Is it important for a designer to have real work in a portfolio?

Question

Design

Let's say there are 2 designers:
The first work is of an average level, but real (you can see what he did to order).
The second work is of a high level, but not real (it is clear that he invented projects).
From whom will you order a design, knowing that both artists are not scammers?

Answer 1

Are you so eager to ask whether it matters whether the projects are real or not?
Doesn't have. More precisely - should not have. Because by hiring a designer, you are hiring a person who can make a "beautiful picture". Adding to this the requirement that he also satisfy some complete strangers whom you do not know and who may be idiots, you only complicate the choice. Customers at every step have no taste or have a crappy taste, climb into the design and make everything worse than it was. Or, on the contrary, an illiterate designer finds himself forced to redo everything, because it is too difficult to implement his original flight of fancy on a real site or in a real application.
Therefore, only a "synthetic" portfolio really demonstrates both the designer's abilities and his qualifications. All other things, such as his ability to work with a customer and so on, are not revealed by looking at the portfolio. They come up in interviews.

Answer 2

I would choose a designer with unrealistic work, as you can tell exactly what skill level he has from his portfolio. If his works surprised you, and they are not real, then he really does cool, and you can be sure that he made some chips himself, and the customer did not tell him. Each designer has his own works that he did outside of work, and he puts the maximum of his experience and imagination into these works. If the designer does not have such works, I would think about it.

Answer 3

If the quality of work of one and the second suits, then with whom it will be possible to agree.
Enough smut in the process. Based on the first negotiations, you can roughly assess the risks and level.

Answer 4

This question is difficult to answer unambiguously.
A lot depends on what exactly is meant by "it is clear that he invented projects."
It happens that the customer and the project are invented, but it was developed as if they were real. That is, the designer immersed himself in the task, came up with some kind of concept, and that's it. Logic can be traced in layouts and so on. In this case, there is nothing wrong with fiction. But this is a relative rarity.
More often there is a spherical photoshop in a vacuum. Dribbles and Behanses suffer greatly from this - there are a huge number of pictures that are beautiful at first glance, but upon closer examination it becomes clear that there is nothing in them except for pixeldra**. I call it UI kits disguised as mockups. You will get beautiful buttons in the absence of an understanding of what and how should work. In this case, a person with real projects is preferable.
Although! If you can afford to hire two separate people - an interface designer and a technical engineer, who will then glamorously draw all this without delving into the meaning - why not?