What is your opinion on having an online design portfolio?

anniestoll asked: What is your opinion on having an online design portfolio?

I hear a lot of students coming out of college saying that their professors told them not to bother with a website/web presence and that sounds crazy as hell to me. There are firms where presenting your portfolio in person to their art director will go a long way past everyone who simply e-mailed their portfolio. But getting those meetings can be a long process, and in the meantime there’s no reason that your digital footprint (your website, your tumblr, your Behance, your twitter) shouldn’t be working passively in your favor. You never know who’s browsing, and there’s something to be said for building a personal image/brand/audience that you can bring to the table along with your work. Yuko got her first comics gig through Livejournal. I’m gonna let that one sink in.

Full disclosure: I don’t maintain an online portfolio at this point. My freelance work balanced against my regular design+writing workload keeps me busy. But the above is how I approached things when I got out of college.