Which Squarespace Theme is Best for Portfolios in 2024?
Creatives tend to be in a tough spot online. They have a lot of pressures that make it difficult to succeed online.
Traditional SEO requires the written word, and can’t do a whole lot with graphical content. Sure, there are ways to help images get indexed, but it’s still less valuable than posting blog articles.
Websites can be expensive and technical to maintain. Most artists, at least in my experience, don’t want to get deep into the weeds of running a website. They want a place they can post art, use as a portfolio, and don’t have to think about all that much.
They need a website. The days of a physical portfolio are long past. The internet is the expected medium for a creative portfolio, so it cannot be ignored.
I always recommend Squarespace to any creative looking to set up a portfolio, personal website, small business, or any combination thereof. It’s easy to set up, maintenance is largely handled by Squarespace itself, and it’s mostly fire-and-forget.
The biggest choice you need to make as an artist of any sort is what template you want to use.
To pick a template, you need to know what you want to get out of it. Generally, I’ve found that creatives want a few specific features.
Large, image-focused design. After all, art is the reason people are there, so showcasing it in all its glory is important.
A professional appearance. Some artists want to tailor their website to their style, but most simply want something professional, functional, and navigable.
Sensible navigation. This is particularly important for creatives with several focuses. An artist who does painting, sculpture, and sketches might want three core sections.
Room for text. Like it or not, part of being found online is SEO, and SEO means text. Image alt text is only a small part of it. A personal blog section, sections to describe each image with details that include technical specifications and descriptions; these are very useful to have, even if you don’t use them right away.
Fortunately, Squarespace offers almost all of these in almost all of their templates. The only one you’ll have to focus on finding is the first one; a large, image-focused design. That’s why I’ve put together this list. These 15 options below mix Squarespace-native choices with third-party templates to give you a range of beautiful options.
Let’s get started!
1. Modern Day Creative by 23 & 9 Creative (7.0)
A very image-focused template with a creative flourish, this option also has plenty of room for text to go along with it. It comes with a lot of additional resources as well, including a primer on SEO, access to the base files in Canva for modifications to any you’re not outright replacing with your own, and a bunch of additional resources. It has a mobile responsive version as well, but then, all of the entries on this list do, so I’m not going to be calling it out specifically.
Click here for more photography style templates
2. Mojzo by Britta Made (7.1)
This is a bold and somewhat aggressive template that works very well for artists who promote not just their works, but their personalities. It also gives you a well-integrated blog at the forefront, which can be great for artists who are also activists, or for artists who like to tell stories along with the content they create. It’s a fairly modern template with the default configuration, but you can change a lot about the aesthetic with a few tweaks to colors, fonts, and backgrounds.
3. Fiji by SquareMuse (7.0)
This is a much more traditional portfolio style, with a grid-based display for the homepage. It offers a lot of room to showcase art or photos, with plenty of deeper spaces for blog posts and other text. It’s quite professional and elegant, useful for a photography business in particular. It’s a pretty solid template all-around, though it does have a few limitations. They don’t offer a ton of additional freebies like some of the other companies on this list, but they have a powerful installation tool to help streamline even the few tweaks you need to make to a Squarespace site normally. Overall, it’s a great and easy option for visual artists setting up their small businesses.
4. Balboa by SquareSpace (7.1)
Balboa is one of the few templates on this list that are available directly through Squarespace. Now, I have nothing against Squarespace – quite the opposite – but a lot of their default templates are, well, common. If you’ve ever been browsing the web and found multiple sites that are all based on the same core design, you realize how it detracts from each site, even if there’s nothing inherently wrong with either of them. It just comes across as less creative, which is the opposite of what you want as an artist. Thus, while I still think templates like Balboa are good options, you do run the risk of potential clients or fans recognizing your template from others they’ve seen recently, which detracts from your work.
5. Influence by GoLive (7.0)
This is another template that works well for creative types who focus on a personal brand or personality through multimedia, rather than focusing on the work itself. It does a lot to put the artist forward, rather than their art. This works great if you’re building a personal brand and freelance business online, but it’s less valuable as a “portfolio on a business card” or “submit as part of an application” style website. In a lot of ways, your choice comes down to what kind of goals you have with your portfolio site.
6. Leon by Big Cat Creative (7.1)
Leon is a sort of southwestern, retro-inspired template design that is both bold and clean. It uses a lot of blank space in between elements to showcase those elements in greater isolation, and allows you to draw more attention to specific pieces.
Big Cat Creative is an interesting design company because its templates are not plug-and-play templates. Rather, they give you elements, code snippets, and guides, and tell you how to DIY your template to be exactly what you want it to be. Use caution if you don’t want to do the legwork, but if you’re fine with it, it’s a great choice.
7. Elise by SquareMuse (7.0)
This is a light and airy kind of template that focuses on a kind of romantic and elegant twist on the usual modern template formula. It’s good for photographers, in particular, especially those who typically do weddings, family photos, graduations, and other important events for individuals. The core of the template is based on the Margot template family from Squarespace itself, if you want to compare the two and see how much of an improvement you can get out of a bit of custom code.
8. Ruminant by Kate Scott (7.0)
Based on the ever-popular Brine family of templates from Squarespace, this template is designed for service providers and course creators. It’s great if you’re a photographer who doesn’t just want to sell their services, but also photography courses and other consulting. That said, with a few tweaks, it can be used to display and sell prints through a print-on-demand service or sell merchandise through a shop, or any of a hundred other possibilities. It’s a fairly flexible template, based on one of the most popular and flexible core templates in the Squarespace library.
9. Lady Nomad by Station Seven (7.0)
This is a combination of a graphics-first and a minimalist design, which might not sound like it works, but it does. It was primarily made for those who wanted to ditch the 9-5 lifestyle and start a travel/lifestyle/content creator business and personal brand. As such, it’s another template that’s great for artists who are building a personal brand, rather than just a simple portfolio. If you’re looking for something to showcase yourself and keep a blog going, as well as showcase your art, this is a great option.
Click here for more blog style templates.
10. Matsuya by Squarespace (7.1)
Matsuya is another default template provided by Squarespace themselves. It’s a very simple template that focuses solely on showcasing art, with a relatively light amount of branding and very little else. It’s great if you want your art to speak for itself, if you want specific pages for each piece to deliver more details but to keep an uncluttered homepage, or if you just want a place to showcase your art in one place and don’t much care about the SEO aspect of running a website. Incidentally, if you want something similar to this but with less white space and a denser layout, consider Gates, another Squarespace-offered template.
11. Bombshell by GoLive (7.1)
This template is designed for creative types who specifically want to offer certain kinds of services as a small business or freelance career. It uses a collage-style initial layout that links through to product pages and serves as a hybrid between a portfolio and a services display. It includes a blog – important for SEO purposes – but doesn’t push it to the forefront. It’s also great as a high-end and eclectic design aesthetic, and might not be ideal for more traditional forms of media or service. Think more “muralist” here.
12. Onyx by SquareMuse (7.1)
Based on the highly flexible 7.1 base template, Onyx is a dark and elegant theme that works great for artists. In particular, I’ve seen it used to great effect by boudoir photographers and others with a more intimate angle to their work. Conversely, it’s great for wedding photographers (another intimate moment, really) and, with a few tweaks, can work great for travel photography and graphic design. It does require the Squarespace business plan to function properly, though, so keep that in mind.
Click here for more templates for artists
13. Boho Social by Applet Studio (7.0 and 7.1)
This is a flexible template that works on both Squarespace 7.0 and 7.1, with a similar design on both. Generally, 7.1 is more flexible for changes you might want to make, but 7.0 is easier for those who are experienced with Squarespace to get the hang of using it. It’s really up to you which you choose.
Though this template was originally designed for small businesses and service providers, you can tweak it with a few quick snippets to make it more tightly focused on art or photography. A lot comes down to what you want out of the template, of course, and how much you want to expand functionality with other plugins and code snippets.
14. Atelier by Candor (7.1)
This is another template originally aimed at small businesses, using the business plan of Squarespace and a 7.1 site. Why, then, is it on a list for portfolio templates? It’s highly visual, and it’s great as a template to use if you’re an artist or designer who wants to sell prints, merchandise, and other items with your work on them. How you use it is up to you, but it’s a great and flexible template kit to start with.
15. Eucalyptus by Design by Bittersweet (7.0)
This is another great portfolio template based on 7.0, with all the files and everything you need to succeed. It even includes PSD files for customization, video tutorials for configuring it, and pages you can use for investment and testimonials as well as your usual portfolio and about pages. It’s one of the more elegant options on this list, and a great choice for graphic designers, and artists of many stripes.
So there you have it; my list of 15 excellent portfolio templates you can use on Squarespace. Creatives, let me know what you think.
Which is your favorite? Do you have another recommendation from another designer? Drop me a line in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.
