Comments on: How Creative Should A Designer’s Resume Be?

By: Drew

Drew — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:59:51 +0000

I have used both the heavy design resume and the traditional one. I can honestly say the jobs I picked up with the graphic resume were much more fulfilling as an artist, as opposed to the ones I got with the traditional resume. If your the type of person who is more interested in getting an awesome job where you are challenged daily as a graphic designer and pushed to the limits of your creative ability, go with the heavy graphic resume. Only those employers who get your style and want what you have to offer will respond. On the other hand if you your looking for a gig…any gig, send them the traditional one. Those employers generally don’t care about your style or talent, they simply just need someone to work the program and produce work in their preset style.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:52:04 +0000

Oh WOW! Some of these are truly awesome! My fiancée is a graphic designer and he could use taking a look at this entry! Thanks for putting it together, Jennifer. _____________________________ Looking for web design tips?

By: spence_noodle

spence_noodle — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:43:09 +0000

Fantastic designs and layouts to inspire all who are about to set to make a resume. But they are only good to post or email and therefore no good for the likes of a job website, they usually want a doc file.

By: atsa

atsa — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:13:33 +0000

I really like all these resumes but its not same with HR Departments of Companies looking to hire. Mostly the look for exact information and in resume there should be more information design than visual designs.

Thanks for sharing these beautiful resumes

By: TomBradshaw

TomBradshaw — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:22:04 +0000

Wow, these are really stunning examples. Designs like these would really make you stand out. It would depend on the kind of company your going to see exactly. I would agree with peterb, that it’s a good idea to have a ’serious’ resume in addition. Perhaps send the serious resume in the mail and have a design like these to leave with the potential employer at the interview. Include a photo of yourself also – every little helps!

By: Juuce

Juuce — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:03:08 +0000

These are great! What is a CV these days? To me it is a bit of paper that convinces the target to consider you for the job and get you an interview. If it achieves those aims, it sure beats a classic approach that gets deleted. A case in point, our studio once received a paper donkey (pinata)from a designer that we had to kick the crap out of to get to the CV and work examples. She still works for us 5 years later.
The creative industry has the benefit of not needing to fit the square hole, wear the suit or be cleanly shaven. Of course some people prefer it – but tolerate deviation!
Roughly twice a year we put out adverts when we need designer for the studio, and nothing is more mind-numbing than 600 applications in the same Word template ranting about creativity, just not showing it. Being an industry largely about creative approached to visual presentation – why not start with your first point of contact. How wild you go depends on the target – a (suit-wearing recruiter? Borderline insane creative director? In-house production manager…
Bottom line is that it is hard to get excited about a creative prospect when their CV look like one from an accountant.

By: peterb

peterb — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:33:13 +0000

Terrific examples of a person’s creativity.

I find that most HR today don’t even know what a resume or c.v. is and it is obvious by the number of books, articles, and examples out there that there are no standards.

The real value of someone is what makes them stand out in the crowd.

I would advise those who do such creative work to have a simple straight forward old fashioned styled resume handy for the less progressive.

By: Hamran

Hamran — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:45:40 +0000

These are all cover pages. Great cover pages. Not resumes.

The actual resume is the complete employment/education information listed in reverse chronology in plain text, with your contact info at the top. If you exclude that, you break HR workflows and essentially hide information from everyone at your potential employer. The first thing many HR people have to do is paste the whole of your resume into a text box in a Web interface and save it into a database so it can be searched and referred to later. They need to see the information in its plainest form.

It’s the same as you can name your house “The Smith Cottage” and paint it blue and red and put lights all over it, but when people ask for your postal address you give them 123 Main St, City, State, Postal Code. There is a standard way to store and share and use this information. If you burn that information into an image instead of including as plain text then you hide it.

However the cover page can be the exact opposite. It is not even required in the strictest sense. So you can get as creative as you want in your cover page. You can also target various ones specifically to a particular employer or job. That is actually a great practice.

But if you were printing and mailing any of the above, then stapling a plain text resume to them would improve them. If emailing, then attach the above as an image and include the plain text resume in the body of the message and you clearly make it much more useful. Even if only to enable plain text searching of the message. So these are cover pages.

By: circle

circle — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:33:08 +0000

Check out these squares and their traditional views of what a resume is and is not. They should still have a print friendly version for entering into a database but these will make them stand out.

Actually everyone reading this I hope you don’t get creative because then it will be harder for me to stand out. Please be boring and basic and let me stand out. Thank you very much.

By: SpacePhoenix

SpacePhoenix — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:54:49 +0000

I think that only the last one would be suitable (even then probably border line) as a resume. imo a resume should be neatly presented, in mono only for easy scanning (possibly with OCR software) or transcribing into a database.

If I were an employer and I was going through resumes even if the job in question was a graphic designer one, I would probably trash all but the bottom one. The rest are really designs, designs which should be in a portfolio and not in a resume.

When an employer is going through a couple of hundred resumes any where they can’t quickly skim through and see the info they are looking for will probably end up going straight into the trash.