Noob Loop Question

If you want to check the number of posts on each page, you can use the found_posts method of WP_Query :

<?php
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
$portfolio = new WP_Query(array('post_type' => 'project', 'posts_per_page' => 12, 'paged' => $paged));
if ($portfolio && $portfolio->found_posts >= 2) :  
    while ($portfolio->have_posts()) : $portfolio->the_post();
        echo "<div>";
        the_title();
        echo "</div>";
    endwhile; 
endif;
wp_reset_postdata();
?>

and here we use $portfolio->found_posts >= 2 to check if we got 2 or more posts on the page. Finally wp_reset_postdata() is added to restore the global $post to the current post in the main query.