A one-day, hands-on workshop where you create your own custom portfolio site. No templates, no AI slop, no subscriptions.
The stack we'll be building with
A custom-coded portfolio mini-website with Cursor that acts as your first entry into designing and building directly with code, resulting in a stack you control.
You leave owning the code and the content, with a workflow you can run again on additional portfolio pages or any other project after the day ends. Gain the confidence to ship without waiting for a template, a plugin, or an engineer.
Product Designers who are comfortable in Figma and want to explore end-to-end building instead of renting a template. Junior Designers on the job hunt and Senior Designers who want a site they fully control.
You don't need to be a developer. A good part of the day is technical and I’ll walk you through all of it. If you can find your way around Figma and you know what good looks like, you have what you need.
Copywriting, images, case study material, whatever should live on the site.
If you have an existing portfolio on Webflow, Framer, or Squarespace, ensure you have the login and we'll pull your content across.
If you want your site deployed to a custom domain, you'll need to buy your domain name beforehand and we'll configure DNS settings together.
Anything that points to how you want your site to feel: A moodboard, a few sites you love, a favourite accent color, a favorite typeface. The more you bring, the more your site will look like you.
A paid Cursor plan, installed and signed in before the day. In the future, you can use the free plan, but you'll hit limits fairly quickly.
You don't need to know how to code, but it's helpful to have some familiarity with the terminal and basic web development concepts. You can use Claude Code if you'd like, and although the interface might be slightly different, the principles are the same. I'll be teaching in Cursor.
This is a hands-on workshop so you'll need to have all of your tools and access ready. While I walk you through the process, you will be building your own site on your own machine.
One full day, two sessions, with a break for lunch.
9am–Noon: Set up the project, connect it to GitHub and Vercel, and ship a first “About Me” page so you know how to deploy and maintain the site yourself. Then lay the Astro foundation: the skeleton of the site, design tokens, and how components and pages fit together.
Noon–1pm: Step away, eat, and come back ready for the afternoon.
1pm–4pm: Translate your aesthetic into a design system using design tokens. Drop your content in and build the core pages: a homepage, and a reusable page template for projects and case studies. Then push it all live, set up a custom domain, and add a staging URL so you can keep iterating safely afterward.
I'm Josh, a senior product designer based in Sydney with about a decade of experience, mostly as the first or only designer at early-stage B2B SaaS startups.
This workshop came from my actual process of building. Tabba, a browser extension I built and shipped, came out of this exact workflow, and I gave a talk on it at a recent Cursor Sydney meetup. My own portfolio website runs on the same stack you'll use here, so you're learning the process I actually use, not a demo version of it.
Incredible workshop! Helped my process of using the cursor tech stack in a much more scalable and organised way. the workshop can move fast at times but Josh is always there to help :)
Aqil, Product Designer
I really appreciated the walkthrough of setup, deployment and best practices. GitHub, Vercel, and getting everything connected is usually the part I struggle with most. I was surprised by how much we managed to build in such a short amount of time, and it was really useful learning how to apply a design system in an actual Cursor project.
Jessica, Senior Product Designer
It made building my own websites actually feel possible (code is not that scary after all). I had attempted vibe coding my portfolio a couple of times before but having the support from Josh in this session and getting set up properly is key. I can actually see this one being successful and I’m excited to keep pushing it now that I’m not limited to templates anymore woop!!
Etain, Product Designer
Great way to learn the integration of AI to create your live portfolio in less than half a day. In-depth explanation and perfect pacing overall.
James, UX/UI Designer
If you want to be up to date with AI and escape from the creative constraints using your typical Framer and Webflow, this is the perfect workshop for designers to familiarise themselves with a bit of code and use AI to enhance creative freedom.
Celine, UNSW Design Student
It was a superbly planned and detailed session on building a portfolio website using Cursor and Vercel. I learned a ton — Josh made sure everyone came prepared before we even started, stayed patient whenever we hit snags, and shared some fantastic resources for building a website. He shared his own personal projects and shared his experience designing and building. Highly recommend!
Asim, Senior UX Designer
One day to learn how to build a portfolio site that's actually yours
$375AUD
3 seats left
Full-day workshop, 6 seats max. Small on purpose so there's time to help when something breaks.
$200AUD
2 seats left
Discounted rate for current students, recent graduates, or people who are between roles. Honor system — I'll ask for a quick note at checkout.
Join the waitlist
Get notified when the next session is scheduled. No payment, no commitment.
Full refund up to 14 days before the session. Within 14 days, I'll move you to the next one.
$375 for the full day. That includes the workshop itself, a FigJam board with the activities we'll be doing together, a starter repo, and a full written lesson plan, which is yours to keep. I'm also available for 1:1 support both before and after the session if you have questions about anything.
6 seats per session. It's a small session on purpose so there's time for me to help if something breaks.
The only thing you pay for separately is a Cursor plan, which is around $20-30 AUD a month, and optionally, a custom domain name for your final website. Everything else we use has a free tier that's more than enough to get started.
Yes. $200 if you're a student or between roles, 2 seats per session. I'll just ask for a quick note about your situation. I'm not going to interrogate anyone.
If money is the only thing in the way and neither of those fits your budget, Email copied!. I'd rather have you in the room.
If you can't make it: full refund up to 14 days before the session, no questions asked. Within 14 days, I'll move you to the next one instead — including if something comes up at the last minute. You can also transfer your booking to a friend or colleague if you can't make it, just email me.
If I have to cancel: full refund, or a seat at the next session, your choice. If fewer than three people book I'll move the date rather than run a session that doesn't work, and you'll know at least a week out.
Yes. You'll get a proper receipt automatically from Stripe, and if you need a tax invoice with an ABN for expensing or reimbursement, email me and I'll send one.
If your team wants to do this together as a private session, that's something I run too. Get in touch.
Remote for now, over Discord, with a shared FigJam board we work from all day. This has worked well so far in previous sessions, and it means you're building on your own machine in your own setup, which is where the site has to live anyway.
I'm planning to test an in-person day in Sydney. Join the waitlist if you'd rather do it that way and I'll tell you when it happens.
Join the waitlist and you'll hear about the next date before it goes public. Seats do open up when people move sessions, and waitlist people get first offer.
Cursor with a paid plan, signed in. Node and Git on your machine. A GitHub account and a Vercel account, both free. If you want a custom domain, have your registrar login handy so we can change DNS on the day.
Full setup instructions for your session go out with your booking confirmation. Work through them before the day so we can start building at 9am. Reply if setup fights you — you don't have to figure it out alone.
A free Cursor plan technically works but you'll hit limits partway through the day.
No. You need design sense. The Cursor agent writes most of the code and I walk you through the technical parts step by step. It's helpful if you have some familiarity with the terminal and basic web development concepts such as CSS, flex box, and responsive design. Many Figma concepts map directly to the same concepts in code.
Bring access and your content and we'll move what we need into the new site. We're rebuilding it properly on a stack you own, not running an automated export. Depending on your current site, there might be some manual copy and paste, and additional editing required to get it looking right.
You'll leave with a live site, and optionally connected to your own domain. Content and polish always continue after, which is why we set up a staging/dev branch so you can keep going safely. I can't guarantee your entire site will be finished in one day (this depends on the complexity of your site and how fast you work), but you'll have a solid foundation to build on.
You'll leave with a real site at a real URL. That's the promise, and it's held for everyone who has come through so far.
It's for designers, at any level, who already know what good looks like. If you're brand new to design, this probably isn't the right starting point. There are some technical parts (Github, command line, basic CSS, design tokens, etc.) in the workshop, but I walk you through all of it step by step. If you're a seasoned developer, you might get some value from the designy parts, but you'll probably get a lot of information you already know (git, branching, etc.).
