brief is impossible and the deadline is tomorrow morning.
That's what your 'About Me' needs to answer.
Key Insight: A potential client or agency is buying all of you β your values, your interests, your attitude, even your quirks. Your work is your past. Who you are is your future value to any organization.
Think about it from the other side of the desk. An agency isn't just a collection of skills. It's a culture. It's a room full of people who have to collaborate, argue, inspire each other, and occasionally order pizza together at midnight. Creative directors know that an agency filled with interesting, diverse people makes for interesting, diverse work. They're not just hiring a portfolio. They're hiring a person who will shape the energy of their team.
Let's address the elephant in the room: your degree.
Yes, you worked hard for it. Yes, it cost a lot of money and probably a few years of your life. But here's the honest truth β your education is only interesting to a hiring creative director if it took you somewhere challenging or unusual.
Did you study abroad in a country where you didn't speak the language? Did you pivot from a completely different field β engineering, medicine, law β before landing in creativity? Did you put yourself through school while working two jobs? That's interesting. That tells a story about character.
"Bachelor of Arts in Communication Design, Class of 2023" tells nobody anything they couldn't have guessed.
If your educational path was fairly conventional, don't lean on it. Let it sit quietly in the background and put your energy into the parts of your story that are genuinely yours.
Pro Tip: If your education did take you somewhere unusual β a semester in rural Japan, a thesis project that got published, a scholarship you won against long odds β lead with that story, not the institution's name. The narrative is what's interesting, not the credential.
Here's where it gets genuinely exciting. The things you do outside of work or school are often the most powerful signals of who you'll be as a creative professional.
Consider this: imagine you're a creative director and you meet a candidate who runs ultra-marathons. Not just jogs on weekends β actually runs 50, 80, 100 miles through mountains. What does that tell you about them?
It tells you they don't give up. It tells you they can endure discomfort and keep moving. It tells you that when a campaign brief is brutal and the client is difficult and the deadline is brutal, this person has a deep reservoir of grit to draw from. You haven't seen a single piece of their work yet, and you already know something essential about them.
Or consider a student who collected snakes. Unusual? Absolutely. But she had converted that hobby into something more valuable: a genuine fearlessness. She wasn't afraid of the weird brief, the uncomfortable idea, the client who pushed back hard. That fearlessness showed up in her work β and it showed up in how she talked about herself.
These aren't tricks. They're authentic signals. The key is learning to translate your personal experiences into professional relevance.
Ask yourself:
Now let's get practical. Here's a framework for writing an 'About Me' that actually works.
Don't open with "I am a junior copywriter with a passion for storytelling." Everyone says that. Open with something true and specific. "I grew up in a house where nobody agreed on anything β which is probably why I became obsessed with finding the one idea that makes everyone nod at the same time."
Don't just list your interests. Briefly connect them to what they've made you like as a creative. You teach pottery on weekends? You understand that the best ideas need time to take shape and can't be rushed. You've been playing in a band since you were fourteen? You know how to collaborate without ego, and you understand that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.
This isn't a novel. Three to five tight paragraphs is plenty. The goal is to leave the reader feeling like they've met you β not like they've read your LinkedIn profile.
Pro Tip: Read your 'About Me' out loud. If it sounds like something you'd say to a stranger at a party, it's working. If it sounds like something you'd submit to HR, rewrite it.
Your 'About Me' should end with a sense of where you're going, not just where you've been. What kind of work do you want to do? What problems do you want to solve? What kind of agency or client would make you leap out of bed in the morning? This signals ambition and self-awareness β two things every creative director wants to see.
Many portfolio platforms allow you to add a section beyond your main work β a place for personal projects, side interests, or creative pursuits that don't fit neatly into your professional narrative. Use it.
If you paint, photograph, write, podcast, build furniture, cook obsessively, or have spent three years learning the traditional textile techniques of a specific region of West Africa β put it in. These activities add dimension to your character. They signal that you are a person who is genuinely curious about the world, and genuinely curious people make genuinely interesting creative work.
One student's hobby was recreating album covers in Play-Doh. Absurd? Maybe. But it showed playfulness, dedication, a love of music and pop culture, and a willingness to commit to a ridiculous idea all the way to the end. He's now gainfully employed. The Play-Doh got him in the room.
Key Insight: An agency filled with interesting, diverse people makes for interesting, diverse work. Your quirks aren't liabilities β they're assets. The right agency will see them that way.
A few things that will quietly undermine an otherwise strong 'About Me':
Your 'About Me' is not a formality. It's not the section you dash off after spending three weeks perfecting your case studies. It is, in many ways, the most important writing on your entire portfolio β because it's the only place where you are the subject, not your work.
Your work shows what you've done. Your 'About Me' shows who will show up to do the next thing.
Make it count. Make it honest. Make it genuinely, specifically, unmistakably you.
Only if your education took you somewhere genuinely interesting or challenging. Otherwise, skip the standard academic list β it tells a reviewer very little about who you are or what you'll be like to work with.
Share what reveals your character and values. Ultra-marathon running, snake collecting, building furniture β these things tell a story about who you are as a person and a creative. Avoid anything that belongs on a dating profile or suggests you'd rather be somewhere else.