Novo

Novo is a free Squarespace 7.1 template built as a stripped-back portfolio for a designer or art director, and it is about as minimal as a working site gets. The demo belongs to a fictional designer, and the nav holds just two items: Work, which is the homepage, and Contact. Work is a full-width Squarespace portfolio grid of six projects with hover titles, and each project opens onto its own page with a heading, a short description, an image gallery and a link through to the next project. Contact lists four areas of expertise (art direction, branding, packaging and web design), a brief biography and a contact form. There is no About page, no blog and no shop. I keep it in our Squarespace templates for artists collection because it gets out of the way of the work better than most paid portfolio templates.

Who it suits

Graphic designers, art directors, illustrators, photographers and small studios with six to twelve strong case studies and no need for a long sales pitch. If your work speaks for itself and you want a client to land straight on it, this is the right shape.

One honest caveat

Two pages is a very thin starting point. All the demo copy is placeholder text, there is no custom code, and the grid lives or dies on the quality and consistency of your project thumbnails. Anyone who needs services pages, testimonials or an about story will be building those from blank sections.

Setting it up

Choose Novo in Squarespace's template picker or start from the demo, replace the six portfolio items with your own projects, write a real biography on the Contact page and connect the form to your inbox. The portfolio grid is a native Squarespace collection and the pages use Fluid Engine, so adding an About page or a services section later is drag and drop.