A bio is the smallest piece of writing on a portfolio and often the hardest working. It sits under your name, above a contact link, and answers a stranger's first question: who is this, and is it worth scrolling further? Most weak bios are not badly written so much as vague. They describe a mood instead of a practice. The fix is mostly editorial, and it takes less time than you would expect.
Start With the Reader, Not Yourself
Before you type a word, decide where this bio will live. An About page, a festival programme, an application form with a sixty-word limit and an email to a potential client all ask different things of you. Write for one reader at a time.
A commissioning editor wants to know what you can deliver, how quickly and to what standard. A curator is more interested in ideas and context. A general visitor wants the human: where you work, what you make, what has kept you at it. Keep a note at the top of your draft — this bio is for a gallery submission, read by someone who has seen forty others today — and delete the note when you have finished.
The Three-Beat Shape of a Good Bio
Most bios that read well do three things in a row. They say what you make and where you are. They say something about how you work or what you are currently occupied with. Then they give one concrete marker of activity: a show, a commission, a publication, a collection, a piece of training.
I am a bookbinder in Glasgow making hand-sewn notebooks and small-edition artist books. My work usually starts with reclaimed paper and a limited palette, and I teach workshops at a community studio. I am preparing a series of ten books for an exhibition in the spring.
Forty-five words, no adjectives doing work that photographs should be doing, and enough substance for a reader to place you. That is the target.
What to Keep and What to Cut
Build the first draft as a list of facts rather than sentences. Keep:
- Your medium, materials or discipline, named plainly
- Your city or region, because it helps people picture a practice
- What you are available for: commissions, teaching, exhibitions, freelance work
- One or two credits that a reader in your field would recognise
- A current or upcoming project, which makes the bio feel alive
Then cut the following without hesitation:
- Adjectives about your own work: stunning, unique, dynamic, world-class
- The word passionate, unless you can back it with a fact someone can check
- Long software lists, childhood origin stories and mission statements
- Apologies and hedges: I am only starting out, I hope one day to, I am trying to
Sound Confident Without Sounding Inflated
Confidence in a bio comes from specificity, not volume. I make is stronger than I aspire to make. I design and build beats work has been undertaken. Keep the first person, keep the active voice, and let the facts carry the weight.
If your experience is thin, describe the work you have actually done and what you are looking for next. That reads as direct and honest. Inflated claims are the thing that makes a reader doubt you.
British English Details That Trip People Up
If your portfolio uses British spelling, hold to it everywhere: page copy, image captions, form answers and social profiles. Consistency matters more than any single rule.
- -ise, not -ize: specialise, organise, recognise, apologise.
- Practise and practice: practise is the verb, practice is the noun. The same split applies to licence (noun) and license (verb).
- -our and -re endings: colour, behaviour, favourite; centre, theatre, metre.
- Doubled consonants: travelled, labelled, cancelled, jewellery.
- Programme, catalogue, dialogue, though software is a program.
- Dates and quotes: 3 March rather than March 3, and single quotation marks for speech in most British house styles.
- CV, not résumé. A placement, not an internship.
One more: whilst sounds dated in a short bio. While is nearly always the better choice.
Draft It in Four Passes
- Dump the facts. Names, places, materials, current work, one or two credits, what you are open to. No adjectives, no scene-setting.
- Cut by half. Anything that sounds like a press release goes. Keep what you would happily say out loud at a private view. For now, aim for around ninety words.
- Read it aloud. This exposes sentences that all run to the same length. Break one, join two, and make sure the opening line tells a reader what you do.
- Check the dull details. Your name, the spelling of every place and collaborator, the current year, and whether your spelling is consistently British.
The Final Edit
Set a timer for twenty minutes. Write the ninety-word version, cut it to sixty, then cut again to twenty-five. Keep all three in the same document, because forms, programmes and press requests will each want a different length.
Read the shortest version first, as though you know nothing about the work. If it tells you what this person makes, where they are and what they are doing now, you are finished. Then put a reminder in your calendar for a few months' time: a bio is not a permanent statement, only a current one. Update it when the work changes, and it will keep doing its job quietly under your name.
Photo: jessica olivella / Pexels