Shares 3K When it comes to creating resumes, graphic designers are lucky. Not many fields allow for potential employees to directly demonstrate their work-related skills with the resume itself. But graphic designers can — and should — treat their resume as they would a sample in their portfolio. Graphic design resumes can be challenging, since the standard rules of resume creation do not apply. Your resume has to ride a fine line between pizazz and professionalism—too much of one and not enough of the other can hurt your chances of employment. Writing Your Resume Start with contact info The very first item to include in your resume is your full contact info. Depending on the situation, you may want to include more information. Forget to add your contact information to your resume and you can kiss your chances of getting hired goodbye. Photo Credit: Your contact info should be placed at the very top or bottom of the page so that it can be easily located. If your resume is two pages, be sure to include the contact info on the second page as well. This way, potential employers will still be able to contact you in the event that your resume pages are accidentally separated. As such, objective statements are starting to go out of fashion-frankly, you can take them or leave them. Make the objective something that would benefit your employer as much as it would benefit you. For example, your objective could be to help new businesses create long-lasting, recognizable brand identities. Graphic designer resume pdf possible, your resume should fit on a single page. Think of your resume like a snapshot—a single photograph can tell a detailed, vivid story without needing extraneous details. Your resume is like a snapshot of your entire professional career thus graphic designer resume pdf. The best resumes are a single page, if possible. These days, employers and clients can and will find out everything there is to know about a designer before working with them, so resist the urge to embellish. But the other factor you have to consider is that employers are going to hold you to whatever skill level you claim to have. There are, however, some gray areas where honesty is concerned. If there are a few blemishes in your work history such as being let go from a previous positionyou can decide exactly how much information you want to reveal. Your resume should focus on the information that makes you look like the top candidate for the job. graphic designer resume pdf Show your results Make sure to be detailed when talking about your past work experiences and clients. You also want to include the results of your hard work. Write a formal cover letter Photo Credit: Do not underestimate the importance of a cover letter, especially when applying for graphic designer resume pdf via e-mail. In many cases, your cover letter will determine whether or not the recruiter looks at your resume at all. It should be professional, informative and to the point. When responding to a job listing graphic designer resume pdf want ad, your cover letter should be a direct response to whatever it is the employer is asking for in a designer. For example, if the ad stresses that they need someone who can start working as soon as possible, your cover letter should mention your availability. Keep the letter brief; it should only be one page, period. Use small paragraphs and get to the point as quickly as possible. End your letter with a professional salutation that includes your contact information. You still have to edit for spelling, grammar and clarity. Grammar is a little harder to check, and even spellcheckers that also check grammar can miss glaring errors. This also helps you catch omitted words. This is a good graphic designer resume pdf even if you do feel confident in your own abilities as an editor; a second pair of eyes will often catch something you never noticed before. Designing Your Resume Use the tools of your trade Put away Microsoft Word for now. When creating the look of your resume, whip out design software such as InDesign or Illustrator. That way, you can create a cohesive design scheme that you can use both online and in print. This also helps make it easier for employers and clients to bridge the gap between your print resume and your online portfolio, since they have a similar visual brand. Make it your own The look of your resume gives you a chance to show off the more unique parts of your personality. Photo Credit: Your resume design is an opportunity to show potential employers and clients a bit of your personality, both as a person and a designer. It gives the people you want to work with a chance to get a feeling for whether you fit in with their culture and identity. Showing people your true personality is a bit of a risk. That being said, you still need to be professional and demonstrate to employers that you can use your style to sell a brand. Figure out what makes you stand out and inject those unique qualities into your work, but in a way that will reach your audience who, in this case, are potential employers and clients. For starters, you never know who else is using the same template. Worse case scenario: the employer is actually impressed by the template design, and then disappointed later on when they discover that you have a different style and skill level altogether. The design you pick for your resume should be representative of what you can do for a potential employer. Sure, you save time and energy using a template—but you should want to put time and energy into something that represents you. Graphic design resume templates can be a good learning tool for figuring out techniques to use in your own design, but using a template like a fill-in-the-blank form is just going to hurt your chances of employment. Color in your resume works best in small doses. Photo Credit: Be smart about your color choices Unlike other professionals, graphic designers get to inject some color and personality into their resumes. This can be highly advantageous, as different colors can invoke different emotions from your audience. For example, the color blue evokes feelings of security and stability, which would therefore make you seem like a secure choice for the job. Use too many colors at once, and you risk muddling your message and making your resume look unprofessional. Again, you have to think of yourself as a brand; most brands only use one or two colors to represent themselves. Plus, using fewer colors gives you more printing options see and makes the design easier to convert to black-and-white if need be. Readability is priority one When it comes to resumes, fashion should never trump functionality. Fonts should be simple and readable. Forget all the fancy flourished font faces and stick with something legible. You should also make sure the font size is big enough, both in your digital and physical resumes. Color can also be an issue, both font color and the surrounding colors used in the design. Some colors clash and can be hard to read, while others blend into one another in a way that makes them practically invisible. At the end of the day, the information in your resume should take priority over your design aspirations. A lot of the best graphic design resumes contain the best elements of infographics, and some designers graphic designer resume pdf excelled at completely converting their resumes into an infographic format. Tread carefully if you decide to go this route. Use whitespace to your advantage Another way to appeal to recruiters who have to read dozens of resumes at a time is to. This is true for both your resume and your cover letter, even if you stick to a standard, text-only resume. Whitespace helps break up your resume and makes it easier to read. Photo Credit: Whitespace makes it easier to quickly scan for information, which means that all the important points you make in your resume and cover letter have a better chance of actually being seen. Use lists to break up information and keep paragraphs brief. Be consistent in the way you present yourself How many times in these tips do we have to say it. You are a brand, so treat yourself like one. Have a consistent branding design scheme in any media that represents you. Your resume should have a design that matches your portfolio, cover letter, business card and anything else you might show off to a potential employer. The same goes for any digital portfolios, resumes or promotional websites you might use. This demonstrates to recruiters that you have the ability to craft an entire branded identity, and that you can keep that consistent design quality throughout multiple mediums. It also helps keep your work all tied together in a neat little package. Recruiters never need to play the guessing game as to which business card goes with which resume; they can tell just by looking that the two are a match. Your resume should match the brand identity of your business cards, portfolio and any other print media you use. Sure, most people can open a. Most importantly, this allows you to have more graphical options for the look of your resume. Photocopies also tend to be extremely low quality. Photocopier paper is of cheap quality and it feels that way, too. Your resume should be nicely printed on quality stock. Make your resume really pop by using high quality paper stock. Just like any other print media, the feel of your resume can say a lot about you to potential employers. But you should see this as an investment towards your graphic designer resume pdf. Make sure your files are high-quality For the best results when printing your resume, make sure the file is saved in a format with at least 300 dpi or more. Avoid annoying gimmicks Sometimes being a little weird and pushing your creativity to the limit can be a huge benefit towards making you stand out from the crowd. But other times, it can just be annoying. Creative, gimmick-based resumes can be effective, you just have to know how to reel in your ideas so that the creativity is a help, not a hindrance. Take the sample resume below that was sewn together using cloth. This will give you a better understanding of how your resume will be received by your typical person off the street. This is also a good litmus test for whether or not your creativity is overwhelming your content. You might even want to ask them what their overall impression of you would be after reading the resume. You can then optimize your resume design so that it gets the most attention possible. Be professional when presenting your resume Many designers make the mistake of focusing on the creation of the resume and that they completely botch an important step in between: making contact and presenting the resume. Dress professionally, look neat and clean and be sure to conduct yourself in a polite, professional manner. Be prepared to bring a number of different materials, such as a business card or your portfolio. You never know how an initial meeting with a potential employer will go, and many times you may be asked questions or have a chance to talk briefly about the position. Treat this like a sort of pre-interview. Having your resume already updated and ready to go can be a big help, especially in a highly competitive industry where landing a job means being the first one to make an impression. Every now and then, you may find yourself wanting to do a complete overhaul of your resume. Or maybe you just want to update your design to better reflect your growth as a designer. Even the most impressive resume will start to lose its luster after a while. Final Thoughts At the end of the day, you want a resume that you can stand behind—something that you like and that you think fairly and accurately represents your personal styles and tastes. You may find that what you like and what your potential employers and clients like are wildly different. Because sometimes recruiters will be able to look past their own personal tastes and see your true potential. Now we want to hear from you. We want to see your creative graphic design resumes, so post your samples and tips in the comments below. Who knows, maybe someone will see it and offer you a design job. With his team of designers and experts, he helps customers put forth the best possible impression with high-quality collateral. Learn more aboutand connect with him on and. I truly hope the pun was intended… I have spent a lot of energy creating my designed resume, only graphic designer resume pdf finding out that Applicant Tracking Systems will not read them correctly or at all. And what makes it worse is that, I was told only 19% of pdfs are considered. There are so many defined rules that need to be met and nobody is explaining this. Only 25% of resumes are making it through this process. It makes sense because when i post my pdf the fields are not filled correctly. Even my non-formatted Word doc does not filter in right. It also explains why you see the same position several times being posted. But why not apply this to hiring, when we are now trying to get driver-less cars to be part of our lives.
