[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_108":109,"_110":111},"routes/embed.x.$handle.$name.$",{"_9":10,"_11":12,"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":18,"_19":20,"_21":22},"handle","jill1","name","lsd-tools","path","apps/portfolio-blueprint.html","project",{"_23":48,"_11":12,"_36":49,"_50":-5,"_51":44,"_52":53,"_54":53,"_55":56,"_57":-5,"_58":59,"_60":-5,"_61":44,"_62":-5,"_63":-5,"_64":65,"_66":67,"_68":69,"_70":71,"_72":73,"_74":-5,"_75":76,"_77":76,"_78":79,"_80":79,"_81":79,"_82":76,"_83":76,"_84":85,"_86":87,"_88":89,"_90":44},"file",{"_23":24,"_11":25,"_26":27,"_28":29,"_30":31,"_32":33,"_34":35,"_36":37,"_38":39,"_40":17,"_41":42,"_43":44,"_45":-5,"_13":46},"permalink","https://www.val.town/x/jill1/lsd-tools/code/apps/portfolio-blueprint.html","extension","html","id","507cb2d3-3ff7-44db-8748-4677f7b45478","portfolio-blueprint.html","fileId","b8ba839a-7a2e-11f1-9080-1607ee4eb77e","parentId","47a6bf47-1d27-4c27-af37-9f16d7745179","branchId","354484fe-ab8e-435c-b8f4-a7d84643afaf","branchVersion",665,"latest",true,"createdAt",["D",1788540004767],"version",4,"fileType","content","\n\n

\n\n \n

\n $\"Learning$ \n

The Corporate ID Portfolio Blueprint

\n\n

\n\n \n

1Start Here

Start here.

So, you're building your first ID portfolio and not sure exactly what needs to be in it?

If you want a corporate instructional design job, you need a portfolio. It's the first thing recruiters look at, and if it's missing or has the wrong things in it, you don't get the interview. I will be honest. That's how it works.

Most people building their first portfolio don't know what to include, put in the wrong things, or underestimate how much goes into each piece.

This tool walks you through all of it. What has to be in your portfolio. How to plan the build across 90 days. What each piece needs to look like to land you the job. Plus two downloadable templates you can use as you go.

A few things to know before you start

This is built for corporate ID. Not K-12. Not higher ed. Corporate learning, healthcare training, government and non-profit L&D. That world.
Work through it in order. Each section builds on the last.
You'll build a 90-day plan you can save and come back to.
The templates and checklist are yours to keep.

Ready? Let's start with what good actually looks like.

See what good looks like →

\n\n \n

2Examples

Before you build, see what you're building toward.

The fastest way to figure out what a strong ID portfolio looks like is to see one. Or a bunch of them.

Look at the portfolios of people who've already landed corporate ID jobs. Notice what kinds of samples they have. How they organized the site. What tools they used. What they wrote about themselves. What they left out.

Where to look

We have a website full of portfolios our students built. You'll see actual Rise samples, Storyline projects, design documents, storyboards, and job aids. All from real people who used these to get hired.

Browse student portfolios →

What to notice as you're looking

Variety. A strong portfolio has different types of samples, not four versions of the same thing.
Polish. The pieces look finished. No placeholders, no half-built samples.
Adult, professional topics. Not education-related. Not personal hobbies.
A clear \"about\" or bio that reads like a competent professional wrote it.

Once you've had a look, come back here. Next up: exactly what needs to be in yours.

See what needs to be in your portfolio →

\n\n \n

3Portfolio Sample Overview

What has to be in your portfolio before you start applying.

Here's the minimum you need before you apply for corporate ID jobs. If any of these are missing, you're going to struggle to get an interview. I will be honest. Probably won't get one. These pieces are non-negotiable.

Required (before you apply)

1 Storyline sample
1 Rise sample
1 design document
1 storyboard
1 job aid

Nice to have (add after you're hired, or during the search if you have time)

A second Storyline sample. Shows variety, especially if the second one is an advanced interaction or microlearning.
An AI-related sample that shows you can use AI tools in the ID workflow.
Vyond video (if you take the elective badge)
Camtasia video (if you take the elective badge)
vILT slide deck and facilitator guide (if you take the elective badge)
Graphic design samples, in their own category, kept separate from your ID work
Real work samples from a previous job, scrubbed of the company name and any proprietary info, and only if you have permission

What NOT to include

This is where a lot of first portfolios go sideways. Do not put any of this in your portfolio:

K-12 or higher ed content. Not even PD you built for other teachers.
Personal hobbies or topics that aren't work-relevant.
Anything controversial. Politics, religion, hot-button social issues.
Photography as a separate category.
Placeholders. An empty spot makes the whole portfolio look unfinished.

Now that you know what needs to be in it, here's how to approach the build without trying to do everything at once.

How to approach the build →

\n\n \n

4How To Approach It

How to approach it without doing it all at once.

A full corporate portfolio is more than you can build in one stretch, so don't try. Think of this as your first 90 days. It won't get you all the way to the finish line, but it'll get you a real start, and a real start is what most people never manage.

Pick one of these two starting points, then work top to bottom. Give it 10 to 12 hours a week if you can. Less is okay, it just moves slower. What matters is that you protect the time and keep going.

\n\n

Starting point 1

Build your Storyline sample

The most demanding piece, and demanding enough to be its own project. If Storyline is the thing scaring you, start here and go in this order:

Plan and create your content map. Your planning document. Map out the topic, goal and business problem, audience, objectives, content, and sequence before you build. Grab the content map template from the resources below.
Learn beginning Storyline. Get comfortable with the basics of the tool first. You can't design for software you don't know yet.
Create your first draft. Get a rough version of the course out of your head and built in the tool.
Learn advanced Storyline. Pick up the advanced interactions and features that make a sample stand out.
Iterate, polish, QA, and publish. Refine it, run the checklist, then get it live with a short write-up of your process.

\n\n

Starting point 2

Build the other four pieces

Your Rise sample, design document, storyboard, and job aid. Four lighter pieces you can move through faster, then come back for Storyline. Work in this order:

Rise sample. Plan it with a content map the same way, then build it in the Rise free trial.
Design document. Build it after your sample, based on the same course. It's a pared-down version of your content map, in the format corporate teams actually use. Template below.
Storyboard. Also based on the sample you built, created after you know the tool. A clean, screen-by-screen map a reviewer can follow.
Job aid. A quick, polished win. One strong corporate job aid.

\n\n

Map it to your own calendar. Put these steps against your real weeks. Block out vacations and busy stretches up front so you're planning around real life, not pretending it away.

\n\n \n

Get the full build guide

Enter your name and email to unlock the standards for every piece, plus a printable portfolio checklist and the templates you'll need. Yours to save and come back to.

\n \n \n

\n\n \n

You're in. The full build guide is unlocked below. Grab your printable checklist to keep the whole build in one place, then work through each piece.

\n \n See how to build each piece →\n

\n\n \n

5Build Each Piece

How to build each piece to a professional standard.

Five required pieces, five sets of standards. Tap through each one. This is where you'll see exactly what separates a portfolio that gets interviews from one that gets skipped.

\n\n

Rise

Storyline

Design Doc

Storyboard

Job Aid

\n\n \n

Building your Rise sample.

Rise is where a lot of career changers start with authoring tools because it's the more approachable of the two. Don't take that to mean easy. A strong Rise sample takes real planning and real thought before you ever open the software.

Here are the 9 steps to plan your Rise sample before you build. Work through these in order.

Planning your Rise sample

Choose your topic. Corporate topic, adult audience, work-relevant. Not education-related. Not controversial. Not a personal hobby.
Define your goal and business problem. What problem does this training solve for the business? What's the outcome?
Define your audience. Who is this for? What's their role, their context, their level?
Identify the actions needed to meet the goal. What does the learner have to be able to do by the end?
Write learning objectives. Action verbs, measurable, aligned to the actions.
Brainstorm and analyze source content. What do you already have or know? What do you need to research?
Chunk and sequence your content. Break it into logical groups. Order it so cognitive load stays manageable.
Create the performance-based assessment. How will you check that the learner can do the thing?
Create your content map. The full blueprint of the module before you touch Rise. Use the content map template in the resources below.

Once your plan is solid, then you open Rise.

What a strong Rise sample includes

A clear topic that fits corporate ID
Learning objectives you can actually measure
Interactive elements (not just a text scroll with a quiz at the end)
A knowledge check or performance-based assessment
Clean visual design that uses Rise's built-in style options well
A recognizable corporate use case (not a hobby, not a personal interest)

Where people get tripped up: Most first-time builders skip straight to step 9 (the content map) or worse, skip straight to Rise itself. Then they build something that looks okay on the surface but doesn't teach anyone anything. Recruiters spot that immediately. The planning steps aren't optional. They're how you build something that shows you actually know what you're doing.

If working through those 9 steps on your own is more than you want to figure out solo, the 30-Day Rise Sprint walks you through building your Rise sample with support. Same process, with guidance and feedback so you don't get stuck.

\n \n

See the Rise Sprint →

\n\n \n

Building your Storyline sample.

Storyline is where corporate IDs prove they can build the more complex, custom eLearning that companies actually pay for. It's PowerPoint on steroids, and it takes more skill to build well than Rise does.

The planning process is the same 9 steps as Rise (see the Rise tab). Same discipline: plan the whole thing before you open Storyline. Skipping the planning is the fastest way to build a Storyline sample that looks impressive on the surface and falls apart when a hiring manager clicks through it.

What a strong Storyline sample includes

Custom interactions (not just Rise-style block templates rebuilt in Storyline)
At least one advanced interaction: drag-and-drop, branching scenario, meaningful click-to-reveal, or a simulation
A knowledge check or performance-based assessment
Custom design (not the default template)
Voice-over or captions if audio is used. Accessibility is expected in corporate.

Where people get tripped up

Building something too simple. If your Storyline sample could have been done in Rise, you're missing the point of Storyline.
Building something too complicated. A branching scenario that goes 30 levels deep and never resolves isn't impressive, it's confusing.
Poor design. Clip art, default templates, mismatched fonts. This piece needs to look like something a company would actually deploy.
Not planning your sample out. Your Storyline sample should go through the same nine planning steps you used for Rise before you open Storyline. Skip that and a hiring manager can tell.

\n\n \n

Building your design document.

The design document is the strategic blueprint for a piece of learning: the business problem, the audience, the objectives, the approach. Corporate IDs write these constantly, and producing one proves you can think like an ID, not just build in a tool.

It looks a lot like your content map, so here's the difference. Your content map is the detailed planning document you built your sample from. The design document is a pared-down, higher-level version of it, and it's the format corporate teams actually use to align stakeholders. That's exactly why it makes a strong portfolio sample on its own: it's a real corporate artifact.

One note on timing: on the job the design document comes before the build, but for your portfolio, create it after, based on the Rise or Storyline sample you already built. Same course, no new project to invent, and you'll know it well enough to write the doc quickly.

What a strong design document includes

Project overview and background
The business problem and the goal of the training
Learner audience analysis
Learning objectives
Deliverables (what will be built, in what format, on what timeline)
High-level content outline
Assessment strategy
Success measures

Download the template

We have a design document template you can use. Same structure we teach inside Applied Instructional Design Academy, and it maps to what corporate hiring managers expect.

Download design document template (PDF)

Where people get tripped up

Making it too vague. A design doc that says \"the audience is employees\" and \"the goal is to teach them the process\" tells a hiring manager nothing.
Making it too long. It's a working document, not a novel. Focused beats comprehensive.

\n\n \n

Building your storyboard.

A storyboard maps a learning experience screen by screen: what the learner sees, hears, and does. It's a standalone portfolio sample that shows a hiring manager you can plan at that level of detail and that you understand the ID workflow.

Here's the part that sounds backwards: build your storyboard after you've learned the tool, not before. On the job, the storyboard comes first, because an experienced ID already knows the tool. But you can't design a storyboard for an authoring tool you've never used. You have to learn what it can actually do first, then you can map out a course that uses it well. Building your portfolio, you're learning the tool as you go, so the order flips. And like the design document, your storyboard can be based on the Rise or Storyline sample you already built. Same course, no new project to invent.

What a strong storyboard includes

Screen-by-screen layout (visual sketch or wireframe)
On-screen text
Narration or voice-over script
Interactions and what happens on click
Notes for the developer (or yourself, if you're building it)
References to the learning objectives each screen supports

Format: PowerPoint works. Word works. Some IDs use Miro or Figma. Pick something that reads clearly and looks like a real work artifact.

Where people get tripped up

Confusing the storyboard with the design document. Different levels of detail. The design doc is the strategy, the storyboard is the execution plan.
Skipping the interaction notes. If the storyboard doesn't show what the learner does on each screen, it's just a slide deck.
Making it visually messy. Corporate storyboards are professional artifacts, not sketchbook doodles.

\n\n \n

Building your job aid.

A job aid is a quick-reference document a learner uses at the moment of need. Not a training. Not a course. A single-page or short reference tool that helps someone do their job better right now.

Corporate IDs get asked to build these constantly. Including one in your portfolio shows you can design for real workplace performance, not just seat-time training.

What a strong job aid includes

Clear task or scenario the aid supports
Step-by-step instructions or a decision tree
Clean visual layout the reader can scan
Corporate design (not clip art, not a Google Doc with default fonts)
One page ideally, two at most

Format: PDF is standard. Some IDs build these in InDesign, Canva, or PowerPoint. Whatever tool you use, the output has to look like something a real company would print, hand out, or post on an intranet.

Where people get tripped up

Making it too long. A job aid is not a workbook.
Choosing a topic that's not job-relevant. This is for workplace performance, not personal use.
Skipping the visual design. A wall of text is not a job aid. Layout matters here as much as content.

\n\n

Grab the resources →

\n\n \n

6Resources

Three resources to help as you build.

Everything you need to reference as you work through your portfolio pieces.

Content map template (PDF)

Your planning document. Fill this in first to plan your Storyline or Rise sample before you build. It's the same planning tool we use inside Applied Instructional Design Academy.

Download content map template

Design document template (PDF)

The same structure we teach in Applied Instructional Design Academy. Use it as your starting point for any design doc you build.

Download design document template

Storyline QA checklist (PDF)

Before you call your Storyline sample done, run through this checklist. It's the same one Applied Instructional Design Academy students use to catch the issues hiring managers notice.

Download Storyline QA checklist

One more thing →

\n\n \n

7Take It Further

Would you like to take this further?

You've just seen everything that goes into a portfolio that gets you hired. If the Rise sample is the piece you'd rather not figure out alone, that's exactly what the 30-Day Rise Sprint is for.

It's a short, focused program where I walk you through building one strong Rise sample from start to finish. The kind that looks like a working ID made it, not someone brand new. In 30 days you go from a blank screen to a finished, published sample you can put straight in your portfolio.

Here's what you get

A 5-week guided path: plan and content map, build in Rise, get feedback, revise, then polish and publish
Live coaching calls twice a week for support, accountability, and getting unstuck
Expert feedback on your sample, with back-and-forth until it earns our stamp of approval
The Map Your Sprint planning tool and a day-by-day tracker so you always know your next step
An AI prompt pack for the full ID workflow
A community building their samples right alongside you
No expensive software required. The Rise free trial covers the whole thing.

By the end, the piece you were most worried about building on your own is done, and it's one a hiring manager will actually respect.

\n \n

Enroll in the 30-Day Rise Sprint →

\n\n

\n\n","deleted",false,"label",[47,25],"apps","94d22c94-c7b8-4c71-924e-bdacd079feab",["D",1783446411330],"deletedAt","legacyEnvVars","privacy","public","httpPrivacy","description","Router serving LS&D's standalone tool apps at clean paths","imageUrl","userId","3e453bbc-d725-4b77-bbaf-19441140f954","pinnedFileId","pinPreview","pinMigrated","screenshotVersion","likeCount",0,"orgId","019e69d3-aae4-700b-a721-1926b8df5eb7","tursoName","94d22c94c7b84c71924ebdacd079feab","tursoHostname","94d22c94c7b84c71924ebdacd079feab-val-town.aws-us-east-2.turso.io","tursoMeasuredAt",["D",1789551045218],"pinned","userPerm","r","valPerm","blobPerm","rw","emailPerm","sqlitePerm","projectPerm","telemetryPerm","user",{"_9":10,"_107":102},"org",{"_9":10,"_101":102,"_103":102,"_58":59,"_104":105,"_106":44},"branch",{"_38":91,"_11":92,"_23":31,"_93":48,"_94":-5,"_95":-5,"_96":-5,"_97":-5,"_98":-5,"_99":12,"_100":10},"isOwned",1119,"main","projectId","forkedBranchId","forkedBranchVersion","forkedProjectPrivacy","forkedProjectId","forkedProjectOrgId","projectName","userHandle","displayName","","avatar","tier","pro","canRestrictVals","profileImageUrl","ctx",{"_84":-5,"_141":142,"_143":144,"_145":146,"_147":44,"_148":44,"_149":44,"_150":35,"_151":-5,"_152":-7,"_153":-7,"_154":65,"_155":44,"_156":44,"_157":-5,"_158":44,"_159":44,"_160":44,"_161":-5},"ENV",{"_112":113,"_114":115,"_116":92,"_117":118,"_119":120,"_121":122,"_123":124,"_125":126,"_127":128,"_129":130,"_131":132,"_133":134,"_135":136,"_137":138,"_139":140},"REACT_APP_SENTRY_DSN","https://586020d86f05489db63a554690acf1e9@o1398359.ingest.sentry.io/6724499","RENDER_GIT_COMMIT","fdb67791413f4386b4dbf18f354029a617f6160f","RENDER_GIT_BRANCH","POSTHOG_API_TOKEN","phc_nmoyuAkStEZuUp69rYlg1DZgrIt19Gx0Y4Hwf8tGgJP","POSTHOG_API_HOST","https://wart.val.town","WEB_API_TEMPLATE","https://{val}.web.val.run","APP_URL","https://www.val.town","MODULE_URL","https://esm.town","VANITY_WEB_API_TEMPLATE","https://{label}.val.run/","DENOLS_URL","https://lsp.val.town","NODE_ENV","production","CLOUDFLARE_TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY","0x4AAAAAACtaIZJH7s9rBMZ6","GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID","875989696899-jtsqkhlbdv5jrlsk8631p7ipjg3c6o62.apps.googleusercontent.com","STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY","pk_live_51N2zvWEpZTTLipIkVEwXrUG9AT0yeOOEYxszarZT1jpsZV58Ly6wlg3SltZpHN26CUalOBmUSY7adQRQiSkCZz2500qSXNkf8Y","API_URL","https://api.val.town","orgs",[],"preferencesKeybindings","default","preferencesTheme","light","preferencesFixers","preferencesCopilot","preferencesSelectionAi","preferencesCloseBrackets","preferencesChatPanelState","preferencesDprint","preferencesDenofmt","notificationCount","flagDenols","isBusinessOrgMember","businessOrgHandle","isBusinessOrgAdmin","isHigherTownieTier","navCollapsed","currentOrgId"]