Why Are Our Portfolios Written in Third Person?

Tobias van Schneider
3 min readMay 9, 2018

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Timmy is a very special designer. He’s works on many fantastic projects and sometimes he even wins awards (but he’s very humble about that, he assures you). Timmy would describe his design style as “incredible,” and also “the most unique.” Please contact Timmy for your next design project!

So goes the typical portfolio bio. At some point, we started writing our own portfolios in third person like we’re being announced at some awards reception. I can’t pretend my own portfolio bio isn’t written that way. But lately, given how many portfolios I see on a daily basis thanks to Semplice, I’ve started wondering why. Aside from personal pronoun preference, is there a reason most of us write our bios as if someone else wrote them for us? Is one way better than the other? Does it matter at all?

I believe there are a couple reasons why we started writing in third person. For one, it’s a little easier to praise ourselves from this distance and it removes an edge of desperation from our tone. “Carol is an award-winning designer” sounds a little less boastful than “I’m an award-winning designer.” Third person allows us to step back from the equation and…

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