Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist and writer. She reports on culture, society, human interest and technology. Her stories hold a mirror to society, reflecting both its malaise and its beauty. Amanda's work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Business Insider, Vice, News Corp, Singapore Airlines, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine. Amanda is an Australian living in the cultural center of gravity that is New York City.
As a writer, I'm constantly curating new clips as my work is published. I've long struggled with how to keep my portfolio up to date. My website needs an overhaul and my PDF portfolios need a designer to update. Sites like Authory populate everything in one place, but I don't love the look.
This isn't just a pain point for writers. Everyone needs a portfolio of past work, especially the job seekers. Anything that can help a candidate stand out in this market is worth exploring. And now with Claude Design, which launched in April, you can create visual assets to go alongside your resume and cover letter.
Claude Design access is included in Anthropic's Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, with subscription limits. Let's see if I can prompt my way to a beautiful portfolio prototype.
To get set up in Claude Design, I upgraded to a Pro membership for $20 per month, then downloaded the Claude app. I didn't have enough disc space on my MacBook, so I had to use the browser version. I clicked on Design on the left sidebar and named my project Portfolio.
This is the design interface, with the chat on the left with prepopulated prompts.
I also went in and selected the latest Claude model, which is Opus 4.7. I clicked on the icon on the far left of the chat box.
You can drop files, images and folders straight in. Claude specifies that designs come out better with more context, so I spent some time collecting the clips and files I wanted to upload. My editorial portfolio was professionally designed in 2020, so I cherry picked a handful of my top clips to add in.
I put a dozen or so links in a Word document, then uploaded that. Next, I used the chat feature to tell Claude what I envisioned. Here was my prompt:
I want to create a new editorial portfolio that I can send to prospects and show off my work. The PDF attached doesn't include my new clips. Maintain the same look/feel but add all my new clips linked in the Word document. I love the branding and design touches of New York Mag. Use it as inspiration: https://nymag.com.
Then Claude started creating.
It took about five minutes to come up with this. It nailed the style but couldn't pull in the images and -- most significantly -- got a bunch of information wrong. For example, I'm not from Sydney and haven't written for many of the places it mentioned.
It also made up details about each article's reception -- another big no-no -- like this:
To make changes, you can either describe a Tweak or use the Edit function and work your way through the asset. I tested out both features. I used the tweak button to update my location, and it took care of that in seconds.
I then used the chat to ask if it could somehow pull in the photos from the original articles. It couldn't do that, but it gave me instructions on how to bypass the block.
To test it out, I asked Claude to use the photo I uploaded for a specific story.
And it did so. Very impressive.
Next, I clicked on Edit, and it opened the live file where I could select something I needed fixed. For example, I changed this bio copy, as this portfolio is strictly for journalism.
With some quick edits, I changed it to this:
I'm obsessed with this look and how close it got off the bat without too much tinkering.
Claude Design is the most impressive AI tool I've used. Granted, I put in a PDF by a professional designer (and the New York Mag reference), but still, it absolutely nailed the look off the bat. The editing features were a breeze and didn't make more work for me, unlike most other AI tooling.
It wasn't perfect, and it fabricated things I'd supposedly done, but it was 75% there in its first version -- and my first time using Claude Design. All for $20.
I'm going to finish off the edits then attach this to my resume whenever I'm applying for gigs or introducing someone to my work. Next Claude project? A new website to store my new portfolio.
